Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Not so long ago, I decided to try and avoid
Speaker 2: another day spent sweating in my non air conditioned office
Speaker 2: and take some meetings at the local coffee shop. Just
Speaker 2: as I arrived at one of these, my phone started
Speaker 2: to go eight ship, as I normally do when I'm
Speaker 2: talking to someone. I had muted it, but it kept
Speaker 2: going off enough for me to pull it out as
Speaker 2: I looked around and everybody else in the coffee shop
Speaker 2: was doing the same. A fire that had begun in
Speaker 2: one of the nearby canyons had grown, and our neighborhood
Speaker 2: has been placed on a level two evacuation warning. If
Speaker 2: you're not familiar with the levels, think of them as ready, set, go, ready,
Speaker 2: as one, go, as three. By the time I got home,
Speaker 2: I could taste smoke in my yard and the warning
Speaker 2: was at level three. My phone blared notifications saying go now.
Speaker 2: I have a bag for such occasion, so I threw
Speaker 2: that in my truck, along with a shotgun that long
Speaker 2: to my grandfather, which I had to find a lock
Speaker 2: and a case for on my laptop. I paused briefly
Speaker 2: to make sure my chickens had full water and food
Speaker 2: tanks and an escape route. And then I went over
Speaker 2: to my neighbors to make sure they knew what was
Speaker 2: going on. By the time I got them more squared away,
Speaker 2: I realized I'd forgotten some things I really couldn't stand
Speaker 2: to lose. So I went back home. Then I drove
Speaker 2: to a friend's place. By that evening, the fire was
Speaker 2: out and I could go home. And I also had
Speaker 2: an extensive list of things on my phone that I
Speaker 2: could do better next time. It's a familiar experience to
Speaker 2: anyone living in North America these days, and I think
Speaker 2: after the fires in Los Angeles, the idea that they
Speaker 2: won't let it get to us. It's not as prevalent
Speaker 2: as it once was. As we will see over the
Speaker 2: next few weeks of the show, they don't get to
Speaker 2: decide when and where a fire will burn. With climate change,
Speaker 2: more often are overstretched and underfunded fire resources seeing fires
Speaker 2: get away from them. Mostly this means more forest or
Speaker 2: public land burning, but increasingly it also means fires burning structures, homes,
Speaker 2: even suburbs. I've been smoked out of cat sites socent
Speaker 2: evacuation notifications half a dozen times the last few years.
Speaker 2: I appreciate the chance to have a dry run the practice.
Speaker 2: Every time it's happened, I've learned something about how I
Speaker 2: could be more prepared, or how I could demor to
Speaker 2: help folks in my community prepare for the fires or
Speaker 2: whatever else might impact us. But in no way does
Speaker 2: that mean I'm ready what I saw a few weeks
Speaker 2: ago in Spokane to happen to where I live. Indeed,
Speaker 2: I don't think anyone could be ready for that. In
Speaker 2: eastern Washington this August, fires struck with such ferocity and
Speaker 2: frequency that fire resources were stretched to their limit. The
Speaker 2: state issued a particularly Dangerous Situation warning, a level beyond
Speaker 2: the usual high alert indicated by a red flag warning.
Speaker 2: But the speed with which existing fires on the Cobal
Speaker 2: Tribes's Retervation and Spokane Tribes Reservation grew, and with which
Speaker 2: the fires had struck outside the city of Spokane struck
Speaker 2: and then grew, caught everyone by surprise. Resources were stretched,
Speaker 2: and air attack resources were pulled off the fires on
Speaker 2: the reservations to fight the fires in town then had
Speaker 2: to set down entirely due to small drone activity. Within
Speaker 2: a few hours, people in Spokane were getting those same
Speaker 2: evacuation notices on their phones, and for some of them
Speaker 2: leaving their homes for the last time. If you're listening
Speaker 2: outside the USA, this could happen to you. Two the
Speaker 2: communities I grew up in caught fire that we come
Speaker 2: writing this, which is mid August twenty twenty sixth if
Speaker 2: you're listening later in pershal houses just a few yards
Speaker 2: away from home, to where I pulled wet carpet and
Speaker 2: wet plasters so we could dry them out from flooding,
Speaker 2: back when I used to work with my hands, and
Speaker 2: now catching fire, where once we worried that it would
Speaker 2: be too wet even in summer, it is now so
Speaker 2: dry that fires make runs across fields and woods and
Speaker 2: into people's homes. So hopefully there's something here for everyone.
Speaker 2: So for those of you who hadn't had the chance
Speaker 2: at to dry run, but who still think the fire
Speaker 2: could never get into town, I want to offer three
Speaker 2: fire experiences for you to learn from. In this episode,
Speaker 2: we're here from people who evacuated and people who hosted
Speaker 2: and helped with evacuees. Next episode, we're here from Miles Gray,
Speaker 2: a colleague at I HUT who tragically lost his home
Speaker 2: in the Los Angeles fires. I hope we can all
Speaker 2: use their experiences to better take care of each other
Speaker 2: when the fire or any other disaster comes for us.
