Evacuees

I was always fascinated by the children who were evacuated from London during WWII, sent into the countryside en-masse and taken in by strangers in villages all over Britain clutching their little gas masks and perhaps a younger sibling’s hand as they left behind everything and everyone they knew, quite possibly forever.
I used to wonder what it would feel like to be sent away from your home and fear never seeing your own bed again, or your parents, your pets and I thought it would be the worst thing in the whole world, even if it was a lovely place that you were sent to.

Watching the Jesusita fire rage in the last few days has been incredibly unnerving and frightening. Husband has been remarkably cool about the whole affair but I have been unable to concentrate on anything much other than think about what to do in case we get the mandatory evacuation order.

I spent almost all of Wednesday opening and closing drawers without removing anything, and looking at – but not packing – my best teapot and signed copies of beloved books. I also lay on the bed with Bagpurrito and thought about how I didn’t want to take him to a shelter because he wouldn’t like it and how all the people who had offered to take us in, in the case of a mandatory evacuation order were allergic to cats. This was such a terrible quandary that I felt completely unable to do anything other than lay there and allow him to comfort me with his gentle, purring presence.
Husband came home on Wednesday evening and we observed the fire going in the opposite direction to our house. This seemed like good news. However that type of thing, we knew, could change in less than an hour as it had that very day and we needed to be ready for anything.

Then all three phones rang at once- his cell, my cell and the land line.

It was the reverse 911 service telling us we were officially on an evacuation warning. This means that you are advised to get ready to go – pack all the essential documents and things you cant bear to lose, and be on standby for a mandatory evacuation order which could come at any time (or not at all, if you’re lucky).
We actually knew this already, but there was something very freaky about having all phones ring simultaneously to tell us the bad news. I felt like a cat with all her hair standing up on end and I couldn’t calm down for hours.
When i woke up this morning there was ash everywhere outside and a warning to keep indoors due to air quality had been issued to the entire city.

How was I going to keep the children indoors for a whole day in the hot weather like this? It wasn’t going to work.

I just wanted to get as far as I could from all of this stress and filth and ash, plus poor Husband was desperately trying to get some work done and we were constantly underfoot whenever he had a moment away from his fire-related duties.
So this morning I decided on the spur of the moment to take the children up the coast to the Monterey Aquarium which they have never seen and we’ll spend a few days here. We are staying in Pacific Grove, which is quite lovely and when we arrived at our hotel room which at first looked like it was going to be pokey and nasty and sort of sub-basementish, we realised that the other side of the room had a huge sliding glass door directly on to a giant stretch of grass that led into a park and there were two DEER nibbling on grass not 100 meters away. Astonishing and delightful. The children were so happy to be there and ran around crazily in the grass. As I put my bag down and rushed out to join them, laughing, I realised that I was starting to relax and that this is a sign of how keyed up the threat of the fire has made me.

I tried to call Husband but my cellphone has no reception here, and eventually I got hold of him on the old fashioned hotel phone (imagine!). He told me that the fire was much closer and he was going to hang up because he was busy packing and trying to get the cat out from under the bed. He thought there was a good chance they’d have to go.

Later on, after I got the children to sleep I checked emails, Facebook and Twitter as well as the news, and we have now been issued the mandatory evacuation. I can’t ring Husband because the little ones are asleep here in the room and he doesn’t Twitter or FB, or even use his email much so I have NO IDEA of where he or the cat might be.

I hope they’re safe.

I’ll drop in with updates on the comments

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