how I spent my evacuation

At 2AM, three sharp beeps interrupted our sleep.  I grabbed my phone and squinted at the display.

"THIS IS THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE.  IMMINENT WILDFIRE DANGER.  EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY."

G and I leaped out of bed and frantically got dressed.  I swept an armful of clothes into a suitcase and tossed my travel kit and a bottle of my prescription medication in as well.  I threw in my mom's engagement ring, my passport, the new tags for my car, a book, my Kindle Fire, my phone charger, and (inexplicably) a Netflix DVD I had meant to return.

Clothes on.  Shoes on.  One last glance over my shoulder and out the door.  It had been less than 5 minutes since the warning.

Neighbors were racing to their cars, peeling out, and honking as they left, hoping to alert others who might not have heard their phones.  We made our way to the 101 with no real idea of where the hell we were going.  The sky was red and the hills only a mile or so from home were ablaze.

"Oh my god, oh my god!" I wailed, and G's hands tightened on the steering wheel.

Traffic on the freeway was not as bad as we had been anticipating.  We decided to get about 20 miles south and try to get a hotel room.  We tried several different places and everywhere was booked.  At the seventh or eighth place we tried, the weary clerk (who unlocked the lobby bathroom for me; may all the gods old and new bless him forever) told me that he'd been calling around for people and everyone was booked all the way to LAX and beyond.  G and I thanked him and went back out to the car.

"What the hell do we do now?" I asked.

We did some research on my phone and saw that a Red Cross evacuation center had been set up at Pierce College in Woodland Hills, so we punched the address into the GPS and headed there.  We were so goddamn tired that when we reached the parking lot, we just reclined our seats and slept for a fitful hour.  When we woke up around 6AM, we grabbed our suitcases and started down the hill to the gym, which was packed wall to wall with cots.  A volunteer said, "We're close to full in this gym, but we're waiting to hear if they'll let us use the other one too.  In the meantime, please fill out this form and then help yourselves to some breakfast."  We signed in, grabbed a donut and a cup of orange juice, and sat down to wait.  Fortunately, the college agreed to open the other gym for the evacuees, so we headed down there and were told to choose an empty cot.  We found two together and covered them with scratchy Red Cross blankets.  There were no pillows, so we folded up extra blankets, and exhausted, we laid down to rest.  I burst into tears, and G took my hand and rubbed it gently until I drifted off.

When we woke up, we decided to move to the other side of the gym because the people next to us were listening to music on their phones and just generally being rude as hell.  At the cot across from us, a chihuahua-pug mix stared from his crate at us, whining piteously.  "I know that feel, bro," G said, and I laughed darkly. 

At lunch, we walked next door to a classroom that had been converted into the food room.  Tables were loaded with pretty much every snack you could imagine: bags of chips, cookies, candy bars, granola bars, you name it.  A volunteer handed us Subway sandwiches and told us that they were going to open up the supply room shortly, so if we needed toiletries or clothes or anything else, to check it out after we ate.  We took our sandwiches and bottled water back to our cots and ate before heading to the supply room. I took a small bottle of lotion and a packet of wet wipes.

For dinner, the college opened up their cafeteria to us at no cost.  I had a burger, fries, and a Coke Zero from the soda fountain that provided me with some much-needed caffeine; G had chicken, rice, and beans that he said was excellent.  After dinner, we went back to our little corner of the shelter to read until lights out at 9:30.

...or should I say "lights out", because the lights in the gym stayed on.  I pulled my thin blanket over my head and shivered. A chorus of snores rose around us, including one that sounded for all the world like a fucking kazoo.  I pulled a couple of Benadryl out of my purse and swallowed them dry, hoping they would knock me out for at least a few hours.

