Look at us, fellow White Folks in a majority White area....we're responding and helping as unpaid volunteers in a major disaster just doing our "Christian Duty".
When it's easy, of course.
They aren't fighting the fire, or setting up fire breaks, they aren't helping to rescue pets and livestock out of the path of the fire - they're making a big production of sharing a tailgate and some drinks.
Cedar Fire, 2003 - our apartment complex, half a mile from the fire break protecting Lakeside, Santee, and El Cajon, abutted a small pond/lake on the way out of the high hills around Barona going towards the high school that was acting as the initial large animal rescue. Everyone was bringing horses, cows and goats down our street - not in trailers, either. I got a couple residents together to set up a small cooling station next to the pond where we had home Depot buckets of water and a couple hoses for the animals, and we ripped up some old sheets to use as makeshift bandanas and masks for the riders and herders bringing animals down. All with ash raining down like snow.
One of my co-workers safer further in town sent his daughter, who was training to be a vet, out to help us. She showed us how to rub the animals down with damp towels and cool their eyes to make them more comfortable before they continued down to the ASPCA staging area a mile down the road.
A couple times, some of the riders would leave the animals they brought down with them, grabbed a couple fresh bandanas, and headed back up towards the fire to bring back some more horses or cows quicker than they could taking what they had all the way to ASPCA. In that fire, a half hour or hour in the evacuation could be the difference between being able to get out or being caught by a fire moving between 5 and 10 mph.
The complex kids who weren't evacuated loved helping out when they could. The goats and sheep were easy to handle as all the animals just wanted to head into the pond.
But it was tough work, because we weren't just hanging out with lawn chairs under some cover - we grownups were dealing with large, stressed out animals, including about a dozen or so occasionally left in our care until someone could come back to get them.
And we didn't advertise our politics, religion, or affiliations like some sort of street fair booth sitters.
Haele
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