Today I begin the weird-feeling process of unpacking some of our bug-out bags and repacking a little of it for the journey to cold Kentucky. Looking at the weather forecast there makes me wonder how wise this trip actually is – it’s gonna be cold. But family ties trump weather, so off I go. Plus, I get to attend a couple of Cats games in person through the remainder of January.

I anticipate trying to explain living through the fires to some of my KY friends and relatives. Our stress (terror!) level this time was low – all we had to do was get prepared for the worst and then wait. But all this brings back my memories of October 2007, The Witch Fire, in which me and our dog Bogey fled the fire and were nomads for about five days. Looking back, I know that experience really affected me psychologically – probably some mild PTSD. I started the day at a hotel on the coast, the Torrey Pines Lodge, where I was scheduled to play in a golf event that morning. I awoke at 4am to a smell of smoke and got up to investigate. I found that fires had broken out in the east county and were being driven by 75-80mph winds toward the coast. I got in my SUV at 530am and drove as fast as possible back to Fallbrook.

The drive there was surreal. Massive smoke plumes from 2-3 sources eastward, at least one directly in line with my destination. I arrived before police began blocking access to neighborhoods. That would become an issue a short time later.

Bogey was glad to see me and I began packing valuables, expecting to bug out later. My wife Kathryn was on a cruise ship with her sister somewhere in the Mediterranean, no way to contact her. I met with a couple of neighbors and we discussed staying or going. Ultimately, when a large trailer park just a mile or so away from us went up in a huge fire, we decided to go. Driving out of Fallbrook with a few possessions, through roads crammed with cars moving at 5mph, with fire all around and smoke/sparks everywhere, was an experience I’ll never forget. We made it to a friend’s house for the first night, then another friend’s place for a couple of nights, then to my brother’s place for a night or two. I went in to work each day, as I was the manager for a crew of utility folks who were involved in power restoration during the fires – fairly critical work.

Every day I drove to Fallbrook to try and get to our place, to see if it survived. Those days I was driving through active fires on both sides of I-15. Quite apocalyptic. For four days the police turned me back, citing safety and concerns with looters. It was maddening. On the fifth day I made it, and found fire trucks parked on our road and in our driveway. Our house and the rock walls surrounding it were the place fire crews made their stand and stopped the brushfires in our neighborhood (actual picture below). That hit me hard.

One of the largest outcomes of that experience was my insistence that we make the property a bit more fire resistant, ASAP. So in 2008 we cut down 300-ish large eucalyptus trees on our hillsides and planted 250 then-tiny Italian olive trees in their place. My reasoning was olive trees are (a) much smaller and less flammable, (b) they don’t need much water, and (c) we could make olive oil. Most of that has proven true, though 16 years later the trees have grown pretty large. Still not as bad as eucs, but now the olives are contributing to fire risk, not mitigating it. I suppose 2025 will be the year that I thin out the olives – trim the excess foliage from each tree, and take out a few of them. That’s always going to be the case for good grove management, fire risk aside. So it’s time.

But back to the present. In LA, 100s of thousands of people are experiencing what I did 16 years ago. And thousands of them will have a much worse ending to their story – they will have lost their home and possessions. I have so much sympathy for them. It’s hard to really understand unless you’ve been through it.