Speaker 2: First of all, I want to introduce you to Dan.
Speaker 3: My name is Dan Wilson. I lived in Spokane for
Speaker 3: around twenty years, and I worked in conservation that brings
Speaker 3: me all over most of central and eastern Washington into
Speaker 3: our rural communities and live on the outskirts of Spokane.
Speaker 2: I met Dan when I arrived in Spokane. Despite his
Speaker 2: own family being evacuated, he spent the day with me
Speaker 2: filling up a truck and driving supplies out to the
Speaker 2: Kobal Tribe's reservation, a journey which took several hours imparted
Speaker 2: due to fire closures of ferries across Lake Roosevelt. But
Speaker 2: a couple of days before, Dan had been headed in
Speaker 2: the opposite direction to evacuate his house and his family
Speaker 2: from a fire which is rapidly pushing towards a home
Speaker 2: in side city limits. As we drove up and down
Speaker 2: the banks of the reservoir created by damning the Columbia River,
Speaker 2: we talked about the fire, the damage, and Dan's experience,
Speaker 2: and it occurred to me there was a lot that
Speaker 2: people could learn from it, because I don't think Spokane.
Speaker 2: It's going to be the last city that burns like this.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to record in the pickup cab, so
Speaker 2: I called down once he was back home and asked
Speaker 2: when he first thought the fire could reach his house.
Speaker 3: I went to a community event, to a pow wow
Speaker 3: about an hour and a half away from my house
Speaker 3: on a reservation out here, and I was watching pings
Speaker 3: happen and nothing serious had come up yet that I
Speaker 3: personally had to be worried about. And right as the
Speaker 3: pow wow was just kicking off, I got a pang
Speaker 3: from watch study that said this fire was small at
Speaker 3: the time, you know, twenty acre or something like that.
Speaker 3: And I thought to myself, oh, I need to watch
Speaker 3: that fire, and started planning in my head, thinking about
Speaker 3: how long it would take me to get back to Spokane,
Speaker 3: and in my own head, I knew that if that
Speaker 3: reaches one hundred or one hundred and fifty acres, I
Speaker 3: need to turn and go home. And that next pain
Speaker 3: came about five minutes later, and I was half jogging
Speaker 3: across a parking lot full of cars, getting back to
Speaker 3: my truck and driving down to Spokane and calling my
Speaker 3: partner to tell them that they need to get back
Speaker 3: to the house and start getting things ready.
Speaker 2: Work in conservation gave Dan a perspective on fires that
Speaker 2: maybe some people lack. I think a lot of folks,
Speaker 2: especially folks who grew up in cities and in more
Speaker 2: mainstream US politics, people who see things like the state
Speaker 2: as a benevolent entity, struggle to process the idea that
Speaker 2: there are some things that came before the state which
Speaker 2: the state can't control. But fire is one of those things.
Speaker 2: Despite the collective might and heroic efforts of firefighters from
Speaker 2: around the country and indeed the world, and all the
Speaker 2: technology in tankers and helicopters and flame retardant and massive
Speaker 2: fire hoses, the fire at Spokane ripped through whole neighborhoods.
Speaker 2: The state didn't get to decide if it came into town.
Speaker 2: In the end, as the state could do was defend
Speaker 2: a fire line and use this resources to get people
Speaker 2: out of their homes and out of the path of
Speaker 2: the fire.
Speaker 3: I think there is an urban complacency that comes from
Speaker 3: the state. The state exists, you live in it, You're
Speaker 3: surrounded by infrastructure and resources, and so even though we
Speaker 3: live towards the outside edge, there's a reasonable assumption that
Speaker 3: if something is going to happen, the different aspects of
Speaker 3: living in a society are readily at your fingertips, and so, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's not going to reach you or impact you. I
Speaker 3: think that's a reasonable assumption most people make until they're
Speaker 3: confronted with the reality that you can't always control those factors.
Speaker 2: Having watched fires burn on the Covid tribes's reservation for
Speaker 2: several weeks and participate in the mutual aid response, Dan
Speaker 2: had a very clear idea of what could happen, and
Speaker 2: when he saw the fire grow, he dashed home. It's
Speaker 2: easy to forget that we're all living through a crisis.
Speaker 2: It is our indigenous communities have been surviving a crisis
Speaker 2: ever since people from Europe first set foot on this continent.
Speaker 2: As many of us has come to see the state
Speaker 2: as a less benevolent entity than we once did. I
Speaker 2: think there's a lot that we can learn from the
Speaker 2: resilience and strength of these communities. So, having seen the
Speaker 2: fire around the Cobalt Tribes and Spokan Tribes reservations, Dan
Speaker 2: new fire could sometimes move a lot quicker than firefighters.
