This week, I was going to post the third article of my series on fear, stress and anxiety.
But then something crazy scary happened, and I just had to share that with you.
It’s the story of how I messed up my trip to Hawaii and ended up on the wrong island, landing in the forecasted impact zone of Category 5 Hurricane Lane. Then, we got completely surprised in the middle of the night by a raging wildfire and a frightening evacuation.
This is the story of how it felt to consider the fragility of humanity, from my own civilian perspective. And the true courage and resilience of our race. We might be a scared and anxious bunch at times, but truly, against all odds, we rise up to meet whatever is required of us. We do great things.
I bring you this story, freshly inspired, and I hope to inspire you too…
The Fire
It was the yelling that woke me first. Distant male voices diffusing their way into my half-slumbered mind, pulling my consciousness out slowly from its sleep. ‘Are they still partying?’, I wondered, rubbing my eyes. The smell of something familiar filled my nose.
When I had retired to bed only a few hours ago, those same voices had been raised and laughing. I’d listened to the sounds of their beers clinking, as they cheered to the approaching storm. Hurricane Lane was all anyone had talked about for the last few days. She’d been downgraded to a cat 4 last I’d heard, but still, grocery stores had been emptied and windows boarded. Family and friends sitting around after days of preparing for floods, power outages and lengthy stays at home.
Now, those same boys that had been saluting the storm were yelling. I wondered briefly if they’d gotten into a drunken fight, but with my mind more awake, I could clearly tell that it wasn’t party-yelling.
It was panic.
Almost simultaneously, I recognised the familiar smell. Smoke. I was still confused. It was supposed to be raining and flooding, now something was on fire? Maybe, I thought, I should get out of bed and take a look.
I’d gone to bed ready. The hurricane itself wasn’t supposed to be here for another day or so, but already the winds were high and the swell building. I’d surfed out front from around 4pm till sundown and the waves had doubled, if not tripled in size. Before I went to sleep I’d brought everything upstairs, placed two pairs of sturdy shoes next to my door, and packed a bag with essential items. I’d even chosen to sleep with a sports bra on. You just never know what could happen, I’d reasoned, and the last thing I wanted to be doing in an emergency was worrying about having my tits out.
I was calm as I stepped out of bed, walked over to the window and pulled back the blind. I could see someone running and a car door slammed. An engine started, and a pick-up (that’s a ute to you Aussie’s) screeched out of its parking space and down our gated community’s street. As a firefighter paramedic, I’d been to plenty of house fires, and no one had ever hurried away from the scene like that.
It must be something bigger.
I placed my forehead against the window to peer out into the dark. My eyes took in a vague orange glow, and palms trees that flailed wildly in the pre-hurricane wind. Then, overlaying the orange was a flashing blue, moving closer. Cops? I craned my neck to the right to see what was going on, as a police SUV moved down the street.
“GET OUT. FIRE. GET OUT NOW. EVACUATE YOUR HOMES!”
I couldn’t see the cop, but the loudspeaker revealed the fear in his voice. A spark ignited simultaneously through my whole body. As a first responder for over 13 years, I knew how hard I’d worked to stay calm in an emergency. I knew how hard all of us worked. And that cop, he sounded completely panicked. Yelling out one last time, he u-turned wildly and careened back the way he’d come.
“Lulu,” I called as I crossed the hall to her room, “something’s happening but I don’t know what. Get up, we gotta get outta here.” Lulu’s head popped up. In a split second she jumped out of bed, her eyes wide and hair wild.
“They’re calling to evacuate us. I think he said there’s a fire. Just get dressed and let’s go, you don’t need anything…” I was back in my room, pulling on a pair of shorts and grabbing my phone, my bag… was there anything else I needed?
I went back to Lulu’s room where she was frantically looking for her contacts, asking what clothes to put on. Half blind, and stunned, she was fumbling to get dressed and gather her things. I was already running down the stairs as she yelled questions, what should she bring? I grabbed a bag and filled it with water, power bars and bananas.
Wait, how bad was it? I stopped, realising I needed to go out and see for myself. I hurried outside and looked up to my right. The sky was ablaze, a terrifying orange. The view stunned me, sending a wave of absolute terror through me.
Were we going to die here? Were we going to be trapped?
Our condo was in a gated beachfront community at the end of town, boarded on one side by the pacific ocean and on the other by a 2-lane highway. It was a narrow strip, and I knew immediately that if the fire crossed the road we’d have nowhere to go. We’d have to shelter in place, overrun. What would it be like to burn to death?
I ran back inside. “Leave everything”, I yelled, “let’s just go, the fire is fucking huge. Let’s get out here NOW!”.
“What? What? There’s a FIRE?” Lulu’s voice was high pitched, confused, her body shaking as she ran down the stairs. I immediately regretted coming inside with my panic, and making her panic. I met her at the base of the stairs, “…It’s ok, it’s ok, we’ve got everything we need, let’s just go.”
“Shoes, shoes, I need my shoes… I’m fucking blind” she cried out, her hands clutching a few packets of contacts and her valuables. She stuffed some things in her pack, while I helped her get her shoes. I held the door while she exited, and closed it behind us. I gave a brief thought to locking the door but didn’t want to take the time.
