Please pray for all of the communities affected by the wildfires in Northern California. This includes not only my own, but so many others...too many to name. I personally am closest to the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa (unfortunately probably the hardest hit place in our county, and also home to St. Seraphim OCA and a Bulgarian Orthodox Church whose name escapes me; Lord, protect them and all of your people), but there are many, many fast-moving and currently 0% contained fires in basically every direction. We're just waiting and waiting for evacuation notices that by this point seem inevitable. So many homes and businesses have been burned in the past 48 hours (over 15,000), and many hundreds of people are homeless, well over 100 are missing, and 11 are confirmed dead in Sonoma County alone. All of these measures are definitely going to get worse as time goes on and the fires continue to spread and destroy everything. The most important impact -- the toll this takes on people -- is of course immeasurable.
I really do not want to make this about me or my family when the scale of utter human misery is so much larger than that, but since I can only personally talk about the people I know, I would like to humbly beg for, in addition to fervent general prayers for the entire area and situation, the remembrance of the following people and situations in your prayers:
- For my brother, Steven, and his family who have not been heard from since 9 am yesterday. They were evacuated at 6 am the day before that, which was the first morning of the fires (they started the previous night in at around 10 pm, apparently), have since been back to their home (which was fine, thank God), and I'm afraid have probably been evacuated again more recently. The last text I got from him this morning said "We're okay for now, but there are active fires less than 1 mile away."
- For my stepfather, Victor, and his elderly mother, Nora, who are currently unaccounted for and unreachable.
- For Paul and Cheryl, the parents of a close friend who lost their home and cannot return to their neighborhood, because there's literally nothing to return to. Everything is completely obliterated, as is the case with so many areas.
- For Jeremy and Jay, who are emblematic of the hundreds, probably thousands, who may now be unemployed and homeless, as their place of work has been gutted by the fire.
- Finally, for Shayna, the adult daughter of my roommate who has a small child and lives on the edge of the current southernmost border of the fire zone, and like so many others nervously watches and waits to be told to flee for her life.
Thank you. If I am able to get back online in the future (this is the first time I've had any internet since the fires broke out, since they moved so quickly and destroyed tons of the communications infrastructure around here), I will hopefully be able to share some good news about the above people, and the situation more generally. We're definitely not anywhere near in the clear, though. It is really indescribably violent and horrific, and will probably get worse as the strong 30-40 mph winds return through Thursday.
Please pray for us all. Lord have mercy.