Speaker 2: He also knew that there probably wouldn't be much time,
Speaker 2: if any, between being told to leave and seeing flames.
Speaker 2: Certainly among my neighbors, I've noticed an attitude that should
Speaker 2: you really be at risk, someone's going to come and
Speaker 2: tell you personally that you need to go. That was
Speaker 2: not the case when Spokane. Indeed, people were not getting
Speaker 2: level worn or two warnings to allow them to prepare
Speaker 2: to evacuate. They were going from no vack status to
Speaker 2: go now across the city. This isn't any particular failure
Speaker 2: on the part of the state or the city or
Speaker 2: the emugency response plan. It's a reflection of how quickly
Speaker 2: the fires were able to move under those conditions.
Speaker 3: At no point during that day was a level one
Speaker 3: or level two evacuation notice issued. It was just level three,
Speaker 3: and then a new block of level three, and then
Speaker 3: a new block of level three. And so when I
Speaker 3: got home, I knew that we were not going to
Speaker 3: get a level one or level two notice. We were
Speaker 3: going to be in the next block or two of
Speaker 3: level threes.
Speaker 2: As I said earlier, the state had issued a PDS
Speaker 2: designation the night before.
Speaker 3: It was the first PDS that had ever been issued
Speaker 3: in Washington and for fire season up here, and so
Speaker 3: a lot of us didn't really have an idea of
Speaker 3: what a PDS means, even as the news talked about it.
Speaker 3: You know, we understood it was worse than a red
Speaker 3: flag day, and we've had red flag days up here.
Speaker 3: The best way most of us understood what a PDS
Speaker 3: meant was in a comparison to a devastating fire we'd
Speaker 3: had up here a few years earlier, at the Organ
Speaker 3: Fire and the Gray Fire, as well as the Palisade
Speaker 3: Fire in California. When they talked about the PDS in
Speaker 3: the news up here, they said, this is the same
Speaker 3: conditions that were on the ground around those fires. So
Speaker 3: I think myself and a lot of people knew we
Speaker 3: were at the risk of a really bad day, and
Speaker 3: we knew that it wouldn't take much if a spark hit.
Speaker 3: It was kind something was going to go bad. I
Speaker 3: think we all just were hoping it wasn't going to happen,
Speaker 3: but knowing we really didn't know where it would happen
Speaker 3: if it did, because it covered such a large portion
Speaker 3: of the area.
Speaker 2: And so Dan had prepared as best he could. But
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how it was possible to prepare for
Speaker 2: something like this fully other than with a moving truck,
Speaker 2: and even then, where would you go? As I flew
Speaker 2: into Spokane, I saw numerous other fires burning across the
Speaker 2: whole of the Pacific Northwest. Still, by hitting the warning,
Speaker 2: Dan saved himself some time the next day.
Speaker 3: I have most of my personal go bag style clothes
Speaker 3: and things like that already prepared for camping season and
Speaker 3: other things, so I can usually grab a bag and
Speaker 3: be out of the house pretty quickly. But the night
Speaker 3: before I did start doing a mental inventory of I
Speaker 3: know where all our files are in the basement, I
Speaker 3: know what I need to grab if I need to
Speaker 3: get out of the house quickly, and you know, we've
Speaker 3: got young kids. And I'd even talk to my wife
Speaker 3: and we didn't have the bags as prepped as I
Speaker 3: would say I wanted, but we knew what we needed
Speaker 3: to grab if we had to go the next day.
Speaker 2: It's by his BET's effort. Evacuating his house facing up
Speaker 2: to the fact that he might never come back to
Speaker 2: it was far from easy.
Speaker 3: I had to have a conversation with my wife at
Speaker 3: one point when the kids were in the other room,
Speaker 3: and kids are a whole different aspect of this, where
Speaker 3: you know she was grabbing some things, and I had
Speaker 3: to talk to her and say, really sternly and empathetically,
Speaker 3: I hope you need to be grabbing things like you
Speaker 3: might not come back to this house. That's the priority
Speaker 3: of the things you need to grab. And I think
Speaker 3: that's when it clicked for her. And it helped me
Speaker 3: saying that, because it really clicked for me on the
Speaker 3: you know, handful of things, things that were really important
Speaker 3: to me besides our basic needs, they got thrown in
Speaker 3: the truck of you know, airloom possessions. You know, you
Speaker 3: might only have time to grab one. It's not every airloom,
Speaker 3: it's the closest one at hand that you can think of.
