Unexpected

It's not only in such dramatic circumstances as being stranded abroad and threatened by fire, that the unexpected can catch you unawares. Take what happened to me less than two months ago.

I had been feeling unwell for weeks and put it down to allergic reactions, poor sleep and anything else I could think of to explain it away. However, one of the closest neighbours on the island where I've spent almost all my time since returning to Sweden from enforced exile in California, is a retired district nurse and she and her husband finally persuaded me to see a doctor at the local medical centre, about a fifteen minute boat ride away. Which I did, taking with me my shopping trolley as you can't buy anything on the island and I badly needed to replenish my food supplies. I would go to the supermarket after my appointment. Hmm.

Tests were taken. The doctor looked at the results – and sent for an ambulance! I had a very high level of infection, an even higher level of inflammation and low blood counts. Ten minutes later I was on my way to the hospital, shopping trolley and all.

I'll say this, if you absolutely must go to the hospital A & E, it is much better to arrive in an ambulance than simply to walk in. Your status is definitely higher, though unless you are deemed to be in the most urgent need of attention it doesn't mean you will spend very much less time waiting for someone to come and decide what to do with you. But you won't have to lie among a herd of other poor souls seeking help. At least I didn't.

I arrived in the afternoon. Well after midnight I was wheeled to one of the wards, having first been covid-tested. Without a negative result you won't be placed among non-covid patients. Of course. At about one o'clock in the morning I was given something to eat and later moved into a room with one other person, blissfully snoring in his sleep. By two o'clock I was attempting to join him in slumberland and might just have succeeded an hour or so later when I felt someone groping for my arm, needle at the ready. To take blood. A couple of hours later, maybe less, it was the turn of a young lady wanting to record my blood pressure, temperature etc. “Have you had a good night's sleep?” she asked.

I tried to open my mouth, but words wouldn't come.

(To be continued)

Wildfires

It started with a Californian heatwave. Where I was, the temperature rose to thirty-five degrees Celsius, followed by highs of thirty-eight and a couple of days with a scorching forty-two! Then came a prolonged night-time thunderstorm, with countless lightning strikes igniting the tinder-dry vegetation. Many of the innumerable small fires soon merged to form large conflagrations spreading their ugly fumes and flames to threaten everything and everyone in surrounding areas.

By the morning, ash was raining down on us through the increasingly acrid air. An official warning went out: Be prepared to evacuate! To think, I had come for a short family visit in March, yet here I was five months later, marooned by the pandemic and now, along with everyone else, threatened by fire.

What to do? We decided to pack what we could and head initially, the next day, to an in-law's place some fifty miles away. “Take only what is of value to you,” the kids were told. “Provided into doesn't take much room.”

The situation has growing ever more ominous by the time we finally departed, well aware that the family could have seen the last of their house and home with all but the few belongings we were taking with us. The children were deposited with the in-laws while we went to check on somewhere to stay. We were fortunate. Many people had nowhere to go and had to rely on emergency arrangements made by local authorities or organisations, everything complicated by the need for social distancing. In our case, a relation of the in-laws had a temporarily empty flat we could use not far from San Francisco airport. We went there, left some things – then drove back to the fire-threatened house to rescue what else we could. The air, thick and tinged with an orange glow, was painful to breathe. Inside, items were quickly collected, including clothes and food from fridge, freezer and cupboards. This time, before we had left a mandatory order to get out had been issued. Incredibly, we later learned that some people refused to go and had to be forcibly removed. All roads into the area were then closed.

We collected the kids and arranged our temporary refuge as comfortably as we could. From there we were able to follow the fight against the flames. Press conferences and fire-fighters' briefings from the command and control centre set up in the local park just a few hundred metres from the family's home, were shown online. We also continually checked air quality on the Purple Air site. Single figures were best, but anything under fifty on the scale used was still shown as acceptable. Where we had come from it was well over four hundred.

But even in our new location the air wasn't always good. All depended on the winds, as pollution from other fires, and there were many of them, could easily drift in our direction. Compared to what we had left behind, however, it was fine. And three times we drove to a coastal area where the air was fresher, for an evening walk.

We remained refugees for eight days. By then the fire – 'our' fire – was sufficiently contained for us to be allowed back. It had destroyed more than nine hundred homes, but our area was now considered safe. At most, two thousand four hundred people had been fighting the flames, ringing them in, denying them fresh fuel. Weather permitting, helicopters and a fixed-wing plane joined the battle. When we walked past the park now we could see dozens of long vans marked 'mobile sleeping trailer' or 'mobile shower trailer' drawn up on the grass. The fight, though being steadily won, was not yet over.