Last Monday night, this was the view from my mother’s house:

It was a bad week, to say the least. Thankfully, my mother returned five days later to find that the house had been spared. Horribly, the house across the street didn’t make it. Nor did the avocado grove. Or 250 other homes to the east of her.

Still, we’re thankful. She’s elderly, she doesn’t have to start over and rebuild, like so many others in Southern California.

I’m a SoCal girl, transplanted to New York. When you live in SoCal, fire is a constant. Every fall without fail, the Santa Anas would start blowing like diablo across the desert, and you just hoped they’d put it out before it got close. Mostly, they do.

My mom had 15 minutes to throw some clothes in a bag, her cat in a carrier, and get out. She had the presence of mind to put some valuables in the trunk of her car; then she had to abandon the car when the town was evacuated. For two days, all she had was the clothes on her back, the cat, and her purse. She’d lost the bag at the evacuation point at the local high school.

After everything calmed down, and I knew my mother had made it out safely, I backed up all my novels onto a data stick, and I put that data stick in my purse. Hopefully, if I’m faced with a natural disaster, I’ll grab my purse. After I finish posting this blog, I’m going to open a gmail account and send all my files there electronically. Just in case.

People, you just never know.

Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She has written two novels under the pseudonym Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter--both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President's teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins.
Kathleen Bolton
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