A fire is a scary thing.

Living in Ventura County, just north of Los Angeles, is wonderful, like most other places in America, until it’s not.

Less than two weeks ago, a wildfire started in the hills around our community. Beginning at 9 a.m. on November 6th, the “Mountain Fire” grew to consume 20,000 acres of mountainous terrain and destroy 200 homes and barns. As of this writing, the fire is still less than 60 percent contained.

Like the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, a fire is scary. Around nine or ten years ago, a fire fueled by 50-60 mph winds called Santa Anas raced through the hills behind my parents’ Camarillo neighborhood. Luckily, all residents were evacuated thanks to the dedicated professionals from Ventura County Fire and Rescue.

The Santa Ana wind originates inland in the Great Basin when a cool, dry, high-pressure air mass forces a downslope and seeks a safety valve through the mountains, channeling the winds past the lowlands of Southern California and out into the Pacific Ocean.

Hopefully, you read the preceding paragraph and were impressed by my keen understanding of climate science. After all, I did take a semester on whether (you need to take a full year before you can spell it correctly). I also built not one but three volcanos, one in my sixth grade and then two others for both my children’s classes.

Like before, the “Mountain Fire” was fueled by Santa Ana winds. In minutes, the city of Camarillo became blanketed by smoke. If you were downwind, your eyes gathered ash, and your breathing was no longer a reflex. Next came the power outages. Whole sections of our town of 70,000 went silent. While our home is upwind and safe, my mother lives across town and in the fire’s potential path. If fire officials ordered her section of the city to evacuate, it would be immediate. Her assisted living facility has practiced this drill many times before.

The view across the street from where my mother lives

Three Greyhound charter buses stood ready and waiting to take 150 questionably mobile seniors to a safe shelter. Getting numerous old folks, many wheelchair-bound, onto the buses would be a feat of gymnastics. As I drove to her place up the 101 freeway, a fire helicopter dropped water in what seemed to be my direct path.

The facility’s director instructed residents to stay in their rooms with closed doors to minimize inhaling smoke. Mom’s ‘go’ bag was packed with 21 different medications. I found Mom relaxed yet annoyed by all the commotion.

“The winds are taking the fire over the hill and away from us. We’re not going anywhere.”

“They just want you to be prepared, Mom.”

With all-natural disasters, it helps to be prepared. We are fortunate to live where city, county, and state officials work together as a single unit to keep their citizens safe. Firefighters from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, led 2,000 firefighters from Orange County below Los Angeles County and as far north as 140 miles and the city of San Luis Obispo.

Add to this team hundreds of Camarillo City Police, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, and the California Highway Patrol, all stationed to help evacuate a thousand residents from eight different communities.

Enabling these local officials are the silent sentinels. These federal employees are often overlooked and taken for granted—those nameless professionals are ever-vigilant. Meteorologists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provide real-time models and predictions, while analysts from the National Geospatial Agency (NGA) provide updated terrain overlays. Without these watchmen, the local incident commander would have little more science than a wet finger in the air to place their crews accurately.

Lillian and I are fortunate to have lived in many parts of this great land. Each locale has unique beauty and qualities, making it a cherished community and home. However, each locale also brings its share of calamities and, sadly, tragedy more often than any of us would like.

We traveled shortly after midnight and were the first ones through the rolling countryside of Eastern Missouri. We didn’t know that a tornado had just destroyed most of a small town. Too soon for first responders, the sky felt like a pile of coal, and our tires on the wet highway were the only sound.

In Arkansas, we wedged our small RV between the bricks of a local bank building and a doctor’s office when the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) system boomed a tornado warning over each of our cell phones. While commercial carriers provided us with the alert, the cell phone companies were fed this information through a partnership between the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). That obnoxious klaxon saved our lives.

We’ve lived on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and survived three hurricanes. One flooded our entire town with six feet of water, and another poured water through our windows like we’d forgotten to close them. We’ve sat by the phone as our good friends weathered countless hurricanes that seem to travel through Southern Florida as frequently as the snowbirds.

The rain came sideways for 48 straight hours

Montana is called “Big Sky Country.” I love Montana. Some of my favorite trout still live there. But during the hot, dry summer months, a forest fire always seems to be burning somewhere in the State. On a trip too far in the past for the fish but not far enough for the hearty folks who call this State home, I realized that there are only two types of people from Montana—those who fight wildfires and those who feed firefighters.

I’ve learned to respect nature and revere those who save us or guide us through. I have a healthy fear of tornados, hurricanes, floods, and even earthquakes.

But fires scare the hell out of me.