Rebuilding Your Life After a Devastating Fire Takes More Than Wood and Nails
Take your keys out of your purse or pocket and hand them to me.
Your house is mine now. Whatever you did when you left home this morning is the very last memory you’ll have of it and everything you own. You probably locked the door behind you without a thought, certain you’d be back soon. Wrong. You’ll never see it again. Maybe I’ll take your car, too.
That’s the best description I’ve heard of what it feels like to lose your home to a wildfire, as my wife Karen and I did in Sonoma County’s Tubbs Fire on October 9, 2017. Between midnight and dawn, tens of thousands of people lost their houses, neighborhoods and jobs. Forty-four people lost their lives (including four who died in a separate blaze in Yuba County). It’s disorienting. Confusing. Doesn’t seem quite real, even when you’re looking right at it. A neighborhood that had been there for 30 years suddenly wasn’t, like a bad magic trick.