Speaker 2: In that moment, a stand left. He saw some of
Speaker 2: his neighbors still hadn't packed up. I don't want for
Speaker 2: a second to apportion blame or scorn here. As I
Speaker 2: said earlier, our whole political system rests on this Hobbsyan
Speaker 2: notion that we give up some of our freedom to
Speaker 2: the state, and in turn we get some safety and
Speaker 2: protection the full might of the federal government, albeit a
Speaker 2: federal apparatus. That it's somewhat diminishing to the richest man
Speaker 2: in the world, thinking it would be funny to fire.
Speaker 2: Forest service staff, who make very little money maintaining our resources,
Speaker 2: was marshaled to fight these fires, and thinking of the
Speaker 2: government won't let the fire get into suburban neighborhoods is
Speaker 2: entirely reasonable inside that worldview.
Speaker 3: Friends of ours who had kids that go to school
Speaker 3: night kids were out in their front yard watching the
Speaker 3: smoke down the hill, watching the planes starting to come in.
Speaker 3: All you could do is pull over and say, you know,
Speaker 3: are you planning to go oh? And they're oh, I
Speaker 3: don't know, because an evacuation level hadn't reached us yet.
Speaker 3: And I said, well, I'm going home to get my
Speaker 3: family ready. You should, You should think about getting ready
Speaker 3: right now. We're going to get evacuated.
Speaker 2: But soon as people realized her risk, they began to
Speaker 2: leave in huge numbers, which, your course, resulted in pretty
Speaker 2: gridlock traffic.
Speaker 3: The traffic it took us about four hours to make
Speaker 3: it forty miles north of our house because of how
Speaker 3: much the reduced traffic happened. As the fire burned all
Speaker 3: the other routes out of our neighborhood and another fire
Speaker 3: started closing.
Speaker 2: In, some people had to abandon their cars altogether, picking
Speaker 2: up their belongings, and children are fleeing. Hopefully you're not
Speaker 2: in gridload traffic listening to this, but if you are,
Speaker 2: now you're stuck in their traffic and listening to these adverts. Leopold,
Speaker 2: who died from a heart attack while fighting a small
Speaker 2: grass flyer, once wrote, all ethics so far evolved rests
Speaker 2: upon a single premise that the individual is a member
Speaker 2: of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him
Speaker 2: to compete for his place in the community, but his
Speaker 2: ethics prompt him to also cooperate, perhaps in order that
Speaker 2: there may be a place to compete for the land.
Speaker 2: Ethics simply enlargened the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants,
Speaker 2: and animals, or collectively the land. I think we need
Speaker 2: to think about fire not as something that happens to
Speaker 2: trees and plants and not us, but it is something
Speaker 2: that happens to the communities in which we are part,
Speaker 2: especially in towns like Spokane with a huge wildland urban
Speaker 2: interface and in a time of climate change and reduce
Speaker 2: government capacity. The way we live with fire in the
Speaker 2: forest is the way we live with fire at home.
Speaker 2: We can't just stop fire once it gets to city limits. Indeed,
Speaker 2: I would argue we can't stop fire period. We can, however,
Speaker 2: choose when and how things burn. But that's a topic
Speaker 2: for another day. Let's get back to Dan, who is
Speaker 2: now facing a second fire.
Speaker 3: Our family's evacuation plan has always been to go to
Speaker 3: my in laws house, which is out in the country
Speaker 3: a bit. That's always been my emergency plan. And they
Speaker 3: lost their house in the Autumn Lane fire that was
Speaker 3: happening at that exact same time, was the second fire
Speaker 3: to strike that day, and so we were pivoting really
Speaker 3: rapidly on the move. Here where do we need to go?
Speaker 3: And I was fortunate I have a friend who lives
Speaker 3: really far out of town in a rural community that's
Speaker 3: very fire adapted, and I called him and just said, hey,
Speaker 3: we don't know where we're going yet, but I'm going
Speaker 3: to need a place.
Speaker 2: Like thousands of people in Spokane that day, Dan's friend
Speaker 2: stepped up to help, opening his home to a family
Speaker 2: who needed place and given them an island of stability
Speaker 2: a mix of flames and uncertainty. In fact, lots of
Speaker 2: friends stepped up. This is something I heard from everyone
Speaker 2: who evacuated, the people who they hadn't heard from in
Speaker 2: months years reached out. This desired to help has admirable,
Speaker 2: and we're going to get into how you can help helpfully.
Speaker 2: But in a stressful time, the volume of notications can
Speaker 2: get a little bit overwhelming. Fortunately Dan's house survived and
Speaker 2: he and his family were able to go home. Luckily
Speaker 2: they avoided the worst of the smoke damage as well.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask Dam what on reflection he had
Speaker 2: learned from his nine day evacuation experience and what people
Speaker 2: had done that really helped.
