Thunder, lightning and blazing palm trees

Late yesterday afternoon, I read a severe weather alert about possible thunderstorms. I looked out the window, and wondered what the weather people were seeing that I wasn’t. The sky was nearly clear. Maybe half an hour to an hour later, a bright flash outside the window over my writing desk signaled the beginning of the day’s first thunderstorm. I reached up to open the blinds, and the crash came—close and deafening. That storm lasted several minutes. Then it was over. That was exciting, I thought. I relaxed back into writing.

Later in the evening the lightning and thunder started up again, rumbling in the distance for a few hours, and every now and then moving closer. First it was west of us, then east of us. Now it was on the other side again. There was very little rain, and I knew that wasn’t good. It was the same weather pattern that had ignited palm trees down the hill from us about five years ago.

After midnight, we were still awake, not because of the storm but because those are the hours we keep. We’d just turned off the television and were starting to wind down when the lightning moved in close again. Then came a blinding, deafening flash and crash, so close I let out an involuntary yelp and the dog jumped to his feet.

I had a funny feeling about that one. So did the dog. I wondered aloud if it had ignited anything, and when the dog continued to growl I decided to get up and take a look out the window. I didn’t see anything at the back of the house, but when I went to our only front window and looked outside, I saw a glow, vaguely visible through the overgrown honeysuckle, but definitely a glow that I couldn’t relate to anyone’s usual outdoor lighting scheme.

“I think there’s a problem outside,” I called to my husband Ken, and I went out to look. Then I heard our nearest neighbor’s son say something about a fire. As soon as I walked out to the front of our house I saw why. Two palm trees right across the street were blazing like torches and raining burning embers onto the yard belonging to the neighbors, and possibly their house.

Ken hadn’t heard what I said, didn’t know where I was, and got up to find me, calling, wondering what was going on.

While I stood on the front walk, stupidly wondering what to do next, Ken located me and saw the fire. He rushed out to drag our front hose across the street, yelling for me to call 911 and locate our pets in case we needed to evacuate.

All I got when I called 911 was a busy signal.

The dog was easy to locate. He’d decided the best thing to do was go to bed. The cat was nowhere to be found.

I tried 911 a few more times. Then I decided we were on our own. I ran outside to see what was happening and what I could do.

The first hose Ken used, from our front yard, wasn’t long enough to reach the trees, or even to catch the burning embers as they hit the ground. One other person from the house the palm trees belonged to manned their hose. A few neighbors had come down the hill, but there wasn’t much any of the rest of us could do. There were only the two hoses, and ours wasn’t long enough. Nobody could get through to 911.

Every few seconds a flash of lightning exposed everything in an instant of stark brilliance. Then the only light was that of the fire and a few weak flashlights.

I ran back inside to try to find our cat. We would need to load up the animals and get out of here, if the situation didn’t change soon. I turned on lights as I went through the house. No cat in sight, anywhere.

Ken called for my help as he ran for the longer hose in our back yard. He screamed something to me about getting back out there to help him. It was dark and he couldn’t see anything. He called that he needed light, and since I happened to be near the switch in the living room at that second, I turned on the back porch light. That didn’t help him at all, where he was. He yelled to bring a flashlight out back. By the time I got there, he’d disconnected that hose and was ready to drag it out front. It wasn’t coiled up, so he had me take part of it and help get it across the street. It kept catching or tangling on things along the way, and the flashlights weren’t much help getting it up the hill, under our trees, out to the driveway and across the street.

All the while lightning continued to flash all around us, and thunder crashed way too close to make me believe we were anywhere near being out of danger.

Once the two hoses were connected, there was plenty of length to reach the palm trees and beyond, but the water gushing out the end would only reach up about eight feet. Ken started washing glowing embers off lower lying plants between the trees and house, and told me to get the spray nozzle. It took me a long time to find it—buried under the same overgrown honeysuckle that had blocked my view out the front window. Meanwhile another neighbor who’d driven his pickup down the hill finally got through to 911 on his cell phone.

Once Ken got the nozzle connected, he was relieved to find there was enough pressure to reach the top of the palms, and he and the neighbor took turns with the hose, finally able to put out the flames.

Sometime during all this it had finally started to rain, and when it did it came down in torrents. I didn’t even notice it at first, but suddenly, when the fire truck arrived, I realized my cheap slip-on sandals were soaked, my T-shirt and shorts were soaked, my hair was soaked, and smoke and ash washed into my eyes and around my eyeglasses. I could barely see to get out of the way of the fire truck. I squished my way through the gritty mud of our reddish granite hill and the rushing creeks that now ran down the sides of the street.

The fire was about seventy percent out by the time the firefighters arrived, but it was still a comfort to have their more powerful hose wet everything down thoroughly and drench the remaining flames and embers.

We spent the rest of the dark hours, first in a state of fresh adrenaline wakefulness, then in laughter, because the fire was out and there didn’t seem to be anything better to do than laugh, then wondering if we’d ever sleep again. Thunder and lightning continued to flash and rumble, sometimes coming disturbingly close. I started complaining to the sky and whatever gods would listen, “Okay, I think we’ve had enough.”

Earlier our dog’s response to the first cracks of thunder had been playfulness and excitement. He’s never been afraid of storms. After seeing us rush around in emergency mode, putting out the fire, he made it clear he’d wised up and now considered thunder to be bad, very bad. He spent the rest of the night by my side, edging closer to be petted each time he heard a noise, and shivering at each loud rumble.

At some point the cat reappeared as mysteriously as she’d vanished. She slunk around the house, venturing near us at times and back into hiding at others, eyes glowing in the dark. She would not be comforted by anything but the end of the storm.

Every near crash of thunder after that brought the dog to his feet. He wouldn’t let us out of his sight. I felt the same way, and I took as much comfort from hugging him as he did. We don’t usually let him sleep in the bedroom, but now I couldn’t bear to turn him away.

I realized sometime in the early hours that while fiction tends to build up slowly, climax abruptly and wind down in a hurry, real life emergencies climax at the start and wind down slowly from there. Too slowly. I also began to wonder if palm trees are such a good idea.

When I did finally sleep, it was a sleep so sound there were no dreams, no movement. I didn’t stir much. I wakened once and found the dog so close to my side of the bed I would’ve had to step on him to leave it. I stayed put. We slept in awfully late this morning. Can you blame us?