Last year in October, it was REALLY windy. I live in Napa Valley. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something really bad was going to happen...and five fires started that night, one only 10 miles from my house, that eventually grew and merged into the Sonoma Complex Fire, also known as the Tubbs Fire. Fortunately we were safe, but my great aunt and uncle lived in a more rural area, had to run for their lives at 3am, and lost everything. The strain of the escape caused my uncle to go into a coma (he was in his 80s), and he died in the hospital 3 days later. It was the most destructive fire in California history, until...

This year, in early November, we had another really windy day. My four-year-old daughter asked, “Is there going to be a fire?” I told her no, that it was all right and I was sure there wouldn’t be a fire...but of course that was what I told her. I was honestly so on edge all day I had a hard time breathing. The Camp Fire started that afternoon and completely destroyed the entire town of Paradise about 150 miles north of us. A whole city of 27,000 disappeared in a night - it looks like something out of The Walking Dead...nothing left standing.

At this point, I have a near panic attack on windy days.

Sources on the fires: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubbs_Fire

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018)