{"id":1756,"date":"2018-09-18T19:10:43","date_gmt":"2018-09-18T19:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2018\/09\/18\/after-the-fires-burn-down-a-surprising-story-of-a-haunted-hero-and-the-ashes-of-regret\/"},"modified":"2025-01-15T21:01:34","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T21:01:34","slug":"after-the-fires-burn-down-a-surprising-story-of-a-haunted-hero-and-the-ashes-of-regret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2018\/09\/18\/after-the-fires-burn-down-a-surprising-story-of-a-haunted-hero-and-the-ashes-of-regret\/","title":{"rendered":"After the fires: A surprising story of a haunted hero and the ashes of regret"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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Who knew there was a beat called \u201cfire coverage,\u201d or it was a job they would learn to love?<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Certainly not Lizzie Johnson<\/a>, who was covering city hall for The San Francisco Chronicle, and not yet sure where she fit in the newsroom. Then one day back in 2015 the metro editor, who was short-staffed, dispatched her to write about the Butte Fire two hours east of the city. She had no clue how wildfire coverage worked.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cMaybe that was foreshadowing?\u201d Johnson wonders in retrospect. Because ever since California’s Wine Country Wildfires ignited two years later, in the summer of 2017, she has been a full-time fire reporter. Or, as she puts it in her bio, \u201ca recovering political reporter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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This summer Johnson was back in the smoke covering the massive Carr Fire around Redding, some 220 miles north of San Francisco. Started in late July by a spark thrown from a flat tire, the fire scorched 230,000 acres, destroyed 1,079 homes and 22 commercial buildings, and caused the death of three firefighters before it was declared contained early this month. One of Johnson\u2019s stories focused on 76-year-old Ed Bledsoe, who left home for a 15-minute errand<\/a>. The Carr fire was miles away from his home. Until it wasn\u2019t. It turned and raced. By the time Bledsoe did the same thing, his wife and two great-grandchildren were dead. In Johnson’s searing interview with him (pay attention to the details she uses to reveal his emotions), he is still running errands on their behalf and waiting for them to return.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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But just days before the Carr fire erupted to claim so much, Johnson returned to wine country, and a man called Priest Morgan. He had been mentioned in stories from the previous summer, declared a heroic Samaritan for his actions in the Tubbs Fire that destroyed whole neighborhoods in and around Santa Rosa. Morgan was racing away from the fire when he reversed course and returned to Journey’s End, the senior citizen mobile home park where he lived. He evacuated several neighbors and saved \u2013 sort of \u2013 some of their homes.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cI believe these stories are really, really important.\u00a0 That keeps me going.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The \u201csort of\u201d sits at the heart of \u201cRegret haunts Wine Country fire hero: \u2018I\u2019ve never cried this much,\u2019\u201d<\/a> published in the Chronicle July 13, 2018. In revisiting Morgan, Johnson found a story that revealed how the consequences of good intentions and actions can sometimes play out in heartbreaking ways. Rather than living with the comfort that he did the right thing, Morgan has been torn with guilt. Sometimes he wishes he had died in the fire with his neighbors. Sometimes he rails, in writing, to insurance companies and the government. Almost always, he wishes he hadn\u2019t turned around to help, but had just kept driving.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Johnson\u2019s story is the opposite of happily-ever-after. But it is real and compelling \u2013 something she seeks in her stories, wherever it leads.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cAfter a big wildfire, the first phase of coverage involves putting a human face on the tragedy,\u201d she told me when I reached out to talk about her work, and especially about the haunted Samaritan profile. As she talks to people sifting through the rubble of their homes or survivors camped in evacuation shelters, she scouts for characters who illustrate life\u2019s big themes: love, loss, change. These become the seeds for stories that come later.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The second phase is to make something whole out of the fragments, she says: \u201cThat means helping the Chronicle\u2019s readers understand a wildfire\u2019s ripple effect\u2026 as well as make sense of a tragedy that seems senseless.\u201d As part of that mission, she uses what she learned covering government: “I know how to request the records and data I need for stories on firefighter deaths or fire causes. I know to keep an eye on what\u2019s happening in Sacramento. Those things give a story teeth. And I know I have to have a really tough skin.”<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Lizzie Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div> \n
