Page 6 - the NOISE August 2013

June 30th 2013 is a day scarred into our minds and our communities. It was a day of rumors and not knowing.
Two pm: We were thinking we’d dodged the bullet and the small brush fire I could see out my front door would become nothing more than that.
Two am: Awake, watching a line of the last of my neighbors leaving everything behind them, and praying for the 19 young men on the hill.
We’d heard about the radio call — they were deploying fire shields. We held onto hope. “Please let these young men, these he- roes, be all right ... please!” Shaking. Just the first of so many tears shed for them.
I was standing outside when the wind changed. It had been a slow, steady wind from the south, blowing the fire into the trap set for it: a break set up by the first team, to protect the residential part of Peeples Valley. Then, monsoon-winds from the north, whip- ping like crazy and driving the fire back to- ward Yarnell, driving it like some locomotive from hell, in excess of 50 miles per hour.
My step-son’s house was the first to be de- stroyed. Trying to get his roommate’s freaked- out little dog into the car, he looked up and saw a WALL of fire descending on his house.
He and his roommates ran, embers falling on them, fumbling to start the car, neighbors trying to navigate the smoke-filled winding path out of Glen Ilah. The little dog, Co-Co, has not been found.
Next door, his older sister was getting their mother out. From her perspective, fire com- ing straight at them. They barely escaped. Singed hair. Without the cat.
Then came a frantic call from our youngest, just graduated from high school. She hadn’t had time to get her dogs. She’d tried. She’d prepared. She’d borrowed large carriers and had them all set out. But at the end, there hadn’t been time. She’d all but seen them per- ish.
I wanted to feel sympathy for her. I wanted to be with her in her grief, but all I could feel was rapture of relief that she had made it out.
The terrible next day: The 19, confirmed. Ev- eryone flung apart. My beautiful valley filled with gray. Breathing gray. There was no es- cape from the sadness.
Our home and café were not in immediate danger, so we stayed behind with our next- door neighbors, veterinarians, to help out as we could. They helped rescue and care for the many displaced animals. We fed people until we ran out of food.
Our kids were safe, traumatized but safe. Still, there were reports of an artist, a friend, who tried to ride out the firestorm in his hot tub, and another man, an elder-caregiver and
favoriteinthecommunity,whosaidhewould not leave his cats. What became of them?
And many other dear friends and neighbors – June and Stacy and Brent and Larry and ‘Ber-
ta and Adra, to name just a few – many hadn’t checked-in with the rest of us, batting emails all and posting scraps of news on Facebook. Were they safe? How could we reach out to them and help them?
The gray cloud shifted. Professional-me stepped in and demanded I get a grip. I won- dered, like so many people do at times like these, what can I do, to be of service to my woe-struck neighbors.
These thoughts went around: contractors volunteer contracting; local businesspeople stepping up to administer the Recovery Groups. Volunteers pouring in.
Red Cross and Christian and Buddhist relief workers offering immediate shelter and sup- port. Housewives collecting, sorting, and dis- tributing donated goods. Everybody with a strong back helping fill the 30,000 sand bags we’ll need when monsoon rains hit our rav- aged landscape.
All I had to offer were my skills as webmas- ter for our community website, Y-PVchamber. com. I worked through those awful first days transforming the site into an emergency re- source that my far-flung community might find some common ground and know where to turn for help.
Yarnell–Glen Ilah–Peeples Valley, with a combined population of about 1300, (the tri- cities we laughingly call them,) will never be the same. According to the Sheriff’s survey, the fire destroyed homes at 129 addresses in these towns. We will never be the same.
Like many Yarnellians, our two youngest have been left with “nothing but options”. They are now forced to take the next brave step. The older girls had been on the cusp of moving, exploring greater opportunities and experiences. The fire seemed to crystallize this, and they and their families, my beautiful grandchildren, are all but moved away now.
Likewise Yarnell is going to change. People are already re-building, and I imagine it will have a stronger economy and become even prettier in a couple years. And while the com- munity has been flung apart, it has also been brought together.
My extended family here is now tighter than ever.
| cheryl tupper fixes computers & washes dishes at the t-Bird internet café in beautiful peeples Valley. cheryl@solutionarchitech.com
6 • AUGUST 2013 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us
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