Speaker 3: We have friends that were like, hey, we can order
Speaker 3: pizza and have it delivered wherever you're at. Like, just
Speaker 3: let us know what pizza you want and where you're at,
Speaker 3: and we'll send you a pizza. I don't think we
Speaker 3: took anybody up on that, but that's like a real
Speaker 3: simple solution, honestly, of like, I can just send food
Speaker 3: to you if you tell me where you wanted. Our
Speaker 3: kids got pretty cooped up by day four, and we
Speaker 3: had had some friends up in the area where were staying.
Speaker 3: You said, you know, let us know if we can
Speaker 3: do anything for you. And I don't want to be
Speaker 3: an imposition to anybody, and even that person I think
Speaker 3: was pretty pretty humble. I'm like, we don't know what
Speaker 3: we can do, but if there's anything we can do, well,
Speaker 3: Like they lived on a farm, and by day four
Speaker 3: it was like, can we just like bring our kids
Speaker 3: to the farm to look at animals and get out
Speaker 3: of a house and like you know, petagoat or something.
Speaker 3: I don't think they thought of that in their offer
Speaker 3: of what can we do? And I didn't know what
Speaker 3: somebody could do for me until that moment I got
Speaker 3: to get my kids out of the house. We can't
Speaker 3: hang out in the smoke down here. What can we do? Oh,
Speaker 3: they have animals, Let's go out there. So like that
Speaker 3: was just it was a weird way that people probably
Speaker 3: didn't think they were going to show up for us,
Speaker 3: but like maybe a huge improvement on the quality of
Speaker 3: life for our kids.
Speaker 2: In that moment, he also wanted to reflect on what
Speaker 2: he had lived.
Speaker 3: The kids were a little nutty without ways to entertain them,
Speaker 3: which is something that you know, coloring books and crans
Speaker 3: and things like that, something productive to keep them busy
Speaker 3: would have been huge for our kids. You know, we
Speaker 3: were able to go buy those things with just having
Speaker 3: those you know, I wish I had done a better
Speaker 3: job of actually having all our files sorted into you know,
Speaker 3: three or four go folders for our family, one for
Speaker 3: you know, insurance and those kind of PaperWorks, and also
Speaker 3: you know, a Manila folder of the documents I want
Speaker 3: to have or the handful of pictures I want to
Speaker 3: keep in saying for other members or our family. I
Speaker 3: didn't do a good job of having that as prepared
Speaker 3: as I wanted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's about it. Dani also mentioned that
Speaker 2: if he could have left earlier, he would not only
Speaker 2: have avoided the traffic, but he also would not have
Speaker 2: contributed to the traffic and thus helped other people get
Speaker 2: out faster. Less than two days after being evacuated, Dan
Speaker 2: and I drove up to Insulin to drop off supplies
Speaker 2: for the Covial tribes. Obviously, this is an exceptionally kind
Speaker 2: thing to do, but it also reflects an understanding of
Speaker 2: how different the state response is to a crisis in
Speaker 2: a city as opposed to a tribal community, and indeed
Speaker 2: in any rural community.
Speaker 3: The weekend before that fire, so the Saturday before the
Speaker 3: Saturday where that fire lit, I had driven out to
Speaker 3: the calvill tribes reservation to drop off supplies for their fire,
Speaker 3: because you know, I'm fortunate to get to work in
Speaker 3: a lot of our rural communities out here, including some
Speaker 3: of our tribal communities, and they've been you know, dealing
Speaker 3: with a massive it was already over one hundred thousand
Speaker 3: acre fire at that point for weeks before it, and
Speaker 3: we were running supplies from Spokane because who is supporting
Speaker 3: our tribal friends out here, like what do they need?
Speaker 3: And they're incredibly durable and self sufficient and rallying their
Speaker 3: own community and also recognizing we've got to bring resources
Speaker 3: up here because of the resources available for them to
Speaker 3: draw from, we can bring more from Spokane. And then
Speaker 3: spokanees on fire. And it's the same thing in that
Speaker 3: we just sucked all the energy out of the room,
Speaker 3: all the oxygen out of the room. About fire in
Speaker 3: Washington State got put on Spokane. And I think it
Speaker 3: makes sense why some of our rural communities would be
Speaker 3: like we've been fighting these fires for weeks. There's hundreds
Speaker 3: of thousand acre fires happening. There is you know, a
Speaker 3: fire further north off the reservation, two other large fires
Speaker 3: that have now been going on, but all the attentions
Speaker 3: on Spokane because there's so many people there in comparison
Speaker 3: to these rural areas. It's burning into a city. And
Speaker 3: the reason I say all that is someday there's going
Speaker 3: to be a bigger fire than the fire in Spokane happening,
Speaker 3: and nobody's going to pay attention to Spokane. You know,
Speaker 3: La catches on fire at the same time Spokane is
Speaker 3: on fire. Spokane's not making it in the CNN news,
Speaker 3: and we need to realize that's the reality of these
Speaker 3: situations and we have to take care of each other
Speaker 3: and our own communities too.