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But the stories that “stick with me,” she says, are the human stories. She is keenly aware that she is not a trained therapist. She drops into a disaster zone and listens. She is humbled by hearing what fire victims have gone through and the grace with which they receive her. \u201cHere they are, going through one of the worst days of their lives, and they take the time to talk to a nosy reporter about what they\u2019re feeling and thinking,\u201d she says. \u201cFire victims want someone to talk to, and I show up at the right moment. I\u2019m a vessel for their tragic stories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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She doesn’t deny that it takes a toll. So while she tries not to flinch away at the pain of the story in front of her, she also tries to take care of herself. A self-described \u201ceternal optimist,\u201d she stays grounded by checking in with family and friends; she runs daily, eats good food, gets enough sleep, and asks for time off when she needs it. And she lets herself cry on the long drives from the fires back to San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Ultimately, she says: \u201cI believe these stories are really, really important.  That keeps me going.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The annotation:<\/strong>Storyboard\u2019s questions are in red; Johnson\u2019s responses in blue. <\/em><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Regret haunts Wine Country fire hero: ‘I’ve never cried so much’<\/h2>\n\nBy Lizzie Johnson<\/em>
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\nSan Francisco Chronicle, July 13, 2018<\/em>
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\nGod woke you up, you\u2019re sure of it.
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\n<\/a>Second person?! An unexpected gambit in newspaper writing. Were you aiming to do that, rouse your readers, who may have been starting to become numb to fire storm stories? Has the Chronicle ever run an article that starts in second person before?<\/span>I wanted our readers to viscerally feel what it was like to be in Journey\u2019s End as the Tubbs Fire devoured it, to put themselves in Priest\u2019s shoes. There rest of the story wouldn\u2019t have the same power if they didn\u2019t deeply understand his decision to save the park. Starting in second person was definitely a gambit. My editor, Demian Bulwa, and I had discussed ways to bring more creativity into my writing. He offhandedly mentioned using second person \u2014 though he still claims he doesn\u2019t remember saying that! \u2014 and I ran with it. My lede nearly didn\u2019t make it to print. He was hesitant about it. It\u2019s not a style The Chronicle has often used, though our wine writer did use a similar device last year. I\u2019m hoping we can try it out more often.<\/span><\/span>
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\nHe kicked you in the head as smoke filled the room. \u201cLook out the back window,\u201d came the voice. So you did.
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\nWhat you saw at 3 a.m. at the Journey\u2019s End mobile home park in Santa Rosa was orange light where it shouldn\u2019t have been. Row after row of tightly packed units were ablaze along Highway 101. <\/a>Although you establish a time of day and a place, at the outset you\u2019re not mentioning month or year or name of this fire (the Tubbs Fire). Is that because you want readers to stay under the spell of the story and wonder what\u2019s going to happen next instead of remembering other coverage of that fire?<\/span>At the time, Priest didn\u2019t know that the wildfire had a name, or that it was blitzing across Sonoma County. All he knew was that he needed to put out the fire as well as he could. I wanted that sense of urgency to stay intact. There was power to that, and I knew those details could come later.<\/span><\/span>
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\nYou didn\u2019t want to die, not like this, so you got in your pickup and drove away. Then you turned around.
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\nPeople were screaming and embers filled the sky. You had firefighting training and knew you could help. Someone handed you a fire hose, and you stayed for hours, until 8:30 in the morning, until the roaring of the flames quieted.
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\nOne row of homes survived the night, thanks to you. In the days ahead, you\u2019d be hailed as a savior in the community and in the news, given a spontaneous ovation at the post office.
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\nBut if you could relive that night in October, you\u2019d get back in the truck and keep driving.
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\nYou\u2019d let it all burn.
