The Home Fires Burning

San Diego is burning.

Again.

Just been sitting here TRYING to get some news on the fires. In case you hadn’t heard (and from what I’m seeing, you may not have), San Diego is pretty much on fire. Multiple blazes, driven by Santa Ana winds (man, I always hated those), are tearing across San Diego County, burning homes by the hundreds, driving people by the hundreds of thousands (that’s not a typo) to evacuate. So while looking for live coverage this evening, I turn to MSNBC, and what do I find there? What do you know. ANOTHER prison documentary! I’m sure another installment of “To Catch a Predator: The Blooper Reels” will be on next. I ended up on Fox, and found live coverage. From Geraldo Rivera, no less.

In a very surreal moment for a former San Diegan like myself, I’m watching Geraldo broadcasting, as if from Iraq (or a gangster’s empty vault), live from Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, the same stadium I lived next to during my seven years there, the same one I drove past every day on I-15 on my way to work…to work in Poway, a town now deserted and burning, to an office that may or may not still be there. He’s walking around interviewing some of the 10,000 San Diego evacuees that are calling the Chargers’ stadium home tonight. The mood there—no surprise to me—is upbeat and hopeful. People are coming together, helping each other out, looking for the best in a bad situation. It’s these people that make me both miss and love San Diego so much. There’s a reason that it still feels like home in my heart.

This is all very familiar to me. It was four years ago, while I was still living there in the suburb of La Mesa, right next to the SDSU campus, that I got up late on a Sunday morning, not bothering to turn on the TV. I eventually went outside, and I remember looking up and trying to figure out why the daylight didn’t really look like daylight…and why the whole sky was orange. It wasn’t until I turned on the tube and that I found what I’d been totally missing (I’d been working on the computer all night and hadn’t bothered to check any news). San Diego was, for all intents and purposes, on fire. Neighborhoods I knew, that I drove through when I’d decide to get off the freeway early on certain days to take the scenic drive to work, were being consumed by fire, and people were fleeing. Some, not fast enough. I remember hearing the first story of a body found in car, someone trying to outrace the inferno and get out of their neighborhood…and losing. It was serious. And it was personal to me, because my office—the GEICO building in Poway—was in harm’s way. Work was called off for a couple of days while the fires raged on. Once it was all over, I was able to return, and to drive through the devastation, to see once beautiful wooded areas looking now like the surface of the moon, to find that the fire had blackened every hill on its way to my building…and stopped just a few hundred feet short of it.

For the next year, the reminders of the disaster were ever-present, everywhere you looked. The landscape had changed dramatically, in both form and color. For moments there you could almost understand what living in a war-torn nation must be like, to look around and see everywhere how the senseless destruction had scarred your world and transformed it into something hopeless and unrecognizable.

And now it’s happening again, only this time, I’m hundreds of miles away, and part of me, for some reason, feels like a traitor for it. I’m seeing shots of familiar landscapes and neighborhoods either engulfed in flame or shrouded in thick smoke. I’m seeing my former fellow citizens in dramatic photos online, carrying their belongings (including fish tanks), on their roofs with hoses trying to save their homes, or sitting in tents in the Q parking lot, not tailgating a big game, but getting served dinner by Red Cross volunteers as they wait to find out if their homeless is temporary or more permanent.

And I’m worried about friends and family there. It took me a while to really realize what was happening in San Diego, because, of course, the whole world thinks Southern California is just one big L.A. All the news I was getting was about fires in Malibu, and the homes of stars being threatened. They slowly started mentioning “other fires” in San Diego, but soon couldn’t ignore it anymore. Seriously, it was like, “Yes, Tom Hanks is worried about his house. So is James Cameron. In other news, additional fires in San Diego have caused the evacuation of 250,000…wait, did you say 250,000?!” I got the news late. My first thought, hearing about the affected neighborhoods, was my friend Tony and his family. I’d heard that people in San Diego were being asked to limit their cell phone use, so I didn’t want to tie up lines by calling. So, from work, I sent him an email, knowing that he’d get that through his iPhone and would give me details when he was able. I figured he was pretty busy. Turns out I was right. I got to work today and found an email from him sent at 7:00pm last night. He and his wife and three kids (and their dog, Angel) had bugged out and relocated all the way to a hotel in Anaheim. As I wrote him back: “Tony Graham, your neighborhood’s on fire. What are you going to do? ‘I’m goin’ to Disneyland!!’”. Tony and the family are safe and sound. My mother got me info on my step-sister. Sherry, and family (I just saw her this weekend when she and Frank were in town for my sister’s birthday party), as there were some Chula Vista worries, too, but it sounds like that area’s doing okay. From what I can tell. It’s hard to keep up when you’re not getting local coverage. I didn’t bug Summer because I had a feeling there would be a blog coming from her on the subject, and I was right. Good local info from her there. And so far, her mother’s home, in the middle of a big burn area, seems to be okay, as do her dogs and horses. I wonder what’s happening with Aaron’s family, who were like a second family to me when I was living there. And with J.D. And Rebecca. And Conrad and Jen. And Andy and Jo. I’m waiting until tomorrow to check on my other friends, as I’m sure they’re getting enough in the way of frantic calls. I just hope everyone, and their homes, are doing well and ending up in the “lucky ones” category, unlike so many others this week.

Oh, and now it looks like Camp Pendleton is burning. Once again, I’m stunned by the “in other news” aspect of such things on a day like today. How many friends of mine did their basic training there over the years? I can only imagine the Marines over in Iraq watching the news, seeing that place they called home under attack by nature. Considering what basic training must have been like, come to think of it, some of them might be cheering…

I’m just dealing with all kinds of weird emotions. I’m remembering the at once great and annoying thing about living in San Diego…that no one seems to know it’s there. You get annoyed at moments like this that so many in the world think it’s a suburb of L.A., but at the same time, when you’re living there, you’re happy that L.A. tends to ignore it and leave it alone (until L.A. Raider fans come to town when their team plays the Chargers and start beating up and stabbing people to show their team spirit). I shouldn’t be feeling any ill-will towards L.A. right now, and I need to knock it off. This isn’t a class war thing. The rich and famous have much better homes, but their homes are still filed with irreplaceable family heirlooms and memories that are going away forever, and their lives are being torn apart, too. This is exactly the wrong time for the knee-jerk “us vs. them” mentality a lot of us who’ve lived in S.D. feel, so I’m trying to keep it out of my head. I think I’ll focus my annoyance on the press, not Angelinos. But Geraldo’s actually doing a really decent job with his reporting, really humanizing things and getting some great interviews. Just saw one with a group of high school kids who came down there to volunteer and serve food and do what they can. I’ll be honest…if I had any vacation time left this year, I’d probably be taking it right now, and I’d be down there. Stupid, I know. It’s not like there’s anything I could do. But I feel like I belong there. Like I want to do something, anything, for the city that I love so much, and the people I called neighbors all those years.

But all I can do is watch the news, and pray, like everyone else, that the winds die down tomorrow, so firefighters at least have some kind of chance to do ANYTHING. So far, they’ve been powerless. We’ll see how tomorrow morning’s news looks, if I can manage to turn off the set and get some sleep and wake to it. It’s going to be a long week in America’s Finest City. It may not have a happy ending, but at this point, we’ll just settle for an ending, so the city can, once again, pick up the pieces and start to rebuild. That’s what San Diegans do.

Stay tough, S.D. I love you. And God bless you.

P.S. Those wacky scamps on Fox News' late night show, Red Eye, are having a great time cracking jokes about California fires. Okay. I'm now done with Fox. Forever.