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Small World
October 27, 2007

At the end of a long week of endlessly monitoring the southern CA firestorms, keeping in touch with donors and friends who had been evacuated, helping World Vision define its fire victim response, and hosting our daughter and son-in-law for 4 days when they evacuated from the big Witch Fire near San Diego, I decided to go for a swim Friday afternoon. I’ve been trying to keep up this habit to manage stress this week, but between wind dust, smoke and ash, that’s been a challenge.

Driving home yesterday from Monrovia to south Orange County, the ever-present smoke suddenly lifted rounding Hwy 241, even as I drove past charred hillsides from the Santiago Fire on both sides of me, which had first raged west and then midweek turned southeast towards our town of Rancho Santa Margarita. Now the air cleared, visibility improved and I could see the fire helicopters dipping into the reservoir right at the Los Olisos exit.

So I exited to use that hilltop RSM city pool and see the activity as dusk approached. Six busy choppers were making 3-4 minute runs back and forth between water dropping and water refilling. The fire, and the choppers, hadn’t left in 3 days. Up on the hills, smoke rose from three or four spots maybe 3 miles distant, with a huge dark plume arising from the vicinity of Silverado Canyon, which was once again being threatened and evacuated. The fires seemed more isolated than a few evenings earlier, when an advancing golden band of fire lit up the foothills. But now the helicopter activity was greater, and the dark plume over Silverado made it clear that we weren’t out of the woods yet.

The good news was that, as other fires around the area were being brought under control, additional equipment and manpower were being moved to our fire, which was less contained that it had been 2 days earlier and still threatens to wipe out Cleveland National Forest and attack towns like Corona on the far north side, even while it continues creeping further southeast just north of us. Firefighting teams from northern California, nearby states such as Nevada and Utah, and even from across the Mexico border are working together to bring the remaining rogue fires under control. The LA Times today quoted a crew from Tijuana: "’There isn't a difference between the firefighters here or on that side of the border,’ said 30-year-old bombero Jorge Villegas. ‘We're all hermanos,’ brothers.”

From the hilltop pool, I watched the choppers constant back-and-forth trips between fire and reservoir, busy as hornets, while I participated in a telephone conference call and prayer time with WV colleagues regarding WV’s assistance plan to those affected by the fires. It was surreal to participate in such a discussion from this idyllic setting of the now-clean, placid pool area ringed with palm trees with the constant chopper traffic flowing just beyond the palms and over the church across the street, water buckets or intake hoses dangling below them. Sometimes the interlinked row of palm tops would hide a helicopter, only its staccato sound and a dripping bucket moving from my left to right past each tree toward the fire giving away its presence.

I admit it felt strange and somehow wrong to go swimming as the battle raged in the not-so-yonder foothills. Only my middle-aged sensibility about the need for self-care convinced me that it was OK, both to manage stress and maintain life-giving habits, knowing I wasn’t able to help actually fight the fires anyway.

With almost every breath, I would either see billowing smoke, hear chopper blades or glimpse a helicopter moving past. So I did what I could: I gave thanks to God for these heroes and prayed for their safety, and kept swimming.

Then as I climbed out of the water I heard a strange out-of-place sound, almost like a wind-up toy. Then as I listened closer, I recognized it: an ice cream truck was in the neighborhood below, chiming out “It’s a Small World After All”. Maybe the vendor wasn’t even selling ice cream that day, just driving the streets proclaiming his wonderful message over the din of battle: It’s a small world after all!

Thanks to the warm outdoor showers next to the pool, I watched and listened another 5 minutes, and the music continued, playing with my head as it played over and over one of my most-beloved songs, one which has always seemed not only a proclamation of our shared humanity but also of our responsibility to one another, that I am my brother’s keeper. I guess in my work with World Vision, a Christian global aid agency, that has normally felt like a “reaching out” to the hurting elsewhere. But now we were the beneficiaries of the service of others who were reaching out to us, putting their lives on the line for our community, for us. Being a recipient is a pretty helpless feeling, especially when you feel that as an able-bodied adult you should be doing something more. But the situation is in good hands, and I’m reminded that it’s a small world after all. And that truly, we are all hermanos.

What a pleasure it was to read the uplifting and wonderful commentary written by Cory Trenda.