Asking me how my week was would be akin to asking Mrs. Lincoln, “So, how did you enjoy the play?”
When the thunder and lightning storms rumbled in early in the week I received Lord-knows-how-many text messages saying things like: “Wow! Isn’t this exciting?” and “Isn’t this cool?” and “Wow! What a show. So cool.”
Oh sure it was a spectacular demonstration of might and power Mother Nature was staging what with the rumbling and the flashing and the fat rain drops plopping down on the thirsty earth but, call me a fun sucking party pooper all I could think of was: FIRE!
Each lightning flash sent shuddering dread up my spine. I’d seen what August thunder and lightning storms could produce in the north state back in 1999 when the county had 30+ lightning-strike fires. The first one was 500-feet from my back door and another virtually wiped out my folk’s ranch and killed one of my dearest friends.
So I watched and waited and then all heck broke loose on Tuesday locally with the Butte Lightening Complex Fire and the Potter Fire. I monitored the fires and evacuation warnings and orders throughout the day. We also started the task of enlarging the wet zone around our property, which is a tiring chore of moving sprinklers every 90-minutes around five acres.
By early evening I was just worn out. I sat down for a cool drink and hot bite and that’s when the Code Red claxon ripped the quiet. We were under evacuation warning. I started to pack … again.
I have lost count how many times I have packed up our most precious things and gotten them the heck outta Dodge the past four years alone but I can tell you it’s been at least five times too many.
Once we were ready to go there was the added problem of trying to figure out exactly where we would go should the warning turn to an order, a more difficult challenge in The Time of COVID then in previous years.
I’m a night person so my beloved went to bed, someone had to get some sleep, while I stayed on fire watch. We had lit ash falling on the property.
During my 3 a.m. sprinkler patrol I got into a wrestling match with the hose and my flashlight. Frustrated, exhausted, worried and with one nerve left I lost what little composure I’d been clinging to and since no one was around to hear I just let loose …
“What a load of 2020!” “Are you 2020 kidding me?” “2020 this!” “Abso-2020-lutely not cool!” “God 2020 it!”
And as I finally got disentangled all I could think was, this freaking year is like the year at Hogwarts when all the Dementors were lurking around the school and swooping over Hogsmeade sucking the joy out of everyone and everything and the only protection was to stay inside and eat large chunks of chocolate.
By Wednesday afternoon I fell down just so I could take a break. Since I fell face first into a five-pound bag of dark chocolate kisses, it worked. I fell asleep drooling chocolate on my pillow … soooo attractive.
When I woke the warning had been lifted but the fires here and throughout the state, throughout the west continued to ignite and rage on.
As I sit writing this column beneath a yellow-gray sky from which ash is raining more than 500,000 acres are burning in the state from 10,800 lightning strikes; more than 60,000 have been evacuated from their homes; hundreds of homes have been destroyed; five people have lost their lives; and 30 firefighters have been injured, one, a helicopter pilot, is dead.
And yet once again just as he did when the Camp Fire burned in “Pleasure,” there are no words or actions of support from the current administration, only threats to withhold federal funding from California because, as he told the lemmings gathered at his Pennsylvania rally this week, we basically just don’t rake enough. His exact words were:
“I see again the forest fires are starting … They’re starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up … Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us. … I’ve been telling them this now for three years, but they don’t want to listen … ‘The environment, the environment,’ but they have massive fires again.”
Pardon my French but…What the 2020, Mr. President?
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August 22, 2020 at 05:42PM
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What a load of 2020 | Off the Record - Chico Enterprise-Record
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