The real question is: Why would I say anything at all? Why does anyone need to hear from me on this topic (you really don't) when the images and stories are everywhere? By now, you've read harrowing stories and seen terrifying photos of embers rocketing across a morbid sky like 5000 angry sparklers.
You've seen videos taken from cars driving through ravaged neighborhoods, glancing past burning carcasses of used-to-be-homes, zooming in on the skeleton of an extant fountain or brick steps.
You've heard horrifying tales of narrow escapes, no-time-to-pack-bags, pets rescued, pets wandering newly ghost-towned streets, bunny museums you never knew about, schools and churches and dry cleaners and bike shops and summer camps decimated along with the concrete proof
that they ever existed in the first place, and wondered what you might have packed or grabbed if given 5 hours or 5 minutes or 5 seconds to decide what you couldn't allow yourself to lose.
You've seen so many GoFundMe pleas for help with nearly-identical photos of rubble that you can barely tell them apart. So, again, why should I post anything at all? I've already marked myself safe.
What a thing to do. Mark myself "safe." With the most destructive fires in California's history still burning and robbing friends and strangers of shelter, memories, and a sense of tomorrow. What is "safe?" Safe is knowing our home is still standing.
Safe is having the choice to evacuate on Wednesday morning because the power was out, the smoke was so thick inside our house that it stung our throats, and the wind sounded so much like thunder that when the sky flashed green as transformers exploded, it was hard to believe it wasn't lightning.
Safe is the good fortune of loving friends who offer their guest room to the three of us and our dog, opening their home to us when we felt unsure about the future of our own. And today, as the Eaton fire has been 27% contained and we consider returning home,
safe is a conditional sigh of relief tinged with survivor's guilt and incongruous uncertainty as strong winds are predicted through the next three days... adding a smattering of worries but mostly a new, surging wave of fear for friends whose homes in the paths of both the Eaton and Palisades fires
have been threatened nonstop since Tuesday evening. The number of close friends who are suddenly homeless is staggering. Much of our own community has been in Pasadena and Altadena for the past 15 years. And the more arial views of obliterated land I see,
the more I grasp what has been wiped off the map, more than I had even imagined. Flattened. I find myself scrolling through past Evites to cross-check home addresses with maps of devastation.