Sonoma wildfire stories--Naomi Sultana Young

I just had this really disconnected feeling afterwards and it took me a while until the end of the day, I was in a really bad mood and I couldn't figure out why and it was part of it was I think because people were there for kind

of a fun and frivolous event and and it was like they didn't get it. Like some of some people I talked a little bit about, oh yeah, you know all of our buildings burned but somebody was like, oh yeah, it would be so great to work

here and I said well we don't work here anymore because our offices are burnt, you know, and it was just like, I don't know that, that it's like when my husband has told me since he lost a sister and a mom, a dad is when you're

going through grief, people who haven't gone through it because there are people from all over the county that hadn't really experienced it, you know from a by Russian river and you know out there parts of the, and I'm sure they got the smoke but it's a

little different when you're kind of like having this experience on a deep level and then you're trying to like make small talk or something and it just, I like I couldn't, my psyche couldn't like handle it. It was a really weird split and I feel like

luckily around here we had like a little block party and people, everyone was talking about their experiences around the fire and what I realized is um everyone has a story, everyone has experienced trauma A lot of people had nowhere to evacuate to. That's something that I,

you know, you hear that was New Orleans, but I said I asked a lot of people where did you go? And they just, we were just kind of stayed around and like, that's not safe, you know, it's not good for your lungs, but honestly they had

nowhere to go.