In the morning, we were awakened around 6:30AM by people starting to talk on their cell phones.  We grabbed some things from our suitcases and shuffled off to our respective bathrooms.  A volunteer told me that the locker room was closed, but they were trying to get the college to allow us access to their showers.  I opened my pack of wet wipes and did the best I could, and then changed clothes in a stall.  I met back up with G, we had breakfast, and then we checked the supply room again, where the donations had tripled overnight.

"Is there anything you need that we don't have?" a volunteer asked.  "We're keeping a list and making regular Target runs."  We requested earplugs. Back in our "room", I noticed that a table had been loaded up with board games, toys, and books, including (for some reason) several Dungeons & Dragons strategy guides.  We sat on our cots and read until our spaghetti lunch, after which we were told the shower rooms had been opened up.  I took my first shower in two days and felt semi-human again.  We went outside for a briefing from the sheriff's department and then stopped by the Verizon charging tent, where the guy told us he could bring a router into our gym to provide free wi-fi, which was an unbelievable blessing.  As I sat in a chair playing Hidden City, a volunteer asked me if I wanted a bag of peanut M&Ms, which: yes please.  Later on, a different volunteer walked around and handed out the earplugs we'd requested.  She also mentioned that a huge supply of blankets had just come in, so G and I went to the supply room, which at this point looked like the Room of Requirement from Harry Potter.  I grabbed a thick leopard print blanket that looked like something Khal Drogo would have in his tent, a pair of socks because the ones I was wearing were covered in ash and dirt from our trek down the hill, a pillow, and an extra-large men's t-shirt to serve as a pillowcase.  On the way back, I noticed that someone had put a 12-pack of Coke Zero on the drinks table, so I happily grabbed a can.  We spent the rest of the evening poking around on our respective electronic devices.  I was getting pissed off that my Kindle was acting up until I remembered I was sitting on a cot in a Red Cross shelter, which sure put some shit in perspective.

On Sunday morning, we checked the news.  Although the evacuation order had been lifted for our area, we saw some "hot spots" a little too uncomfortably close to home and big sections of the 101N were still closed.  After discussing it, we decided to stay one more night as we didn't want to risk the fire flaring up and potentially having to evacuate again.  People were still checking in all the time, and if we had to come back, we might not be able to get back in.  As much as we wanted the comforts of home, and to make sure we even still HAD a home, we were surprisingly well fed, warm, and had access to water, medical care, showers, and toilets.  We didn't want to risk our spot.

In the afternoon, we found out that Paramount Pictures was going to move the premiere of their newest movie to the college as a special treat for the evacuees and volunteers, and they were also donating the food they would have served at the event.  I said to G, "I can't wait to hit the red carpet in somebody else's socks.  Talk about glamorous!"

That evening, we walked over to the cafeteria, where a representative for Paramount Pictures and several stars from the movie Instant Family, including Octavia Spencer, Tig Notaro, and a gigantic Saint Bernard named Meatball were waiting for us.  Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne weren't there, because fuck us, I guess.  (I'm just joking; who knows what was going on in their own lives.)  I didn't get anywhere near Octavia Spencer, but I got to pet Meatball and, as I passed Tig Notaro, I blurted out "I loooooooooove you!"  She was very gracious but I still wanted to hide in the bathroom for being such an embarrassing fangirl.  Instead, I loaded up my plate with chicken, mac and cheese, and mini-cupcakes and returned to our table to eat.  (They also had spinach quiche and steak tartare, but I have the palate of a really fussy 5-year-old.)

The movie was not anything I would have ordinarily watched, and it was very predictable, but it had some cute and funny moments and it took our minds off things for two hours, which is what entertainment is really all about.

The next morning, G and I checked pretty much every website you can think of, and it looked like we were safe to go home.  We didn't know if our home was okay, but we wanted to find out, and we wanted to free up our spots for someone else, since people were still checking in all the time.  We put our donated blankets in the designated pile for washing, dismantled our cots, checked out, and effusively thanked every volunteer we passed on the way to the car.

Our home was safe, and for the first time in days, despite the smoke in the air, I was able to breathe again.