Speaker 2: Speaking ofies, I also wanted to get a sense of
Speaker 2: how it can be to be in a crisis but
Speaker 2: not also directly impacted by the fires. In my time
Speaker 2: is Spokane. I also met Hadley, who wears an absolutely
Speaker 2: wild number of Mutual Aid hats.
Speaker 4: I'm the secretary for NAACP branch. I'm on the board
Speaker 4: for a local Queer community center, and I'm part of
Speaker 4: a mutual aid group called Mutual Aid Survival Squad.
Speaker 2: When the fires began, they were not on a path
Speaker 2: towards at home, so instead of grabbing her reliants and documents,
Speaker 2: she started trying to organize for the people who were
Speaker 2: doing that.
Speaker 4: My immediate thing was to like think about my network.
Speaker 4: So I posted on my personal Facebook page and said,
Speaker 4: you know, hey, what's likely to happen in the next
Speaker 4: couple hours is there are going to be a lot
Speaker 4: of people who need to evacuate. So start immediately by
Speaker 4: checking on your people and figure out who in your
Speaker 4: life that might be that needs assistant. And I asked
Speaker 4: my community to start listing, you know, who could take people,
Speaker 4: who could take pets, who could do an hour of
Speaker 4: you know, cell phone charging or a shower, things like that,
Speaker 4: and just try to build an inventory to know who
Speaker 4: I could start referring folks to if I had people
Speaker 4: who needed a safe place or a safe whatever.
Speaker 2: Quickly it became clear that there was a huge amount
Speaker 2: of goodwill, but it was going to take someone with
Speaker 2: experience organizing to help herd those cats in a useful direction.
Speaker 4: A lot of people who could, you know, so that
Speaker 4: you could come hang out here, you could park a
Speaker 4: trailer here, you could you know, charge things here. It
Speaker 4: was harder to find folks who had space or the
Speaker 4: willingness to offer, you know, a room in their home
Speaker 4: or let someone land with them, and I'm part of
Speaker 4: a mutual aid group called Mutual Aid Survival Squad, and
Speaker 4: we've got some like really both great community connected people
Speaker 4: and some wonderful nerds who I say that very lovingly,
Speaker 4: who you know, very quickly were making spreadsheets of you know,
Speaker 4: here's all the businesses that are starting to offer donation
Speaker 4: sites or you know, open their doors, you know, masks.
Speaker 4: Our group made a list that we could start to
Speaker 4: refer to really easily, because frankly, it just it's suddenly
Speaker 4: massively overwhelming how many people want to help, and the
Speaker 4: main way people wanted to help within like I mean
Speaker 4: literally two hours before. Most people don't have any idea
Speaker 4: what they're going back to, and you have piles of
Speaker 4: donated clothing and furniture like stacking up at different businesses
Speaker 4: and nonprofits all over town, which is really well meaning,
Speaker 4: but a little bit disconnected from you know, the timing
Speaker 4: of the situation.
Speaker 2: Well, her friends organized spread sheets to resources she wanted
Speaker 2: to help to, and she found it was most effective
Speaker 2: to offer concrete solutions and stop asking people who are
Speaker 2: already so overwhelmed to make more choices.
Speaker 4: In my case, one of my friends who was out
Speaker 4: of town. I just called and I said, hey, like
Speaker 4: you just moved to level two, Can I just go
Speaker 4: get your cats?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: And she was quiet for a couple seconds and just
Speaker 4: was like, yes. You know, if I had said, hey,
Speaker 4: can I do anything? I don't know. We're great friends,
Speaker 4: but I don't know if she would have felt comfortable
Speaker 4: just saying, hey, can you drive twenty minutes and wrestle
Speaker 4: these two cats that you don't know and do the
Speaker 4: whole thing?
Speaker 2: One thing she began to find something I found all
Speaker 2: over the world the places people could go when they
Speaker 2: needed help, but the same places where they went to
Speaker 2: help other people who needed help. That's what strong communities
Speaker 2: look like. All of us have times in our lives
Speaker 2: when we need help. None of us is an island,
Speaker 2: and all of us have times in our lives when
Speaker 2: we're able to help other people. When we create systems
Speaker 2: that allow us to rely on each other, we have
Speaker 2: someone to rely on what we need help as well.
Speaker 4: So I am like really privileged and spoken to be
Speaker 4: organizing a lot of different spaces. You know, as folks
Speaker 4: started to hear, oh, you know, you know somebody who
Speaker 4: was award recipient at our ENDPACP volunteer appreciation event last
Speaker 4: year lost their home. As that starts to hear, you know,
Speaker 4: that community starts to activate around Okay, well, what can
Speaker 4: we do?
Speaker 2: Where can we out for support?
