I woke up to flashing lights, which was odd, because I don’t wake easily. There were blurry shapes of firefighters, fully clad in fire gear, milling about on the street below. I rushed to my brothers room, flinging his door open.

“I think there’s a fire, let’s go!” He, still quite groggy, grabbed his to-go bag, and I ran upstairs to warn my parents, too. I shook them awake and pulled back the curtains. There was a wall of flame in the not-so-far distance with smoke billowing upwards. We all went upstairs, donned our smoke/COVID masks, got our dog, and anything else we could grab. Then, outside we went, shivering in the midnight air. Alarmingly, the only cars we saw were going back up the hill, instead of leaving! One neighbor was kind enough to tell us what was going on. He rolled down his window.

“The fire engines are blocking the road… we have to evacuate on foot.” We lived on a narrow, windy, deathtrap of a street, right next to open space, so I should have expected this, really. It was a 30 minute walk to town. Panic would have flooded through me, but I was high on adrenaline. a sense of grave calmness. Would this be the next big wildfire? My heartbeat quickened a bit at the thought. Would we end up as little more than numbers on a death toll?