Emergency Call

As I’m writing this, I am keeping tabs on a raging fire in Anaheim Hills, California. My girlfriend is from Anaheim Hills, and her house is three blocks away from the desert / forest / place where the fire is happening. She’s here in New Jersey because she goes to school here, but the rest of her family is still back in California.

As we speak, her address is being told to evacuate. This order is mandatory and it is a pretty scary situation. The fire is now less than a mile away, and there are no firefighters to contain it, because there was a fire in Los Angeles yesterday and they went there to help. All of Anaheim’s firefighters are in LA and cannot reach this fire because the roads are closed. The famous Santa Anna winds are blowing the embers from the fires all over the place and spreading the fire at an alarming rate. To further complicate things, the reservoir usually used to fight fires in Anaheim was drained to help put out the fires in Los Angeles. The houses are basically being left to their own fate.

We are sitting by my computer and watching the live report stream online from KABC in Los Angeles. In the shots coming from the helicopters hovering over the fires, she is constantly picking out places she knows that are close to the fire line and, unfortunately, sometimes consumed in the blaze.

What has inspired this entry is that I am constantly reminded of how dependant we are on our cell phones. Jen found out about the fire on her cell phone from her mom. She then called me and told me about it. She has been on the phone often these past few hours with friends and family making sure they are getting out safely. So far, nothing bad has happened to her or anyone close to her personally.

In emergencies, sometimes our cell phone networks let us down. I can remember on September 11, 2001 all of the wireless communications were shut down. I don’t know if it was because of everyone calling and jamming the lines or if one of the Twin Towers was a pat of the infrastructure, but I could not place a call for a long time that day.

It was such a frightening day and we didn’t know what was going to happen next- maybe there were more attacks is store. The added stress of not being able to contact loved ones was a part of that horrible day that I will never forget.

Even at happier times, cell phones have let me down. I remember being at the Louisville- Rutgers game in 2006, where everyone rushed the field. I guess because everyone was calling their friends to find each other (and to brag to kids who went to other schools) that the network got jammed and I couldn’t make any calls that day, either.

It’s sobering to know that cell phones can not work properly when you need them the most. I hope that people continue to work on this problem and it gets fixed as more and more people ditch their landlines and rely only on their mobile phones.

Since I started writing, the fire has been contained somewhat and Jen’s house looks like it will be spared. My heart goes out to the people who lost their loved ones and their homes. This one hit close to home today.