Fears and Uncertainty and No Jokes for El Nino

We’ve been evacuated from our hillside apartment in Ventura due to the mudslides caused by the El Nino rains. We walked away with our clothes and a few personal belongings and the uncertainty of what we will find when and if we are allowed to return. Even so, I know that we are some of the more fortunate ones.

As I sit in this motel room looking out the window, watching the rain continually pouring down, I am feeling bereft as I think of all the things we’ve left behind, many years accumulation of life’s mementos. I tell myself that there is nothing that I own that is more valuable than life itself but still it’s hard to let go.

I think of my friends in Cuba and know the deprivations they’ve endured for years and marvel at their smiles and their jokes. This, in the face of their hard lives and many irreplaceable losses. I am only threatened yet I’ve lost my smile and can make no jokes about El Nino.

On Sunday morning I had watched my son Mark and our neighbors carry sandbags up the steep hillside behind our apartment building and felt both hope and anxiety. As they worked I prepared for our possible departure, trying to decide what could be saved and what must be left behind.

About 10 a.m. the Fire Department said that we must indeed leave our home but that we did not need to leave immediately. I cooked a meal, ate, called friends and relatives with the news and waited for the Red Cross people to come by with requisitions for rooms at the Vagabond Inn and for meals.

I became fragmented, hyper and had difficulty in concentrating. As I did the dishes I imagined them covered in mud and wondered why I even washed them at all. But then I disciplined myself and finished my housework.

Later that afternoon I walked away from my home.

On Monday morning I called Dan, the apartment manager. He said the slide area was getting wider and all the preventive work they had done on the hillside had washed out. The rear apartments are now red-tagged. He also said that mud was building up at the far end of these units so they were boarding up the back windows. I can do nothing to help as my car is now rained out and I am still recovering from lymphangitis.

All I can do is wait, worry and write.

I listened to the news and it’s all bad in every direction. The railroad bridge is hanging at an impossible angle and the 101 Freeway is closed on both ends of Ventura. Because of the severity of the storm, Mark had left work early and arrived home just ahead of the freeway closure. He was also feeling the tension and paced around the room. After a few minutes he said, “I can’t stand this. I’m going back to the apartments to see what I can do to help.” His daughter, Maureen, is still there. She lives in one of the units that have not yet been evacuated.

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On the news they said that the next storm front will be moving in soon and should be worse than the one just passing. This seems to go on forever and I am very frightened.

I remember what a Cuban friend told me when he was going through a very bitter experience: “I know that this is a very bad time but I also know that bad times pass.” We can only wait for this to pass and trust that the mountain will not fall.

It is now Tuesday morning, the sun is shining, my house suffered some damage but still stands. Others here have not been so fortunate. I just spoke with a neighbor whose home now lies a tangled wreck on Cedar Street. He had a smile for me but no jokes for El Nino.