A Burning Issue: Save the Wife . . . Forget the Bird

After the Bel-Air fire of some years ago, I speculated on what I would try to save from my house if it were in immediate danger.

As I remember, some people rushed into burning houses to save stuffed animals, leaving jewelry and priceless oil paintings behind.

Such choices are obviously not prudent. They are the product of panic and values distorted by a sense of impending catastrophe. It may be true, of course, that a stuffed animal may be of more emotional value to a person than a string of pearls.

When one’s world is about to go up in smoke, one may try to hold on to something that has an emotional connection with the past, with one’s sense of being human.

Since my house is on the edge of a tinder-dry brush canyon, and is, I would say, at high risk, I have been wondering what I would try to save, given a few minutes, as well as what I can do to minimize the potential danger.

First, I have nothing--absolutely nothing--that I would risk my life for, except, of course, my wife. If she were asleep, or in the shower, or whatever, I would have to get her out.

There is little room for humor in these speculations, but it is amusing to think of the possibilities if she were in the shower. At my warning would she simply run out naked? Or would she try to dry first and then paw about in her closet for a robe and slippers?

Of course, I might have the same problem. At the most, I think, I would merely grab a towel. At least it would be more than Adam had before the fall.

Our house has a composition roof, which gives it some protection. Nevertheless, the back yard has numerous trees, which, I suppose, would fuel a fire. When a house goes, it can go like a torch. I covered the Malibu fire as a reporter, and I remember watching a house that seemed literally to explode.

When the time comes, there is no time. I am writing this for my wife, as much as for anyone else. When the fire arrives, it is not the time to take inventory. One does not say, “What must I save?� One gets out.

Of course she has her birds. They are three parakeets, a canary, and an extremely mean and noisy cockatiel who must be older than my Airedale was when he died. Three are in three bulky cages. She might, at the last moment, feel bound to save them. In this enterprise I would try to discourage her. Every bird’s time must come. But no bird is worth a human life.

If the dog were in the house I suppose I would try to get her out, which wouldn’t be hard. She likes to get out anyway. All she needs is an open door. But I wouldn’t go back into a burning house to save her.

Those rules having been established, what else is there? Let us suppose we thought we had a few minutes. Grab two armfuls of clothes? After the Santa Barbara and Glendale fires I read of many people who escaped with nothing but the clothes on their backs. But what would we grab? We wouldn’t have time to pick and choose.

Probably the wisest thing to do would be to store a small wardrobe in one of our son’s and daughter-in-law’s houses. But I’m afraid my wife would have so much trouble making choices that she would soon exhaust any extra space they might have.

The prospect of losing everything you own and a house you have lived in for 40 years is terrible to behold. One feels for the poor couples sifting through the ashes, looking for some surviving link with their past.

But what if you had to start all over? What would you buy first? I’d probably start with underwear, then a jacket and slacks, shoes and socks, a razor and a toothbrush, a computer (if we had a place to put it) and a dictionary. (No use running out of words.)

I suspect my wife would start with underwear too, though where she would go from there I don’t know. Of course if we were to eat she’d have to buy a microwave oven. We could live without television but not without a microwave. Especially since her 1,000 cookbooks would be ashes.

There is one thing I might go back into a burning house to rescue: My reading glasses.

But not, I assure you, a cockatiel.