When bad things happen

I don't even know how to write about what happened this week. It didn't happen to me -- we're fine. Just need to put that out there, since we've been getting the usual calls and texts and emails over the last few days asking if we're all right. We're all right.

But oh my god, our community is not all right, and it really hurts to think about it.

So, I woke up Thursday morning to wind. This is not unusual, but I hadn't noticed on the weather forecast that we were going to have wind. I was focused on the snow and cold that was coming Friday, because I was going to be driving Rocket Boy to the airport Saturday morning. Missed the wind forecast entirely. But it was windy when I got up, and when I checked the weather it said we would have gusts up to 65 mph -- which means gusts up to 85 mph or more. They're always off by at least 20 mph, not sure why.

It got bad very quickly, and a gust of about 65 mph took our power out at 8:10 am. The lights flickered, went on and off, and then off for good. Great. We didn't lose power in the wind event on December 15th, so I guessed it was our turn. I turned off my laptop, since it doesn't hold a charge more than a few minutes, and went off to make tea -- except of course I couldn't do that because we had no power. I woke up Rocket Boy instead. 

Our local branch library just recently reopened (after being closed since March of 2020), so the kids decided they'd like to go there to play on the computers in the Teen Lounge, since the library still had power. I said I'd drive them, since it was so windy. I was a little nervous even being outside long enough to get in the car, the way things were whistling down the street. I drove to the intersection of Dartmouth and Broadway -- and the streetlights were out. Oh. Hm. I turned right instead of left and went down to the (non-working) streetlight at Rayleigh Road, where I made a U-turn and came back along Broadway to Table Mesa (where the lights were working). I got the kids to the library and headed home again. Two hours later, when I went back to fetch them, things had gotten worse. I took a different route and there were branches down everywhere, in some cases blocking the streets. I was nervous being out, even in my car. When I finally got to the library, I didn't want to get out of the car, but I went in and got the kids. And when we were driving home I noticed something I'd seen on the way there -- huge brown clouds to the southeast of us.

I thought they were dust clouds.

Made it home somehow, and told Rocket Boy about the "dust clouds." Then checked email on my phone and someone on our neighborhood listserv's asking "where's the fire?"

So then we started reading fire news on our phones. The fire was just a few miles from us, so close, but we were never in danger because of the way the winds were blowing, west to east, never northwest towards us. But it so easily could have been us. We were getting those crazy winds blowing down the mountain right at us. We're across the road from a big grassy field. It could have caught on fire. It could have been us.

This map is from the Colorado Sun. It shows many of the homes burned, though not all. My neighborhood is on this map too, in the upper left corner. Martin Acres. There we are. Not far away at all. One of my book group friends is even closer, in the middle left. Maybe a mile from the flames?

Rocket Boy said later that our house wouldn't have burned because it's made of brick, unlike most of the houses that burned which were probably made of wood. But Whole Foods and Costco and Target weren't made of wood. I found an article which explained that most of the structures burned from the inside out. They were being pummeled by high winds bearing embers, and the embers eventually found their way into air shafts, crevices, maybe a broken window. The contents of the houses caught on fire and then exploded their way out. 

At one point I got a call from our next-door neighbor and tenant. She had a small greenhouse in her backyard and the wind was whipping the covering off it and trying to blow the whole thing away. We all went out to help her, and she and Rocket Boy managed to get everything stabilized with the help of a heavy picnic table.

Rocket Boy had planned to take the kids to the Denver Museum that day. He hadn't been able to do it earlier because we'd been sick, and it was Christmas, and he had to work. Thursday seemed like the only possible day. The museum is still requiring reservations, and they were almost sold out, but we got tickets for 2:40 pm and he and the kids left here around 1:45. (Later I realized that if I had to evacuate, I had no car to do so with, unless I could get the Montero started. Fortunately I didn't have to evacuate.) They had a terrible time getting there and back, because of the fire. They couldn't take US 36, which was closed, they had to go east, around the fire. They drove past burning houses on South Boulder Road. They were a full hour late for their reservation.

