My Story: The Cedar Wildfires
Posted on | February 22, 2008 |
By Jacqueline Lloyd, our guest fire blogger and the author of The Thief of Sacred
A Story of Survival: Read this harrowing, first-person story as author Jacqueline Lloyd, her family and animals evacuated their home and ran for their lives from the Cedar Fires.
The Aftermath: Most people fled our town when the Cedar Fire raged, braving panicking drivers and gridlock on the winding mountain roads to get down to the city. But for me, leaving was not an option.
Since my family’s homes were all destroyed early on in the Cedar Fire fire, I had no idea where to go. My husband had his hands full with his elderly mother and his sister, who had both lost everything. I had my 20 month old daughter, five cats and two dogs in a car wedged full of our treasures- jewelry, pictures, home movies and a computer disk on which I had hastily saved the manuscript of my novel, The Thief Of Sacred, right before we evacuated.
I felt utterly lost. Homeless and scared. The only comfort was that my daughter was too young to really grasp the enormity of our situation: she was busy sticking her fingers into the cat carriers stacked around her car seat and chortling.
It was two-thirty in the morning. Out of sheer desperation, I called a friend who lived north of the fire. Fully expecting to wake her, I was surprised to hear her cheery voice. As it turned out, several other families had shown up on her doorstep earlier, and she threw us a lifeline as well.
My daughter and I bunked with her for two days, along with our cats and dogs and four other families and their pets. I already knew most of the other people, but because it was such a raw time we had really honest, heart to heart talks over wine while we watched the fire rage unchecked.
We all pitched in and helped each other with childcare, cooking, and animal care- keeping the house clean and stocked for each other and for our hosts. The atmosphere was part party, part commune, and part psyche ward. Way too many people and animals and stress in a small house- but lots of love and unconditional support too. Hours dragged by as we huddled around the radio and TV, and fielding phone calls from people elsewhere with tidbits of news and reports of whose house burned, where the fire had gone and where it had skipped.
None of us could really fathom the magnitude of this fire until later, since it was so massive and moved so quickly. Tensions and love ran equally hot. It was life-changing experience. We knew that at the time and it built a very deep bond between all of us.
During the last fire, the Witch Creek fire of October 2007, we hosted people at our house. We’ve learned a lot and we’re very well prepared.
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