I'm perplexed about those Floridians who had the capacity and ability to leave

[Sympthsical]

16. My neighborhood caught fire yesterday

Was an odd little thing. I was sitting at my computer working on something with an open window next to me, and suddenly an overpowering smell of smoke blew through. Eyes stung, started coughing within a minute. I bounced outside, and the area was filled with smoke as a plume rose behind houses across the street.

This is California. I absolutely intellectually know how fast fire can spread here, particularly where I live in North Bay where everything is Nature's highly flammable tinderbox. I've read countless stories, seen endless footage of neighborhoods going up. It can be very sudden.

And my dumb ass is standing there going, "I'm sure this is fine. My house will be fine." I then started walking towards the smoke to get a better view of things.

There's this part of the human brain that rationalizes out that bad things are what happen to "other people" and cannot possibly happen to you. Nothing that bad has happened yet, so it's probably fine.

Firefighters came, because my county does not mess around with this stuff. A brush fire had started somehow, gotten into the trees, and was moving towards houses (some people started hosing theirs down). But fire people fortunately quashed it before any buildings went up.

There was real danger in the situation. If the firefighters had been ten minutes longer, it would've reached houses. And yet for about ten solid minutes, my brain was working in that, "This is fine," capacity before I turned back home with the idea of throwing boxes and kittens into the car.

"It will never happen to me," is a very real impulse. Sure a hurricane is coming, but their houses will be fine because they always have been.