We hopped into her giant truck, me driving, and screamed out of the parking lot. As we rounded the corner the whole sky was a deep crimson and orange. “Holy shit” We both said in unison. All along our private street people were packing their cars, carrying children, and organising themselves.
I immediately relaxed. No longer panicked, but still scared.
We were not trapped, we weren’t going to die. And everyone else was in this too. I drove quickly anyway, just in case, and within a minute we were at the exit. We turned right out of the gate, and there it was, just a few meters in front of us, the most intense fire I’ve ever seen up close. Flames 3 times the height of a single parked fire engine, right there on the other side of our road.
“Oh my fucking God”, came Lulu’s voice, mimicking my thoughts. As we turned right onto the highway, a single fireman stood along the road, in a small area of black, his hose spewing water into the wind driven flames.
“We’re ok Lulu, everything’s ok.” I took a huge sigh of relief. The fire was out of control, no doubt, but the firefighters were clearly on it. Even if it did jump the road, we were outta there, and it was just a house.
It was just stuff…
We drove down the highway, away from the fire till we came to the Launiupoko parking lot, a place I’d surfed only two days before. We sat and watched, the whole hillside ablaze. With a moment to rest, Lulu put her contacts in and we caught our breath. We were safe.
For the next two hours we chatted with the other evacuees around us, told stories and heard stories. We listened to the same stories being told multiple times, the adrenaline still clearly coursing behind wide eyes.
We sat still and quiet in our truck, as the waves, brush and palms around us blew wildly in the wind, as the fire changed directions multiple times. Finally, around 4am we made a plan to brave the storm and head to the other side of the island, where Lulu’s good friends had arranged to take us in.
The hurricane had been predicted to dump huge quantities of rain over the island, but nothing had come. The reports said it had disintegrated to a tropical storm and was now moving only 2 miles per hour. We all prayed for rain, but the whole night passed, and the fire still raged at sun-up.
Finally, at 9am, the reports said rain had come. By then, Lulu and I were fast asleep at her friends house in Paia.
Humans are awesome
The fire had been started by a transformer explosion, and spurred by the pre-hurricane winds, which were reported at 50mph. Before the rain turned the flames into smouldering heaps of black, the fire had burned 2000 acres, and yet had only (thanks to the awesome work of the firefighters) affected 21 homes.
Lulu and I rested, uncharacteristically exhausted. I hadn’t felt that kind of sympathetic nervous system stimulation in a good three years, and all I could think was, this is how I used to feel after a long night at work.
It made me think, a lot, about the toll all those years of adrenalised living had taken on my body. It felt crazy to be there again.
It made me think about all the years I rose to the occasion, to help the dying, to work my ass off at fires, to put myself in repeatedly strenuous positions.
And I didn’t think anything of it.
In another life
I’m writing this from my friends house in California. Over the last couple days, I’ve caught up with three of my old firefighter paramedic buddies, and in our conversations I know that they still don’t think anything of it.
They’re just doing what is normal, what is expected of them. They don’t even fully understand the toll that all these years have put on their body. They don’t understand the awesome sacrifice they’ve made for humanity. Because they’re still doing it.
I love that about them.
I love that about people.
When we need to perform, when the absolute best is expected of us, we just do it. It isn’t till later, when its time to rest, that we have the privilege of looking back and licking our wounds. None of my post-trauma symptoms were obvious to me when I was still in it. Yet now I get to heal. I think that’s kinda awesome, don’t you?
There’s an image ingrained in my mind of that one fireman last week, standing alone on that two lane highway, protecting the hundreds of Lahaina homes with his tiny yellow hose.
What a f*#king bad-ass.
Do you think he knows how awesome he is? I want to tell him. I want to tell all those fireman who worked tirelessly through the night. Who probably didn’t eat, sleep, pee, or rest for who knows how long. They rose to the occasion and worked tirelessly simply because that’s what they do.
I guess I just can’t help but think about what it all means, this life.
The incredible human capacity to rise to the occasion, to expand and contract, to overcome adversity, and to handle great stress.
It makes me think about perspective too. Because I was so afraid. In that first minute when I walked outside and saw that orange sky of Armageddon, I really thought that maybe, we could die.
Yet, I’ve been to big fires before, when I’d been working. I’d stood there, like that guy, and put my little hose water onto fire. But it was different being on the other side.
It has my mind reframing all the disastrous things I’ve seen as a firefighter, seeing it now from their eyes, those frightened civilians. The ones who were never in control like we were. The fear they must have felt, the trauma, the stress. They were so brave.
It was the same thing that happened to me after Bobo died, and I felt the awful heart wrenching loss of him. I felt what it was like to wake in the morning to a life that no longer contained his physical body. It reframed all the memories I had from my paramedic days, all those times I’d told a husband or a mother or a child that they didn’t have their loved one anymore. I see those memories from their perspective now. How did they handle their loss, their grief, their fears?
We’re so resilient. We’re so strong.
And we get better when we rise against adversity, when we suffer through pain, when we are stressed, tested or hurt.
If I hadn’t messed up my flights, I could’ve been in Kauai having a mellow relaxing time, lying by the beach. And isn’t it funny, but I’m glad I didn’t go. I think I kinda like the adventure, the adversity, the opportunity to rise against. And the contemplation and reminder that…
Life is so short.
You never really know which moment will be your last.
The real questions is, what will you do with each of your moments?
