Close to home.

I was reading in the Chronicle today that Mill Valley (north Bay Area) is going to just about implode if anyone so much as sneezes while lighting a cigarette. There hasn't been a large burning up there in nearly a century, and all the narrow, winding roads would make it nearly impossible for fire trucks to reach homes at the top of the hills. That, and if someone breaks down on one of those roads, it's every man on foot for himself.

This got me thinking about my environment in Walnut Creek. My apartment is set back from the road up a long-ish driveway, and surrounded by brush and huge trees. It wouldn't be impossible to get out, but it would create some logistical issues. I only have one door, and all the windows are high off the ground and sort of surrounded by metal spikes. (It's goth, or something. Sounds weird, looks cool.) That kind of freaks me out.

I'm not good in disaster situations. There was a 6.5 earthquake in San Simeon when I was living in San Luis Obispo in 2003. My apartment was pretty much rotting away (I found piles of wood on my carpet every morning from some disgusting bugs chewing away at my walls and then pooping it out or something) and was built on stilts above a garage. It would sway in high winds, so this temblor nearly shook it loose.

I had just taken a shower when the shaking started, and at first just thought one of my neighbors was being an asshole and moving furniture or something. Then suddenly it got worse, and all my cabinet doors started swinging open. So I was in my towel and just ran outside. (Forgetting about my poor fish! I didn't remember him until later. But he was fine, just motion sick.) I didn't get in a doorway, or duck and cover, or anything else that's been drilled into us California kids since we were 5. So I see one of my neighbors running down the rickety staircase and scream "Wait for me!" Then the shaking stops, and I get dressed and go downstairs, and there's no one outside except for the two of us. And that seemed weird, because you expect people to walk outside and look around, bewildered, and then ask "Did you feel that?" That's the classic post-quake question. So we finally found one guy at the end of the alley and he was like, "Yeah, I felt it." Then we were satisfied. I called in to work and discovered it was the biggest shaker in about a million years in our area, so everyone was being asked to come in. We needed to save the day by ... writing headlines.

Anyway, even after that, I still don't have my earthquake kit, or a good escape plan, or an emergency ladder. Maybe that's what I'll do this weekend ... make a rope ladder.