Randall Paul Jenkins, Esq. » Blog Archive » California, and it being on fire.

So once again California is on fire.

Just on Saturday I was down in San Diego, remembering events from 4 years past (not the fires), and then suddenly Sunday events from 4 years past (the fires) were happening all over again. It has been a pretty crazy week.

My Sister (due to give birth to her first child at any moment) and her husband had to evacuate from their first house, which they moved into only weeks ago. From what I can tell the fire was as close as a few miles to their neighborhood, but all seems to have gone well. My Mother evacuated that same night, it would become mandatory the next day for her neighborhood, but things appear to be okay now there as well. The fire rages on though, to the northeast.

Four years ago we evacuated my Mom’s house, wearing scars of scratching cats as battle wounds, and expected our Cabin in Julian to be lost. Once again Julian is threatened, and the small back country (well as back country as something in California can be) town will come together and fight like mad to save itself. I lived in San Diego County for the first 24 years of my life, and only in the 24th did I ever have to evacuate or truly feel the imminent threat of what these fires could bring. I think wildfires to a lot of people are not as much the tragedy as an earthquake or hurricane, but the psychological effect I gather is much the same. And now evacuations have surpassed those of Katrina, the local government taking so much necessary caution by making people get out before it really became life threatening or impossible to evacuate. The loss of possession is tragic, but the reaction of leadership and sense of community is in a somber way encouraging.

I reflect upon these fires to the south because most of me still considers San Diego my home. It’s where I’m “from”, it’s where I never intended to leave. I have family and friends spread out across the county, and none have been safe from the threat one shift in flames could bring. That image up above (Photo Credit: Brad Filip), that is Encinitas, maybe 10 blocks from the Pacific Ocean. At one point in the week both major interstates heading north, and the one interstate heading east out of San Diego were closed because of the fires. I think that makes a statement the news has failed to show. Up here in Los Angeles county we get hours and hours of a Malibu fire that has destroyed or damaged 22 structures, meanwhile an entire metropolitan area to the south is an island in a sea of flames.

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