Nearly a hundred wildfire evacuees slept in the Katella High School gymnasium Saturday night, on neat rows of cots placed over a vinyl tarp to protect the gym floor. Laying on them, looking up at the ceiling, there was no way to miss the 130 championship banners lining the top of the walls, two deep. There's been a lot of winning in this gym. Some here now had lost everything.
They had run out of houses with arms loaded as if in a supermarket contest. Beverly Buffet lives in a senior citizens complex in Yorba Linda. When the smoke got too bad she put the cats in the car and high-tailed it out of there.
16 year-old Melody Fang frantically rushed her immigrant mother out of their Yorba Linda house. The Esperanza High School junior says she didn't bring clothes or a computer but for reasons known and unknown she brought her telephone book-thick AP Chemistry study book. She has a test soon. How can she study? A television's blaring stream of consciousness fire reports in one corner. Fire department officials announce firefighting progress and the championship banners from this high school stare down at her. Her friend's home, she says, is ashes.
Laura King also sprinted out of her Yorba Linda home. She's 21 years-old and takes business classes to fulfill her dream, her own tattoo shop. Get the things you can't replace, she thought as she left her house: she picked up her mother's dolls and Bibles belonging to her niece and nephew. Her grandfather died recently. She didn't take any of his belongings or photos.
Silvia Hernandez waited until it was almost too late to get out of her modest Santa Ana Canyon home. She's originally from Cuernavaca, the Mexican city's nicknamed "La ciudad de la eterna primavera." The city of eternal spring. Her home's on the south side of the Santa Ana River where it does a parallel tango with the 91 freeway. She moved to the canyon home 20 years ago to be close to the mansions she cleans a few minutes across the river in Yorba Linda. The fire doesn't discriminate between social classes. She's displaced as are her patrones, her employers.
She called several from the evacuation center because she's equally concerned about their well-being as with her employment. She was only able to reach one. He was happy to hear from her. For a few minutes they shared concerns about their homes and prayers to be let back in soon.
The photo associated with this post was taken by Flickr user ronploof. It was used under Creative Commons license.
-
Make Your Mouth Water
Soup is straightforward in theory. It's complexity lies in the execution... in how you build flavors and the first flavor layer can come from a mirepoix. Unlike "soup," "mirepoix" is fun to say and it's the colors of the Irish flag, which makes me like it even more.
-
Gov. Brown Sworn In, Faces Tough Job
Our new/old Governor Jerry Brown is inaugurated into a job that promises to be more trouble than even this old pol can skillfully navigate.
-
Empty
These are the empty days. Their hours are filled with blank stares past cubicle walls and through tinted windows. The end is not over and the beginning is far from started.
-
Why Does it Take 20 Years to Build A Shopping Center in South Central?
The 20-year struggle to get a shopping center built at Slauson and Central reveals long-standing problems with the politics of development in L.A.
facebook.com/KCET28
@KCET
RSS: Full KCET Feed
Ophelia Chong says :
After the Griffith Park fires last year, I packed haphazardly, not really knowing what I was grabbing. My neighbors were calling to give me the update on the fire's progress, and we all wondered if we should leave right away before the evacuation. The fire fighters got the fire under control later that night. When the sun rose the next morning, we were covered in ashes, ashes of trees and grass, they floated like they were trying to find each other to become a tree again.
Stories like Silvia, Laura and Melody bridges the space between us because we have common ground, a fire that doesn't discriminate.
Great post. :O)