When The Dust Won't Settle

It has been an unprecedented week. For those of us living in California anyways. Many of us have been in the dark, both literally and figuratively but we finally got some hard, cold, startling facts at our Town Hall meeting this week. The rate at which the fires ripped through our hills and communities was alarming even for the men working around the clock to stop them. The Fire Captain told us of the almost 100,000 people who have been displaced, the structural damage as well as the acreage that burned, and to date, there has only been one fatality. For me, this was the most alarming statistic of all. It certainly speaks to the skill, the strength and the resolve of our first responders. I have seen many communities wait for the dust to settle and get that second wind, that breath of fresh air before they roll up sleeves and dig in. Not our community. We have had to help, respond, cook, clean, hug, take in strangers, stretch ourselves beyond what we thought we could while our hillsides were on fire. We have had to work in thick smoke, half of us wearing heavy respirators, and be present for our communities. We have been called to work in the dust and in the chaos with hopes that this all stops soon. The fires still burn, the helicopters are still in the air and the smoke has not cleared. What will our towns look like in two weeks, in six months, in a year? Nothing today is certain other than we will not stop until it is time to do so. #805strong #thomasfires