On the Fringe of Disaster
One family discovers many "there is a god" moments when faced with recurring disasters.
The rain sounded different as I lay in bed listening to it pound on the roof. Relentless, unforgiving … for three days straight without a pause. The San Lorenzo River dragged huge redwood debris down its course until it piled under the bridges and flooded the streets. Water-logged brakes in my van made it too treacherous to drive, so I took the bus.
Beyond the bus stop, I waded two blocks to my job at a friend's home. She stared at me in disbelief as I stood there, soaked to my waist. When her son drove me home, we stopped on the Ocean Street Bridge. It trembled as boulders rolled against the supports. At that moment, I realized how destructive this storm had been. As the days passed, the body count rose.
When I joined friends to watch Apocalypse Now, we heard helicopters overhead, bringing the dead from a huge landslide at Love Creek. To this day, there are still people buried under that mud, some of them children. We, however, were safe and merely inconvenienced. Our host's daughter defied restrictions on water usage and washed her hair.
The whomp of rotor blades echoed between the movie's battle scenes and our reality. Now whenever I hear helicopters, it's never a comforting sound.
After thirty years living with the placid geology of Salt Lake City, the Flood of '82 was my first "disaster." Never before had I been so close to the chaos around me. Even the social upheavals of the 1960s were viewed from a distance. With this event, I was in the eye of the storm, unscathed while many around me lost so much. The aftermath continued for months.
One evening, as we ate dinner, we heard a snapping, tearing sound growing louder. We froze, not knowing if we could escape in time. Where would it land? Would it catch us running down the stairs?
The rain-soaked roots of a eucalyptus, about seven feet in diameter, crashed to the ground, shaking the building. A tree that size could slice clean through a structure. To our relief, the tree only nicked a corner of the eave.
The landlord removed the entire grove of trees, totally dismantling a tiny urban forest. I was deeply saddened. My only loss, though, was a snarky squirrel who scolded me from branches hanging near my balcony. Soon, the trees regenerated with suckers. Vines covered the stumps, creating mounds for habitat. Animals returned to a sunnier landscape. It could've have been so much worse; that falling tree could've wiped us or a neighbor off the map.
Now in 2023, with over sixty feet of snow crushing homes in South Lake Tahoe, I wonder how many bodies will be found in spring. People trapped in their homes, unable to shovel their way out. After living in Truckee for sixteen years, I could relate to that.
One morning, I opened the door to a solid wall of snow. The same held true when the garage door opened. Only a few inches revealed sunlight. I stood there, panic rising in my throat. I was trapped. As I fired up the snow blower, I hoped I could throw snow through that tiny gap and start chewing away at the massive task in front of me.
How long would it take me … and just me … to clear our 65-foot driveway? How many days rather than hours? My husband was stuck in San Jose where he commuted for work each week. Our daughter was studying at Chico State, but had her own water issues. Could my muscles carry the weight of this effort?
The difference between these two scenarios is that one is a disaster zone, a once-in-a-while event that lay outside normal circumstance. The second scenario was a way of life. The man who built and lived in our house for several years told us of winters when he and his family had to dig downward to reach the door. One colossal winter dropped twenty-three feet of snow on his roof. But not sixty. That pulls this winter's snow out of the realm of lifestyle and into the disaster zone.
We pat ourselves on the back as we think of all the catastrophes we've endured. Wildfires. Earthquakes. Floods. Even long periods of unemployment. We counted many there is a God moments of reprieve. Our neighbors focused on the travails of recovery, which led to divorce or mental crises.
Early on, we learned that turning to government agencies instead of using our own resources increased the level of duress. My husband was a help-yourself kind of guy. That attitude spared us from the chaos that shattered others' lives.
Not even the 1989 earthquake in the Bay Area left us as devastated as it did so many others. An artist friend had stored all his work under his house. When the house collapsed, all his work was destroyed. When I heard about that, my heart broke for him. It was unimaginable. Houses, roads, towns could be rebuilt, but the loss of a person's creative produce horrified me.
My daughter and I had gone to pick up my husband at work in San Jose; so we were all together when the quake hit. All the way home, I visualized our "rustic mountain cutie" collapsed around the newly tiled shower he had built just a few months prior to the quake.
A stop at his mother's house allowed us a pleasant dinner on the patio. The only damage to their home was a wide bookcase that had been torn horizontally in half. It curled over like a soft slice of butter. As we watched news footage of "San Francisco in Flames," it dawned on me that maybe I should call my Dad. He was in tears, thinking we were all crushed under the rubble. It was difficult to console him against the news videos he had seen.
Everything in our house lay strewn on the floor. It was easier to pick up the few objects that were intact then sweep the rest away. One object that fell was a heavy shelf from a tall display case. The TV was on the bottom and our daughter would've been watching Sesame Street at the time of the quake. That shelf had fallen where she would've been sitting.
The house sustained roof damage and cracked the stone hearth behind the wood stove, but we didn't feel the need to apply to FEMA for assistance. From all the stories we heard, FEMA was a disaster in itself. Instead, we fixed the damage ourselves. The only injury was when one of the hearthstones fell and crushed one of Jeff's fingers. A speedy drive to the local doc-in-a-box remedied that one. .
Funny thing is, I felt anxiety on a daily basis for weeks before the quake; an undefined anxiety that I couldn't figure out. Once the quake hit, I felt peace. Was the Earth sending me a message?
Days before the quake, we watched a PBS program on emergency preparation. It was rerun a couple more times. I said, "Do you think they're trying to tell us something?" The next day, we purchased canned food and gear to fill the gaps in our camping equipment, which we had pulled onto the patio for an inventory. It was still there ready to set up when we got home that night. By heeding the subtle signals, we fared well, camping in the backyard.
Every summer when California burns, Nevada gets the smoke. One summer I had to wear a silk "wild rag" purchased at a western wear store in Reno. It's what buckaroos wear to keep the dust out of their lungs. It worked for me as I tended to the chickens and gardens on our acre in Minden, NV. During the Caldor and Tamarack wildfires, the air filled with thick particulate smoke for three months. I couldn't leave the house. My COVID lungs weren't up to it.
While we never had to evacuate, that was true for friends closer to the burns. Thousands of South Lake Tahoe residents poured into our valley to escape the Caldor Fire. We sheltered on our remote hillside, not really coming close to the disaster unless we went to town. We kept such activities to a minimum. Through both the Tamarack and Caldor Fires, though, I found myself drawn in to these disasters in an add way.
My little two-meter ham radio kept me busy passing information about road conditions, evacuation orders, and firefighting progress reports. It wasn't much, but it was something I could do to help without getting in the way.
Listening to those who were evacuating, I realized that a level of stress was building inside of me. Even though their stress was much more complex, I was exhausted after a week of monitoring the radio. My temper flared against people who had offended my perceptions of emergency protocol. Between those fires and the COVID restrictions, I was ready to pop. How I would be if I'd actually suffered the same stress as the evacuees? Was it cummulative stress?
The whole experience created a mindless anger, causing me to withdraw into my home. We resorted to shopping at night to avoid crowds. The onset of anxiety, or PTSD if that's appropriate, was finally taking its toll.
We had moved "off the hill" from Truckee to get away from blizzard inconveniences. Soon, it was apparent that Carson Valley was a beautiful but disaster-prone place to live. The "afternoon zephyr," as we affectionately called it, could break down fences or hurl patio furniture high into the air. If it rained, there was flooding, but if a thunderstorm was brewing, it was a safe bet a wildfire would soon follow.
One afternoon, while my daughter and I were watching TV, I saw smoke gathering outside our windows. Just as I was getting a bit concerned, her phone blared with a spine-grating whine.
"There's a fire just seven miles to the south of us," she reported. Hmmm, I thought, so that explains the smoke. But it's seven miles away.
"Is the fire coming our way?"
Before she could answer, there was a knock on the door. Our neighbor invited us to ride in her side-by-side to the end of the street where the wash was running. As the muddy water churned across our road from a rain storm miles to the east, I had to laugh. We were living between Hell and High Water.
Neither fire nor that flood touched our home nor inconvenienced us beyond the smoke. Residents living along the road parallel to the wash, however, battled a flood as it breached containment ponds. Damage to yards and pavement remained visible for months. No one died, but people learned how vulnerable they were to these occasional upsets in Camelot.
Such has been our history with disaster. We could see it from where we stood, but some Deus Ex Machina swooped in to keep us from annihilation. By whatever benevolent force that exists, we've averted ruin through all the disasters we've witnessed.
The media loves to highlight those who've lost everything. Such is the news cycle need for drama. What the media doesn't cover is the folks who've missed the brunt of whatever Nature unleashed. Like us, they were close enough to see it from where they stood. Their lives were inconvenienced and needed a bit of patchwork, but they were not devastated or killed. They were still capable of helping those whose luck had run out. In responding to those around them, though, how were they affected? Was the effect one that would dissipate over time; or would it haunt their dreams for the rest of their lives?
Health care providers are talking more about the mental health issues created by constant stress. As the natural and social tragedies build in frequency and intensity, how do we cope as we watch the news or witness the turmoil in real time? Some people have "hurricane parties" to get through the storm. After the 82 Flood, people swarmed to the beach and piled huge bonfires from the driftwood. They danced and sang in a tarantella of relief.
Many people dwell on the fact that one million Americans succumbed to COVID, but there are 329 million more who have survived, perhaps not unscathed, but alive. Despite the lockdown's effects upon our psyches, many are incorporating life ways that, before the pandemic, they couldn't imagine. People found innovative ways to enjoy work and family. During lockdown, videos showed people hanging out of windows or balconies, joining in song to boost their spirits. They engaged with their children, learned to home school, to cook bread, to make their homes more appropriate to their needs.
I took advantage of the latest fashion craze in face masks and bought one that instigated smiles. People made eye contact with me instead of folding in on themselves. Human capacity to go forward is remarkable.
Indeed, disasters often create major shifts in the way we deal with them. While some are stuck, rebuilding without improving house designs or moving away from disaster zones, others repair and reconfigure their properties to meet future events.
My husband and I have learned there isn't a place on the planet that doesn't test our confidence. We live on a tempestuous, constantly morphing rock. The angst that some people clutch tightly concerning our changing climate needs to change. Nothing is static on this planet. Change is the reality and those species who can adapt are the ones that continue for eons.
So, as I watch the latest disaster come into view, what thoughts cross my mind? There's only so much preparation one can do. Then one just has to wait it out or get out of harm's way.
I've whittled the exposure to news media just to protect my sanity. Earth's tantrums are its natural rhythms and we sometimes get in the way. There's no way we can stop these processes or should. So, I've developed a sense of gallows humor. I can live in constant agitation or I can write poems that express the ridiculousness of it all. Like this one:
Yellowstone
He saw the sign on my Jeep
Emergency Communications
Peered at me and whispered
What do you know about
Yellowstone?
His eyes flared with fear
And a tiny hint of orgasm.
Yellowstone?
You mean bears, buffalo
Old Faithful?
Yeah, that's it! His eyes widened.
That big cauldera up there.
Oh, that. Yeah …
Well, we're on the very edge of it
We'll get the dust, but
If you really want to live in fear,
You'd better worry about Mammoth
And Mount Shasta
We're sitting in between them
They're dormant right now
But they're waking up these days.
I didn't think his eyes could get any bigger.
So I said, I heard the frogs last night
Singing their little hearts out
Hey baby, here I am
Let's get it on!
He shook his head as if he'd suffered
Whiplash.
Yeah, they were singing for all they're worth
Makin' hey while they can
Couple years ago, they all froze
In a late snowstorm
The whole pond went silent
Not a croak or a buzz all summer.
But hey, they're back! Like Jesus Christ
They rose from the mud
By the hundreds
A friggin' Tabernacle Choir of lust.
Filling all their sweet time with love
Well, I gotta go, have a nice day.
To end this tirade, I'll leave you with something my friend, Boots Needham, once told me. She was a Marine wife who moved her family around the world as her husband followed his career. She had mastered the art of dealing with life's disruptions.
"Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's all small stuff."