Some Things I Remember About the Cedar Fire

• That time it was the biggest fire in California history.
• That time the guy stood in the popcorn room of the refugee hotel. (In October 2003, we were still called refugees.) That stunned look on his face I already knew too well. That awkward elbow-out way he held the phone at his ear because we still thought you had to hold your cell phone to your head.
• What he said: “My house is gone, my folks’ house in San Bernardino is gone, I can’t get them on the phone, I’m done with southern California, that’s it, it’s over.”
• What my friend’s voice shouted from my phone: “Mom’s great-uncle is in San Bernardino. We can’t find out if he’s alive or dead. You’re closer, you can get through, can you please call him, he’s blind, he just made a hundred.”
• Yes, two fires at the same time. More than two, come to that. But the Cedar Fire and whatever they called the one in San Berdoo are the only two I remember now.
• At this hotel, the refugees were allowed to bring their pets. Most were floof dogs, big-eyed and curious and a little hushed as they looked up and down the check-in line. One woman held an Amazon parrot.
• You couldn’t go outside because of the smoke. But everyone spilled out of the popcorn room with their plastic cups of complimentary wine because the popcorn room was too confining, too red and yellow, too bright somehow. And also it felt rude to sit there while this guy called everyone he knew who still had service. So into the lobby and across to the lounge where there was a seventies-style glass patio door overlooking the famous pool. It had a heavy plastic cover on it.
• The guy was stuck on repeat, something I’d noticed before from victims of shock: “I didn’t even have time to get my wallet. My house is gone, my folks’ house in San Bernardino is gone, I can’t get them on the phone.”
• A woman somehow out there in a jogging costume. Ponytail jaunty. A pink sweatband. Pink sweat shorts. White running shoes. She thought she was doing something healthy. The look on the man’s face before he went out too: “Somebody has to tell her to get inside.” The way he pulled his shirt up high to cover his nose and mouth.
• All the times a robot voice picked up when I called the great-uncle: “That number is not in service.”
• Eyes dazed, phone out of battery, the guy told me the same story in the same words: “My house is gone, my folks’ house…” Had I repeated myself like this when my little house was crushed under 20,000 pounds of red pin oak? I must have. The sense of looking in a mirror was too strong.
• That time a few weeks later when I read they had more fire trucks in low-income New Orleans than wealthy San Diego. There was public corruption somehow somewhere. There would be an investigation. Although maybe it was Orleans Parish that was corrupt, and somebody was putting relatives in all those jobs. Who remembers that part now? I don’t.
• That time later yet in the open-air bar near Villa Tunari, Bolivia. Wet and green and who knows how many thousand miles away. Here I sat, drinking wine with the old frenemy who still lived in San Diego after all that. Well, I was drinking it. He said Bolivian wine was undrinkable, and anyway he didn’t need to drink to share his endless yarns about the endless fires, and finally I said, “We were stuck downtown during the Cedar Fire,” and he paused for a beat, and then he said, “Hmm. The Cedar Fire? I don’t remember that one.”
• By then, there had been too many.
• It was October 2009.

Author's Note

This short memoir was previously published in, "Found In My Journal," a Medium publication.

In the 18 years since the Cedar Fire, North America has experienced an explosive-- even exponential-- growth in forest fire disasters. The greatest fire disaster in California history has become a footnote. How do you tell the story of a terrible disaster that became a run-of-the-mill event in only six years? It took a while to figure it out, but I woke up one morning with the concept of using the listicle format, and from there the memories unspooled freely.

Although I have few photos in my files from 2003, to create the feature image I whipped up a collage from those low-rez images I still own.

If you enjoyed this story, please gently tap the <3 to let me know. I also accept tips.

Some other stories you might enjoy

A small but concerning report about hummingbirds in trouble:

This story is fiction but is also inspired by true events: