brokenco.de/_posts/2017-10-23-this-is-reality.md

---
layout: post
title: "This is your reality now"
tags:
- santarosa
- sonoma
- fire
- sonomafireinfo
---

The traffic on the Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco to Oakland is one of the
most congested routes of traffic in all of Northern California. Somehow it gets
even worse on Saturday and Sunday. One weekend, a few years ago, I was driving my wife
and some of the women from her soccer team back to Berkeley, from a game in
San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. On the east side of the bridge, before
inching onto I-580N, I was pretty pissed off, and half-joking half-frustrated
shook back-and-forth at the steering wheel "GAHHHHHHHHHHHH." The woman sitting
behind me, who was certainly the "funny one" of the group, put her hand on my
arm and gently said "Tyler, this is your reality now."

Certainly a well-delivered line, perfect timing, received with laughter all around, but
the phrase has stuck in my memory longer than the woman's name.


My [last post](/2017/10/09/fire-coming-down-the-mountain.html) I wrote as a way
to process and capture the trauma of watching fire rip into northern Santa
Rosa. A town I have adopted and which is the subject of a number of picturesque
photos I have posted over the past three years, always titled with my
unofficial city motto: "Santa Rosa: It's nice."

The day after I wrote that post, I ended up at the [Chimera Arts and
Makerspace](http://chimeraarts.org) in Sebastopol, the little hippie town west
of Santa Rosa, where I joined a fledgling effort called [Sonoma Fire
Info](http://sonomafireinfo.org). I took the remainder of the week off from
work, and our little volunteer organization rapidly became a clearinghouse for
verified information across the county in its time of need. Soaking up the
efforts of over 60 volunteers who made thousands of phone calls, scoured social
media, and captured truth amid the chaos. In a two week period, the website had
been viewed by over 100k people.

I think we did a great job of informing Sonoma County. The rest of the country,
and world, remains frustratingly less informed about an event from which my adorable
little city is going to take _years_ to recover.

The fire that I watched whip down the hillside is known as the "Tubbs
Fire". The fire that I could see from miles away on Llano Rd during our
voluntary evacuation to Sebastopol at 3:45 that morning is known as the "Nuns
Fire." While I saw both of these with my own eyes, there were **four other
fires**, of various sizes, engorged by 50-70mph winds, raging in Northern
California:

* The "Sulphur Fire" burned in Lake County to our northeast.
* The "Pocket Fire" destroyed parts of northern Sonoma county.
* The "Redwood Valley Fire" incinerated Mendocino County further to the north.
* The "Atlas Fire" tore through Napa County to our east.

At one time there were **six active fires** in the part of Northern California north of
San Francisco and west of Sacramento. To put this into a historic context,
**four** of those six fires rank in the 20 most destructive (structures destroyed)
wildfires ever recorded in California history:

![The 20 most destructive fires](/images/post-images/your-reality-now/destructive-fires.jpg)
(posted by [@CALFIRE](https://twitter.com/CAL_FIRE/status/921441414981885952/photo/1) on October 20th)


The most destructive (Tubbs), and sixth most destructive (Nuns), wildfires in
the Bear Republic's history scarred Sonoma county on a difficult to understand
and on a difficult to process scope.

The impact on Santa Rosa, in particular, from this [unfathomably big fire](https://twitter.com/agentdero/status/921609069810532353)
cannot be understated. Considered the fifth most populous city in the "Bay
Area," with just over 170k residents, it lost **5%** of its housing in less than
twelve hours. The gale-force winds which woke me up at 12:30am on October 9th
pushed the fire through neighborhoods, across 4-6 lanes of Highway 101, and
through hundreds more homes before it could be stopped, all in a matter of
about 8 hours.

---

We returned to our house the Thursday night after the fires started, exhausted.
After a full day working at Chimera on Sonoma Fire Info, and some dinner that
Friday, I holed up in my office and continued scouring the internet for news
and updates when I startled at the sound of water falling on the tin patio roof.

My first thought: "did a water-tanker helicopter just fly over?" Followed
quickly by "no fucking way, did it start raining!?" Bolting out the front door,
I was disappointed to learn it had not started raining, but then was bemused to
find my neighbor, watering my house.

I can understand the compulsion to water down the house "just in case" in areas
near wildfires, but this wasn't a "just in case" rather, my neighbor caught an
ember burning on my roof earlier in the week. He had since taken to watering both our
houses a couple times a day.

I also learned from my night-owl of a neighbor that he had been sitting on my
corner-lot house's porch, and brandished his pistol a few times at some cars
which took an especially slow roll through our neighborhood, not about to let
any thieves take advantage of the situation.

The CALFIRE maps show that we are almost exactly one mile south of the last
structures completely destroyed by the Tubbs Fire.

This was close, terrifyingly close.

---

The next Monday, a week after the fires broke out, I return to work, to
questions of "are things okay?"

I lie.


Everybody in Sonoma county who didn't lose a house, knows somebody who did.
Thousands of people will have to wait until early 2018 for the EPA to remove
thousands of tons of toxic ash and debris, requiring a clean-up operation of
unprecedented size, before they can begin to rebuild. Large portions of
Sugarloaf Ridge State Park are burned, the majority of Annadel State Park is
destroyed. Most of the little Sonoma Valley towns I drive through on my way to
Napa have suffered severe damage.

This region, this adopted home of mine, is scarred in places beyond appreciation
for many Americans, including some who live here.


Much as I would like to wallow in that frustration and despair, there is no
direction to go but forward.  There is nothing that will undo what has been
done, nothing will make this "okay."

There is no option for Sonoma county, and Santa Rosa, but to enjoy the warmth
of the autumn sun, pick up the pieces, and to rebuild.

"This is your reality now."