Speaker 4: I do a lot of organizing with an immigrant community,
Speaker 4: and we were hearing about folks who were, you know,
Speaker 4: needing to figure out where to go. Resources weren't translated,
Speaker 4: you know, not sure whether or not the shelters are
Speaker 4: going to be safe.
Speaker 2: Who's up?
Speaker 4: You know, the National Guard's getting called in. What does
Speaker 4: that mean? You know, there's just a lot of confusing
Speaker 4: information that can also create fear.
Speaker 2: All right, as you might expect, I got some feelings
Speaker 2: about this. First, we have to be clear about the stakes.
Speaker 2: I think any hesitation in the face of a fire
Speaker 2: can cost lives. That is why there is so much
Speaker 2: in this episode about going when you get a level
Speaker 2: three warning, if not before, people are going to hesitate
Speaker 2: if they think National Guard troops manning checkpoints are going
Speaker 2: to deport them or hurt them, or that those National
Speaker 2: Guard troops are actually bortec who tend to wear similar
Speaker 2: camera uniforms. So let's talk a bit about what might
Speaker 2: cause people to wonder if evacuating or going to a
Speaker 2: shelter is the safest choice for them. There is sadly
Speaker 2: a long history of migration enforcement fucking with people at
Speaker 2: the moment they are at their most vulnerable. In the
Speaker 2: San Diego two thousand and seven which Creek fires, a
Speaker 2: Mexican American mixed status family we're accused of taking shelter
Speaker 2: supplies to resell and handed over to CBP, who deported them,
Speaker 2: including a US citizen who was two years old. As
Speaker 2: their own community was hurting as people were reaching out
Speaker 2: to help each other, CBP stepped in to ruin someone's life.
Speaker 2: Should point out that it was the police who detained
Speaker 2: them in the first place, not CDP. There's an excellent
Speaker 2: ACLU report in that fire. Other notable San Diego fuck
Speaker 2: ups in this report include reverse nine one one calls
Speaker 2: to evacuate only being in English, the police doing sweeps
Speaker 2: of the evacuation center to look for people whose ideas
Speaker 2: were not from evacuated areas, and the Superior Court extending
Speaker 2: the time someone could be detained without arraignment from forty
Speaker 2: eight hours to a week, and keeping this rule long
Speaker 2: after the worst of the fires was gone. San Diego
Speaker 2: never changes, I guess I hear about this Witch Creek
Speaker 2: fire all the time. Every time there's a fire and
Speaker 2: we are worried about people evacuating, this comes up. It
Speaker 2: was nearly twenty years ago, and it's still stopping people
Speaker 2: from making the safest choice. So a few days after
Speaker 2: I got home for Spokane, I wasn't shocked, I guess,
Speaker 2: but still sad to see CBP posting pictures of their
Speaker 2: OFOSRT that see Office a Field Operations Special Response Team.
Speaker 2: Think about like a SWAT team responding to another fire
Speaker 2: in Washington in an area with a large Latino population.
Speaker 2: Par take a level of ignorance will be quite spectacular
Speaker 2: to not realize that this would make people afraid to
Speaker 2: access state resources and assistants, especially when you combine us
Speaker 2: with the fact that last year in Washington State, the
Speaker 2: BLM apparently requested assistant from CBP, who detained a contract
Speaker 2: fire crew and arrested two of its members. Quote. I
Speaker 2: asked them if his family can say goodbye to him,
Speaker 2: because they're family and they're just ripping them away, one
Speaker 2: firefighter told the Seattle Times, and this is what he said.
Speaker 2: You need to get the expletive out of here. I'm
Speaker 2: going to make you leave. Well, that's why I thought
Speaker 2: it was going to end this section until I came
Speaker 2: across an Instagram post of Army National Guard firefighters, or
Speaker 2: at least what the post claims a National Guard firefighters
Speaker 2: fighting a fire in Washington posing for a photo with
Speaker 2: a Rhodesian flag. If you're not familiar with Rhodesia, we
Speaker 2: call it Zimbabwe now, and it is very amusing that
Speaker 2: this is happening at a fire. If you know how
Speaker 2: Rhodesia ended. Rhodesia was the last bastion of white ethno
Speaker 2: nationalism in Africa. There's no reason why anyone would have
Speaker 2: that flag other than crass and disgusting racism. It is
Speaker 2: the same flag that Dylan Ruth chose to adorn his
Speaker 2: hateful website with when he murdered nine people in the
Speaker 2: Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in twenty fifteen. National Guard soldiers,
Speaker 2: of course, are also manning checkpoints in evacuated communities and
Speaker 2: people associating them with this kind of disgusting bigotry. It's
Speaker 2: not going to make people feel safe with those soldiers
Speaker 2: in their communities. I have contacted several pios over the
Speaker 2: last week. The pios for different fire organizations, for different
Speaker 2: military organizations. I have left a voicemail for the Washington
Speaker 2: National Guard PIO three days ago at this point and
Speaker 2: still not heard back. And I think, I hope, I
Speaker 2: guess so that gives people a sense of like why
Speaker 2: this is such a problem. Right, The Washington State National
Speaker 2: Guard were guarding the checkpoints at the neighborhoods that people
Speaker 2: had to evacuate. They were deciding who've got to go
Speaker 2: in and who got to go out, And they were
Speaker 2: present in those neighborhoods where people couldn't be safe, and
Speaker 2: they were present on the ways into and out of
Speaker 2: those neighborhoods, right, And I hope people can see that
Speaker 2: the fact that the Washington National Guard not only have soldiers,
Speaker 2: and my understanding is that these soldiers run a little
Speaker 2: giant fire and not the Spokane Complex fire, but nonetheless,
Speaker 2: not only do they have soldiers who are so proud
Speaker 2: of being racist, so proud of being associated with someone
Speaker 2: who murdered nine people in a church that they bought
Speaker 2: their flag to wave about it, but that the institution
Speaker 2: as a whole doesn't think that this bears remarking upon.
