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Standing on it the back porch and peering through the crevice in the trees, out through the canyon, Liz Johnston sees spots of red light. The night sky above it glows an intense orange. A few miles from here a hill burns: huge flames engulf a dense expanse of pines, firs and cedars.
August 16, 2021 is the middle of the fire season in California. Johnston is watching the Caldor fire, which will burn 221,835 acres over the next two months and lead to a quick evacuation in the resort town of South Lake Tahoe. But here in the rural district of El Dorado, 40 miles east of Sacramento, she has not received an evacuation order.
Johnston’s house is located on a hill in a forest that is both green and dry. Next to the deck are flower pots, which she plans to arrange in her mother’s memorial garden, which died less than a month ago. The place doesn’t feel good without her mother inside. Now the exterior is also fine.
Johnston pulled out his phone to try to trace the path of the fire. She checks Facebook, which is teeming with chatter from other locals seeking information. She starts scrolling on Twitter. She sees tweets saying that the fire is rising on the nearby town of Grizzly Flats, and begins to panic. Her heart pounded, she rushed into the house and collected the few things she could fit in her Toyota CR-V – photo albums, her father’s ashes, her mother’s old coat. She presses her cat Chelsea and dog Nainer in the car, gets in the driver’s seat and leaves.
She flees to a town called Diamond Springs, a few miles away, and stays at her boyfriend’s home. Tonight, much of the Grizzly Flats burned to the ground. Authorities closed roads in the area. Johnston is checking official government maps showing the outermost edges of the fire, but they have not been updated for nearly 24 hours. She found an evacuation card on the district sheriff’s Facebook page, which now includes her house. She thinks about all the things she can’t fit in her car. The big oak desk where her mother used to sit. The pile of clothes Johnston had hoped to make in a quilt. Brand new flowers for her memorial garden. Johnston plays a bit of Crossbreeding of animals to try to distract himself, but he can’t stop thinking about his house.
Year after year, the American West is burning millions of acres in flames amplified by warming climates, densely packed forests and increasingly populated rural landscapes. When the flames threaten, the inhabitants of the fiery country must make the colossal decision whether – and when – to leave their homes. State and local agencies may seem excruciatingly slow in providing updates. If the forest may seem lonely on a good day, on a day of fire silence creates pure fear.
“Everyone stayed there trying to figure out what to do,” Johnston said. She spends the next few days glued to her phone – constantly refreshing her search for the hashtag #CaldorFire, browsing tweets for canceled vacations in Tahoe, ignoring onlookers watching the scale of the fire.
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