On the way home they ate dinner at a Village Inn. I had some cheese and crackers. We lit the Advent candles, which fortunately had a lot of life in them yet, and we found various other candles and lit them too. Rocket Boy worked on the puzzle we were doing, while the kids discovered they could charge their phones from their Chromebooks. I kept checking my phone for more bad news, watching as its power dwindled. We all decided against showers in cold water. It wasn't too cold in the house, in the high 50s. 

Friday morning, I started freaking out. I hadn't had any caffeine since Wednesday morning, and I was feeling it. (We tried to go to Starbucks on our way home from the library, but they didn't have any power either.) My phone was down to 7% and I couldn't find a car charger. Rocket Boy was trying to sleep in, but I made him get up and look for the charger (he found it; we charged the phones). We decided to go to Longmont to deliver his brother's Christmas present (a King Soopers gift card) and eat out along the way. Teen B came with us, but Teen A chose to stay home alone. The snow had started and visibility was very low, probably because the smoke from the fires was mixing with the snow. But we made it to Longmont and ate at something called First Watch, which used to be The Egg and I. Then we went to King Soopers and got the gift card and dealt with all that. Rocket Boy drove home, for which I was very glad, since we had a few near misses with other cars.

While we were gone our power came back on -- I read it in my email first, so we called Teen A and he reported that yes, the house was heating up. That was very lucky, because it got down to single digits that night (and below zero Saturday night). We had a subdued New Year's celebration. Watched a movie, ate snacks. We had 10 inches of snow by morning and spent Saturday indoors because it was so so so cold. (We changed Rocket Boy's flight -- he's now going back Tuesday instead.)

Many of our neighbors didn't have power until today (Sunday). There were so many problems -- so many trees fell on power lines, so many power poles broke in the windstorm. Xcel Energy has been doing a valiant job of fixing everything, but their corporate office, or whoever is in charge of the robocalls they send out, really needs to rethink their approach. On Friday we got 22 phone calls from Xcel. Our home phone, which is no longer a true landline, had died sometime Thursday night, so almost all these calls went to voicemail -- so I listened to them one after the other on Friday afternoon after we had power again. One call would say, "We are aware that there is an outage in your service area. Crews are assessing damage and do not yet have a restoration estimate." The next call would offer a "restoration estimate." The next call would say, "Your power has been restored." The call after that would go back to saying there was an outage. Repeat, repeat, repeat, over and over and over. It was nonsense. We got a call at 11 pm that night saying we might have to hire a private electrician to fix our problem (we'd had our power back for over 8 hours at that point).

I think some people still don't have power, even now. But they have houses! And we have our house (plus the house next door, which our tenants still have). At least 991 families don't have houses anymore. It's just so hard to take in.

So, that's New Year's. In a few days I'll be back to do New Year's resolutions and all that. They may be a little different than usual. I've had some ideas. In the meantime, I'm trying to think how to help. We donated a bunch of old coats and boots, and also $100. It isn't much. I'm thinking Teen A's old trombone might be useful to a kid who lost theirs in the flames. We'll just have to keep thinking of things like that. How can we help? 

What I want, what everybody wants, is a way to prevent things like this from happening. This was the most destructive fire in Colorado's history and it happened so fast. I'm thinking about those terrible floods in Europe this past summer, and the heat dome over the Pacific Northwest. And the tornadoes in Missouri and Kentucky that just happened. And the flooding in New York City in September. All the terrible weather events that happened in 2021. Most if not all were related to climate change. Which means we have so many more such events to look forward to.

Going into 2022 it's so hard to have a positive attitude. I think the only thing you can do is plan to help out, as bad things happen. Of course vote Democratic, of course work to stop climate change, whatever you want to try to do is all good. But I think all one person can really do is try to help. When bad things happen, try to help. Think of good things to do for other people (and for cats, for the Earth, all that). I don't know what else.