It was a Wednesday night like any other for this Boston University student. The hit FOX drama ‘The O.C.’ was back on prime time and I sat glued to the TV watching twentysomethings playing teenagers and thirtysomethings posing as their parents. Among the irony of it all was the glaring irony that the very part of California I was watching on FOX was being threatened by a wildfire that had already burnt the equivalent of the state of Rhode Island. A fire that my Dad, a firefighter from Marin County, Calif. (20 minutes north of San Francisco), was battling for nearly a week.
While my house was not in any direct danger, my heart leapt in my throat when FOX News interrupted ‘The O.C.’ Wednesday to report that a firefighter died.
My dad has been fighting wildfires for close to thirty years in California. I can recall dozens of times when he would come back from a wildfire and tell me the tales of his near-death experiences. Every time he is called to fight a wildfire, I imagine only the worst. This time around, however, the situation in California was one of graver proportions than the state has ever seen.
According to statistics in the Los Angeles Times, 14,500 firefighters worked to fight the fire that as of Friday left 20 dead, burnt 739,907 acres, destroyed 3,335 homes and has cost close to $63 million to battle.
California Gov. Gray Davis and governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger displayed a seemingly united front when they appeared together below the scorched hills of Claremont, Calif. Both promised to aid families who lost their homes in the rebuilding process.
Yet despite this united front, critics from both the Republican and Democratic parties have been throwing mud at each other concerning management of the beetle infestation that plagued the Angeles National Forest and is thought to be one of the major sources of the rapid mushrooming of flames in the southern portion of the state.
While the process of managing this problem is on the minds of many politicians, the thoughts filling the minds of the thousands of Californians who have lost their homes in the fire are where they will be sleeping and what the next step will be in rebuilding their homes.
As of Friday, 1,544 claims had been filled with California’s second-largest insurance company, Farmers Insurance, and the numbers are only growing, again according to the Los Angeles Times. Total costs are expected to exceed $1 billion. While many families are settled in temporary housing, the process of assessing and paying for damages can take months, with repayments contingent on a homeowner’s specific policy plan.
Among the devastating figures of the damage inflicted by fires around the state several thought to be set by arsonists according to the U.S. Forest Service is the statistic of one firefighter’s death: a 38-year-old man who was killed on the blaze’s front lines last Wednesday.
When FOX News reported that a firefighter died on Wednesday, my thoughts turned to my father and I quickly dialed the 10 digits of the fire station cell phone my dad had, my hands shaking and my eyes filling with tears. He answered and immediately apologized for not calling earlier to inform me of the death of the firefighter, who had worked for the Novato fire station, 20 minutes north of my dad’s firehouse.
Steven Rucker was killed trying to save a home in the San Diego area; he is survived by his wife and two small children. My dad was fighting north of Steve in the Simi Valley fire.
I have two brothers, ages three and six. I don’t know what I would have done if it had been my dad who died before seeing my brothers grow up. I would have told my brothers how heroic he was to give up his own life to save someone’s house and possessions and how he loved helping people and felt most at home when he was fighting a fire or surfing the massive waves of Northern California. I am sure that Steve Rucker’s wife, whose children will now grow up without a father, will be telling them similar stories of their brave dad.
‘Everybody loved Steve,’ said Novato Fire Protection Division Chief Forrest Craig in an interview conducted by the Marin Independent Journal. ‘He had the type of persona that is infectious. When he spoke to you, you were the most important person.’ While the memories Rucker’s friends and family have of his life will live on through the stories of reminiscence, the memories of those whose homes were destroyed in the fire will have to be restored along with the structures that held them.
Alexis Guy is a junior in the College of Communication.
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