Speaker 2: They don't think that this is important enough to merit comment.
Speaker 2: You can understand perhaps why people might not want to
Speaker 2: go to them for help. You can understand perhaps how
Speaker 2: that might have very severe consequences when a fire is coming.
Speaker 2: So that's where we're at right now. Not only is
Speaker 2: this happening, but it's happening in a way that the
Speaker 2: institution doesn't seem concerned about, doesn't seem to think merits
Speaker 2: remarking upon, let alone condemning. This is why it is
Speaker 2: important for people to take care of each other, because
Speaker 2: there are people right now who have very good reasons
Speaker 2: not to trust the state, and even that at the
Speaker 2: time when they are most vulnerable, they still can't look
Speaker 2: to the state for support because the state has failed
Speaker 2: them anyway, back to Hadley, because when the state does
Speaker 2: the opposite of helping, we have even more reason to
Speaker 2: help each other. I arrived in Spokane on Monday, and
Speaker 2: I was able to find a hotel room. I was
Speaker 2: kind of shocked. I thought they might all be full.
Speaker 2: I drove by the convict that was sheltering people the
Speaker 2: next day and I was surprised to find it looked
Speaker 2: pretty chill. It seemed that rather than leaning on the state,
Speaker 2: the one third of people living in Spokane who were
Speaker 2: evacuated leaned on each other.
Speaker 4: Sixty five thousand people had to evacuate. I would love
Speaker 4: to actually figure out and map where everybody went, because
Speaker 4: it's shocking to me that that many folks were absorbed
Speaker 4: kind of by our community. I think it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 4: My understanding is the height of the shelter capacity was
Speaker 4: only about four hundred. All of the hotels were full,
Speaker 4: so that means most people found a friend or found
Speaker 4: a family member someone who was able to take them.
Speaker 2: That's remarkable, and it meant that the people who most
Speaker 2: needed help from the state or NGOs or even needed
Speaker 2: hotels could still get that help.
Speaker 4: I was really encouraging folks that if you had a
Speaker 4: place to go, if you had a family member or
Speaker 4: friend to go to, even though if you were telling yourself,
Speaker 4: I'm going to be a burden, I don't want to
Speaker 4: annoy folks. I don't want to bother people do it,
Speaker 4: because you might actually be fraying a hotel room or
Speaker 4: an AIRNB space for someone who does not have a
Speaker 4: community to hold them in and shelter them in last time.
Speaker 2: And I think that's where I want to end this
Speaker 2: week with a reflection on how letting people help us
Speaker 2: helps us build a world where people can get help
Speaker 2: when they need it. This happens on a big scale
Speaker 2: and on a small scale, in cities of two hundred
Speaker 2: thousand people like Spokane, and in tiny rural communities. As
Speaker 2: our federal government is stripped for parts, climate change increases
Speaker 2: and the gap between the rich and the rest of
Speaker 2: us grows even bigger. We are going to face more
Speaker 2: and more crises and get less and less help. We
Speaker 2: need to build communities where that's okay, because we can
Speaker 2: rely on each other in the short term and in
Speaker 2: the long term. And that's what I want to talk
Speaker 2: about next week. The long term. What it looks like
Speaker 2: a year and a half later, when you're still out
Speaker 2: of your house and you're trying to move on with
Speaker 2: your life as a state, and the giant corporation that
Speaker 2: caused the fire that burned down your home don't show
Speaker 2: up to help you.
Speaker 5: Rebuild natural causes the production of cool Zone Media. For
Speaker 5: more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cooalzonmedia
Speaker 5: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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Speaker 5: find sources for natural causes listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.