The Fires Three Months Later

Quote of the day:
“42.”
--The Ultimate Explanation for the Universe, according to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

A few weeks ago, Merrie and I visited Heidi, who lives near Ramona, about 40 miles northeast of San Diego. Her house had burned to the ground in the October fires. In fact, every house on her street was a pile of rubble.

Heidi was living in a FEMA-supplied trailer next to her burned-up house. She said she’s not going to rebuild, because she plans to retire and move in a few years. Her matter-of-factness about this impressed me.

It’s hard for me to imagine what it’s like to lose most of your possessions, including where you live. During the fires, people who had lost everything would often say something to a reporter about how they were so glad to be alive and that their families were safe.

Life is the most important thing, of course. But as much as I might hold on to that, I would still have to put my life back together.

As we drove past all those destroyed homes surrounded by blackened earth and trees, I simply could not grasp what all these people had been through--and will continue to go through.