Fleeing from Fires in Napa Valley
It’s 11 pm. My sister and I are on the outskirts of a vineyard, watching an orange glow of flames slowly creep up the side of Mt. St. Helena, the backdrop to our beloved town of Calistoga. The sight is unsettling and ominous but we haven’t gotten any notice of an evacuation warning, so it must be far enough away…right?
Should we evacuate now while we’re exhausted and weary, driving several hours to an unfamiliar location, just to come back again in the morning for work if the threat is minimal? Or take our chances and wait it out till the morning, praying the firefighters will extinguish the flames and take control of the situation? It almost feels like that scene in Titanic where the ship is sinking and impending doom is just hours away but the passengers don’t know it yet.
Personally, I’m drained from arriving in Calistoga a few hours ago after a trip to Santa Barbara for the weekend and can’t fathom any more hours of traveling. Perhaps stupidly, we opt for the latter choice, taking our chances to get at least a few hours of shut eye.
Do we evacuate now?
Sleeping is almost impossible as my phone continues to ding every few minutes from Nixle alerts announcing evacuations of surrounding areas. I read each one, making sure Calistoga is not included in the updated evacuation lists.
At 4 am, I get a call from my good friend Olivia, (yes, we have the same name). I talked to her before I went to bed and her tone has shifted dramatically. “You need to get out now,” she urges me. At first I’m skeptical since we haven’t even received an evacuation warning yet. I prod her further and she tells me that the fire is moving so quickly that she doesn’t think the Nixle alerts are keeping up in real time. I look outside and can see flames from my window, coming for the direction of our house, something I didn’t see when I went to bed a couple of hours ago. She tells me that propane tanks are exploding outside her house, a few streets down from mine. As we’re on the phone, we FINALLY receive an evacuation warning, which quickly turns to a mandatory evacuation order about 30 minutes later.
Chaos Begins.
I wake up my sister, Julia and her boyfriend, Cole. We scramble to throw our multiple, pre-packed evacuation bags, filled with our valuables in the cars. As we’re packing up, the emergency city sirens sound, causing even more panic for us and our surrounding neighbors. I’m yelling at Julia and Cole that they need to move faster as I’m worried that we’ll be stuck in a grid-lock with the fire surrounding us if it takes us any longer.
We coax the dog into the car and put the cat in the crate while simultaneously taking the last few pictures/videos of the house for insurance purposes in a worst case scenario. I take a final look at our family home that we love so much and created many memories over the years, hoping it will be still standing when we return.
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We have no idea where we’re going but decide to start caravanning north. We drive past our neighbors, either frantically loading their final belongings or racing out of town with the rest of us. In the dead of night, the streets are alive and packed. Our family unit tries to stay together as we drive over the mountain towards Healdsburg, the only evacuation route available. Going south, toward downtown Napa isn’t an option at this point as the flames have jumped the highway and are currently on both ends of the road. Driving over the mountain in
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