Rina Faletti, PhD

SUMMARY: The wind and fire storms of October
8 changed my personal and professional life. Personally, the
firestorm incinerated the forest surrounding my
house, keeping my family out of our home for 7 months and
creating years of work to repair the landscape I live in.
Professionally, it immediately focused my work as an art
curator and California environmental historian toward the new
topic of environmental crisis that has resulted in a
constant situation of California On Fire. 


The night of October 8 is permanently etched in my
mind as I watched dozens of fires eventually gather into
three monster firestorms surrounding my ridgetop home above the
Napa and Sonoma Valleys: At midnight from my
forest-ensconced mountaintop home above the Napa and
Sonoma Valleys, I saw the shocking sight of the
huge Atlas Peak fire burning 20 miles away. Over the
course of the night we learned that Santa Rosa, Calistoga,
Kenwood and Glen Ellen had all been wracked by the firestorm
and within 24 hours 100,000 people were evacuated and 300,000
affected.

 My 9-year-old daughter, husband and I
became long-term evacuees, living in a hotel for 7 months
due to the catastrophic fire damage to the
forest surrounding our home, and to our entire water and
power system: The firestorm raged directly over my
house and the dense forest surrounding my home, completely
incinerating the forest that encircled my house, destroying
all our water and electrical utility systems we ourselves
build and maintain, including three huge water tanks, high
voltage power poles, above-ground utilities that took 7 months to
rebuild.


Our home itself was saved by our local volunteer
firefighters, the Mayacamas Volunteer Fire Department, all of
whom are also our neighbors. Of over 130
homes on the mountaintop where I live close to 50
home were destroyed by fire. The effort to save those
remaining by a cooperative joint firefighting effort, but
local volunteer firefighters who know the rural area helped
guide that effort. Nearly half of the firefighters also lost
their homes in the fires as they were fighting to save ours.


My personal experiences of the 2017 North Bay
Firestorms immediately inspired my professional work with
the two hats I wear. One hat I wear is as an art
exhibition curator; the other hat I wear is as a
California environmental historian, researcher and
writer: As a trained historian, I am helping
lead an oral history project in my local mountain
community about the Mayacamas Volunteer Fire
Department. I have interviewed all of the
volunteer firefighters in my mountain area about
their experiences. I plan to publish that story when we
finish the interview project. My work as an art historian
and exhibition curator inspired me to create an art exhibition
and film screening event to show work by artists who
immediately began creating art in response to the fires; 4 of
the 11 artists in the show lost everything. We have worked hard
to open this show in October for the anniversary of the
2017 fires. We thank Todd Zapolski for his generosity
working collectively with us to provide a beautiful and
accessible exhibition space in his shopping and dining
development in downtown Napa, called First Street Napa.
Our Art Responds project also includes an online
public exhibition for anyone out there (adults, artists, kids,
families) who has images inspired by California fires
that you want to share online -- photographs, pictures
from your phone, drawings, artwork, any image you can upload
will be exhibited online. 


CONCLUSION: My experiences from that terrifying
night of October 8, 2017 to now a year later, have led me
to seek creative ways to channel the grief, terror,
sadness and deep empathy that we all feel as we collectively
recall, tell and rebuild our stories from the 2017 Fires
in California. But this is not only a story for people who
lived it in the Wine Country in 2017, but for all people
in all places affected by wildfire and firestorm. For me,
art is what allows us to begin and
continue having the conversations we need to remember,
share, heal, rebuild and move forward.