‘They Barricaded Everything’: Living Inside an Evacuation Zone

Yeah, usually I go out in the mornings, take a ride up and down the streets, make sure everybody’s OK, make sure everybody’s got water. I grew up out here since I was a tiny kid, born and raised, and I don’t even recognize these streets. Everybody needs to evacuate. But I was still here. The next thing you know, it was cherry red around us. Then my nephew showed up. I was like let’s get up here and start putting water on the houses. So we started dousing the house next door. Out of nowhere, the fire department showed up. And luckily, between the five of us, we were able to get it out. I’m one of the lucky ones, fortunately, but it’s my neighbors, man. It’s like, this is huge. How are we doing, guys. They barricaded everything, and that’s when they discussed to us — “Hey, you guys can’t go out or come in anymore.” All they did was let us know, if you pass the line, you can’t come back. They’re very verbal about that. We got our burner out there. We’re going to make coffee right now. We have a couple of generators if we need it. Our kids, our family, our nieces, our nephew. Everybody’s just coming to us. I figure around 12, it gets real dark around here. So at night, I come here around midnight, bundle myself up, go up on top, sit in the chair and just watch for flashlights. At that time, you call the sheriff’s, have them come on out and take a look at it. All you can do is lock everything up and just pray.