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\n<\/a>In this graph you establish a geographical turn around (he escapes, but he goes back to the fire) and a philosophical turn around (he wishes he had never made that geographic turn around). In essence, this makes a bracket around an interval of time between the fire breaking out in October 2017 until now. How did you discover a way to frame a story that\u2019s ostensibly about a particular bureaucracy (boring, but important) as a narrative about one man\u2019s trenchant regrets (emotional, but universal)?<\/span>At first, I struggled to write this story. I had interviewed Priest for another story I was writing about Journey\u2019s End and how the residents were still in limbo. But Priest didn\u2019t seem to fit into that narrative. He didn\u2019t feel like a supporting character to me. Eventually, I realized I could use his emotional journey to highlight what was happening at the mobile home park in an indirect way. By this point, I had already written a handful of stories about the plight of those senior residents, and nothing was changing, so I decided to try something completely different. The story is about Priest. But it\u2019s also not about him at all. It\u2019s about the city and the county\u2019s failure to help these people. That\u2019s how those two subjects joined and this story was born.<\/span><\/span>
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\nPriest Morgan\u2019s real name is Robert, but the hero of Journey\u2019s End hasn\u2019t gone by that in five decades, not since he was 11 years old and started play-acting the role of local psychiatrist in his East Los Angeles subdivision. \u201cEast LOS\u201d is tattooed on his right forearm. <\/a>These names! Priest Morgan. Journey\u2019s End. It all sounds so Steinbeck-ian. Did any novelists\/mystery writers influence the way you reported this story?<\/span>No, not really. Don\u2019t pass judgement, but I haven\u2019t read Steinbeck since high school, and his novels are fairly time-warped in my memory. I had a massive word document with Priest\u2019s story on my desktop, but I hadn\u2019t touched it for a month. I was still struggling to decide what to do with it. I do my best writing in cycling classes (I know, it\u2019s weird), and the story came to me fully formed one afternoon earlier this summer. I left the class early and wrote the story lede and structure on an app on my phone. I\u2019m very detailed in my reporting, and I was able to fill in the gaps with greater specificity and detail later.<\/span><\/span>
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\nHis father left before he was born, and Priest was raised by a single mother in the crime-ridden neighborhood. She later remarried, and his sister was born when he was 7. He lost 10 cousins to gang violence, he said, and was knifed twice and shot once in the hip.
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\n\u201cIt was crazy back then,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cYou would walk to school and see shootouts and bodies in the gutter.\u201d
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\nPriest wasn\u2019t interested in joining a gang. \u201cGod puts you places to help people,\u201d his mom would tell him. So he tried to be in the right places <\/a>A question about questions: This bit about God putting Priest Morgan in places\u2026was this an oft-spoken guiding mission of his, or was it something that gradually came to the surface in the interview process? Also, what was the wackiest or most difficult question you posed to anyone on behalf of reporting this? And in the end, was it your questions or your fly-on-the-wall observations that yielded the most helpful information?<\/span>Silence is my favorite interview tool. I tend to ask open-ended questions, then sit back and let my subject talk. People are uncomfortable with silence, so they\u2019ll keep talking to fill it, and that\u2019s where I find the best details. My wackiest questions involve hammering down details: What did you eat? How did it smell? What were you wearing? Why that tattoo? How many tattoos? There\u2019s beauty to specificity. And to your first question: I try to retain as much of my story subject\u2019s character as possible. If they have certain speaking mannerisms or repeat specific phrases, I\u2019ll underline them in my notebook and make sure they are written into the story. Priest often repeated that idea you mentioned \u2014 of God putting him in the right places \u2014 so it felt important to include. It encompasses everything he\u2019s done in his life and his decision to save a row of mobile homes in Journey\u2019s End.<\/span><\/span>
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\nHe could get anyone to talk to him, and he liked untangling problems. The neighbors called him \u201cPastor\u201d and eventually \u201cPriest.\u201d If you call out for him on the street now \u2014 \u201cRobert!\u201d \u2014 he won\u2019t turn around. That early nickname became his identity.
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\nIt\u2019s how the low-income seniors at Journey\u2019s End saw Morgan, too. There were 161 trailers in the 13.5-acre park, where Morgan, 61, was one of the more able-bodied.
