Some Terrible Choices Travel With Fire

Patsy and Smokey the Bear would like you to be careful of fire. I would, too, because fire is a terrifying scourge, having a malevolent life of its own.

Patsy’s adventure with fire is recent, a couple of weeks ago, and terrifying. She was at work and Pat Collins, a member of the firm where she works, came in and asked: “What are you doing here? Your hills are on fire. Go home this instant.”

She grabbed her purse and went to her car. When she reached the first corner, she could see the smoke building a dirty cloud over the hills where we live.

The sky was that virulent orange, that color that triggers every alarm system in the human animal. By the time she reached our corner, the streets were jammed with fire vehicles and the smoke was smothering. She pulled the Resident sticker out of the glove compartment and made her way through the clot of trucks and up the hill and finally up our driveway, which is a steep incline that many people have claimed cause their ears to pop.

As she reached the top of the incline, she saw a young woman with a hose on the roof. “Well, that’s nice,” she thought, “I’ll change my clothes and join her.” She did just that and when she was back outside, her friend on the roof called her by name. She recognized Mary Ko, a friend who lives with her husband, Dr. Peter Ko, about five blocks from us. Mary is an intensive-care-unit nurse and a pure-gold friend. Patsy asked, “Do you want me to get another hose and get up there?”

“It’s too slippery,” Mary called, “stay down there. There is no use in both of us falling.”

By this time the hills were jammed with firefighting equipment and firefighters. The fire was moving toward Sacred Heart Academy, which crowns the top of the hills. And to the southwest, the Art Center College of Design was evacuating its students.

That must be one of the emptiest moments in a lifetime, when you are told to walk out and leave everything. I have thought since of those people whose pictures are in the newspapers, standing beside the ashes of a house, with a jagged fireplace chimney pointing at the sky. They all say the same thing. “We lost everything. Everything is gone.”

Or there are doughty souls who say, “We’re all safe. That’s what matters.”

Of course that’s all that matters, but a fire loss leaves the same feeling of invasion that a burglary does. The world has gone askew and something we have always believed inviolate and foursquare has turned out to be less than a paper house.

A few minutes after Patsy reached home, Pat Collins came up the driveway with words of encouragement and a walkie-talkie. Then a friend of Patsy’s named Sandy Flores made it up the driveway to offer help, after parking her car way down the street and walking through the snarl of cars.

Mary suggested that Patsy go in the house and get what she wanted to save. But Patsy didn’t make a move. She didn’t know where to start. Mary said, “At least get the pictures.”

Patsy just shook her head. That’s because our house looks like an explosion in a snapshot album shop. There are pictures of our respective husbands, Pat’s three children, my one, numerous grandchildren, dogs, awards, certificates, too much. So she didn’t make a move. One time when Doug and Tim and I were living in the La Habra Heights house, a fire swept down the La Puente Hills and the fire warden who patrolled the hills with his German shepherd told us to leave our house in 10 minutes.

Doug asked, “What do you want me to get?”

I told him the Christmas tree ornaments and he ran downstairs to the basement and came back with a box of Christmas tree baubles. We had been collecting them all our married life and everything else but pictures was replacable.

Playing what-would-you-take-if-you-had-a-fire is like playing what-10-books-would-you-take-to-a-desert-island. The choice is so poignant.

We would like again to tell the Pasadena firefighters how much we appreciate their protection. One time, one of them even gave me a marvelous recipe for chicken while we were trying to keep the hill behind us from sliding into the kitchen. And to Patsy’s friends who climbed the hill to help. To Mary Ko, a square-cut emerald or whatever else she wants. That’s the second time she or her husband has been a savior. The other time was when I went into the hospital for an emergency surgery and by the rarest good luck, Dr. Ko had the duty. He and Mary have been a treasured part of our life ever since.