Stand on her Liz Johnston could see a gap in the tree and peer through a gap in the tree, across a canyon. The night sky above it glowed an intense orange. A few miles away, a hill was ablaze: Huge flames were engulfing a wide expanse of dense pine, fir, and cedar.
It’s August 16, 2021 — in the middle of fire season in California. Johnston is observing the Caldor Fire, which in the next two months will burn 221,835 acres and require urgent evacuation in the resort town of South Lake Tahoe. But here, in rural El Dorado County, 40 miles east of Sacramento, she hasn’t received an evacuation order.
Johnston’s house sits on a hillside in a forest that is both green and arid. Next to the deck are flower pots that she plans to arrange into a memorial garden for her mother who died less than a month ago. This place wouldn’t be okay without her mother in it. Now outside all is wrong too.
Johnston pulled out his phone to try to track the fire’s path. She checked Facebook, which was buzzing with chatter from other locals looking for information. She started scrolling through Twitter. She saw tweets that the fire was breaking out in the nearby town of Grizzly Flats, and she began to panic. Her heart pounding, she rushed into the house and packed up some stuff she could fit in her Toyota CR-V — photo albums, her father’s ashes, her mother’s old coat. She forced her cat, Chelsea, and dog, Niner, into the car, climbed into the driver’s seat and left.
She ran away to a town called Diamond Springs, a few miles away, and stayed at her boyfriend’s house. That night, most of Grizzly Flats earth fire. Officials closed roads in the area. Johnston checks official government maps showing the outermost edges of the flames, but they have not been updated in nearly 24 hours. On the county sheriff’s Facebook page, she found an existing evacuation map that included her home. She thinks about all the things she can’t fit in her car. The large oak table, where her mother liked to sit. Her pile of clothes that Johnston hoped would turn into a duvet. Brand new flowers for her memorial garden. Johnston played a bit Mule to try to distract herself, but she can’t stop thinking about her house.
Year after year, the American West burns — millions of acres rise in flames supercharged by a climate is warming, dense forests, and more and more populous rural landscape. When flames threaten, the inhabitants of the land of fire must make enormous decisions about whether — and when — should leave their homes. State and local agencies seem to be slow to provide updates. If the forest seems lonely on a clear day, on a burning day the silence breeds pure fear.
“Everybody gets stuck there trying to figure out what to do,” says Johnston. She spent the next few days glued to her phone — constantly renewing her hashtag search #CaldorFire, scrolling through tweets about canceled Tahoe vacations, ignoring previous snooping. the scale of the fire.
