Not a Prepper (But Maybe I Should Be), Part II

I have been thinking about the fire that raced through Lahaina on the island of Maui a few days ago.

I am remembering interviews with survivors that I read recently in the New York Times. I may not be getting the interview details perfectly here, and was unable to locate the exact article again, but the main ideas have stayed with me. One woman who was interviewed said that she and her husband had just checked into their hotel and, of course, were excited to be starting their vacation when their cell phones chimed an alert that they should evacuate immediately, that there was a dangerous fire in the area. She said that since they were from the West, they hurried back to their rental car and started driving toward safety. While they were doing that, they saw people still checking in at the hotel and others heading to the beach or playing in the waves.

In other words, it seems like not everybody got that warning. Or if they got it, they didn’t think it applied to them or that it was that serious. She said that it was lucky that they still had their phones on, that they hadn’t turned them off to nap or just because sometimes that’s what you do on vacation: when you finally get checked in at your hotel after a day of travel, you turn off your phone and let that vacation feeling begin.

She and her husband are alive today. I wonder what happened to the folks who were just checking in at the hotel or the people playing in the waves? How long until fire started raining down into the ocean, until cars started burning and people started jumping over that rock wall that separated the road from the sea, and then floated in the water for hours before help finally arrived?

It’s hard to take in the enormity of that tragedy, of the lives lost, both human and animal.

I wrote a piece several years ago titled “Not a Prepper (but Maybe I Should Be)” after we had a snowstorm that dropped several feet of snow on our little town one night, a storm that knocked out our cell phone towers and electricity, too. We woke up one December morning to three feet of snow on the road out of town and three feet of snow on the highway and hundreds of trees down. Suddenly, there was no way in or out of town. It took days for the roads to clear, days for cell phone service to return, and even longer for the electricity. It was strange, to go to bed with electricity and a connection to the world, and to wake up the next day and be completely isolated. We were lucky; I don’t think there were any lasting negative ramifications from that storm. No heart attacks or strokes in our town that resulted in deaths or injuries because we were suddenly cut off from the rest of civilization.

But it gave me an uneasy feeling, knowing that there could have been.

It would have been a bad time to cut yourself while slicing a bagel.

(I read once that this was a major cause of Sunday morning emergency room visits).

It struck me that the woman interviewed by the Times who survived the fire said that one of the reasons they heeded the evacuation warning was because they were “from the West.” People who live here have seen how quickly fires can spread and decimate entire cities. When the powers that be tell you to evacuate, we listen. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we leave, because some folks choose to stay and protect their homes. But at least we pay attention. We all have to decide what we will do in various nightmarish situations.

Seems like the nightmarish situations are happening more frequently these days.

I don’t know what lessons could be learned from the Lahaina disaster. I know that the new normal of firemageddons in California has altered life here. PG&E, our local power company,  turns off the power without warning and without apology. They’ve cut thousands of trees. They have installed power lines with advanced settings that will turn off power within one-tenth of a second if a hazard like a tree branch falls onto a line.

But mostly? Maybe the thing to remember is that we need to be aware. We need to realize that the people who we think are in charge and taking care of us, that they are just people, too, and some things are bigger than all of us. Don’t trust the hotel front desk person to know whether or not it is safe to check in if there is a fire burning somewhere close. Don’t go to the beach if you see smoke in the area even though it seemed like a good idea a few minutes ago and you are on vacation and how could anything truly terrible happen in such an idyllic spot? Don’t plan on the power company to always keep the lights on or the cell phone company to guarantee service if a big storm is headed your way. Have a plan for what to do if the worst thing you imagine happens. At least think about it a little.

Because bad stuff happens in idyllic spots.

Bad stuff happens everywhere.

And sometimes, there’s not much that anyone can do about it. You might be on your own for a while. You might need to figure out how to take care of yourself until things get sorted and help arrives.

Which reminds me that I have an empty propane tank that I need to refill. A cord of wood to buy and stack. Also a couple of new tarps to keep the wood dry for when those winter storms come. All while remembering the people of Maui, those who lost their lives and those who survived whose lives will never be the same again.