It’s a relief to see a blue sky.
The smoke from the Butte Lightning Complex fires blanketed Butte County for weeks. Fire turned the sky in Paradise orange. Ash rained down in Paradise and Chico. Wind and dry brush fueled the flames, which torched homes in Butte Valley, Oroville and finally Concow. The stink of smoke filled the air and clung to people’s hair and clothes.
When I heard that part of Paradise was being evacuated, I called a friend of mine who lives off Pentz Road.
She cried as she told me she was driving down the Skyway toward Chico. The panic in her voice made me sit down. She told me that Paradise was orange and that she was being evacuated. She kept saying my name. I tried to be there for her. But I was scared, too. I didn’t know if her home would burn.
It didn’t, thanks to the firefighters.
But not everyone was so fortunate.
My cousin, Nora Burnham, and her husband, Rob Brunig, lost almost everything when the Humboldt Fire raged in Butte Valley and reduced their 14-year-old home to ashes in mid June.
About a month after the fire, they were looking toward the future rather than dwelling on the past.
“I feel like I’m unburdened,” Rob said while sitting on a wooden chair in a large, mostly empty room in the couple’s recently rented home near downtown Chico. “I don’t feel any real sense of loss.”
He said it has been important for him and Nora to focus on their well-being. It helps to know that other people care about them. After the fire, neighbors, friends and family members offered their condolences, and many offered to help. Their kind words helped lighten the burden.
“Everybody was sort of there for you,” he said.
Nora described how they were in denial when they first heard about the fire. They thought their house wouldn’t burn.
Since the fire, she’s felt angry and sometimes depressed, but now she’s in a stage of grief she calls “bargaining.” It includes negotiating with the insurance agent, going to local auctions and shopping at Target.
“I’m going to be in this stage for a long time,” she said with a laugh.
Rob said he’s not a minimalist, but he and Nora won’t collect as many material items in the future and they won’t have things in storage.
“A few coffee cups are enough,” he said. “I don’t need 15 like I had before.”
At first the middle-aged couple didn’t plan on rebuilding, but now they’ve changed their minds.
They loved their custom-built home and, more than that, they loved living in the country, with all the wildlife. Rob, especially, misses the solitude.
He said they’ve had three fires burn near their home in the past 14 years, and he’s convinced they will have another one.
But they will rebuild and next time their home won’t burn, he said.
Their new home won’t be built with any wood. And it won’t be tucked away behind a small hill surrounded by trees. Instead, it will be out in the open with lots of defensible space. It will be safe.
And from their new home, they will see a blue sky.
Journalist Lauren Brooks lives in Chico. She is the editor of the Chico Enterprise-Record’s weekly entertainment guide, The Buzz. She is a CSU, Chico alumna who graduated with a B.A. in journalism in spring 2006. She can be reached at lmbrooks.work@gmail.com.