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\nHe caulked one woman\u2019s roof. He changed a man\u2019s bandages after surgery. He hoisted couches and deciphered legal paperwork. <\/a>I love how lean and alive these lines are. Instead of \u201cHe helped his neighbors,\u201d you offer a high level of specificity. Commenter \u201cBradnewsham\u201d noted, \u201cThis may be one of the best, one of the cleanest, most-touching newspaper stories I’ve ever read. My usual test is can I read it from start to finish without my mind wandering for even an instant? And that was true here. It was so personal, so immediate.\u201d How do you tell such an emotionally rich, detailed story on deadline?<\/span>Readers shouldn\u2019t have to work at a story. The best way to streamline a story is to cut as much as you can \u2014 every \u201cthat,\u201d \u201cjust,\u201d \u201cThen,\u201d \u201cand,\u201d dependent clause and meaningless detail. I tend to overwrite, so I\u2019ll go in afterwards and edit myself before I push it to my editor. It helps to have really good details. They make a story richer because the subject becomes more human, and thus, more relatable.<\/span><\/span>
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\n<\/a>Did you have a word limit for this story?<\/span>I didn\u2019t. My editor, Damien Bulwa, is amazing. He will always give me more space as long as the story is worth it. That\u2019s always his disclaimer \u2013 make the words worth it.<\/span><\/span>
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\n\u201cCome on,\u201d Morgan would say. \u201cI\u2019ll take care of you. I can do it for free or cheaper. Just call me.\u201d
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\nHe joked about buying a walker to blend into the community. The seniors gave him \u2014 as his childhood neighbors once did \u2014 a sense of purpose. Morgan was there for them when others weren\u2019t. They baked him chocolate chip cookies and always remembered his birthday.
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\nWhen the Tubbs Fire came rolling down from the forested hills east of Santa Rosa on the night of Oct. 8, Morgan knew his purpose. Firefighters were focused on evacuating and saving the Kaiser hospital next door, so they cut a hole in the chain-link fence and passed Morgan a thick hose.
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\n<\/a>It is so rare for journalists to circle back, in effective ways, after the news headlines go away. How did you and the editors decide it was worth revisiting the Tubbs Fire and the plight of the Journey\u2019s End residents by way of Priest Morgan?<\/span>In late October, right after the Wine Country Wildfires had calmed, my editor called me to say he was putting me on long-term coverage for the next year writing about the North Bay\u2019s recovery efforts. It was a massive blaze, unlike anything the state had ever seen, and The Chronicle believed it was a story worth following. Priest\u2019s story fit into that. Also, last summer, I had moved to the general assignment desk from San Francisco City Hall, and I hadn\u2019t found an area of coverage that inspired me yet. I felt lost in metro and was struggling to understand how I fit into the grid-work of existing beat coverage. I don\u2019t know what Demian\u2019s thought process was, but fire coverage was the perfect fit. Eventually, people started calling me \u201cthe fire girl.\u201d I don\u2019t fit the narrative for what wildfire reporters typically look like. I\u2019m very petite and very blonde. Officials always seemed surprised to see me on the front fire lines. Now I\u2019ve been to every major wildfire across the state in the past year, and I\u2019m the paper\u2019s lead fire reporter. I love it.<\/span><\/span>
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\nAs he fought the flames threatening units on Sahara Drive, he paused only to follow the sound of a barking dog and rescue the animal\u2019s owner \u2014 a woman in a wheelchair in a nearby trailer. A captain and three other firefighters eventually joined to help.
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\nProtecting a portion of Journey\u2019s End may have saved additional lives.
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\n\u201cAs my focus was on the Kaiser evacuation, part of that plan of success heavily relied on your … efforts to hold that last row of homes on Sahara Street,\u201d Jason Jenkins, a battalion chief for the Santa Rosa Fire Department, wrote in an email to Morgan in February. \u201cI am doubtful that Kaiser would have made it without Sahara Street.\u201d
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\nAs morning dawned Oct. 9 \u2014 a blood-red sun rising behind soot and smoke \u2014 the line of mobile homes beyond Sahara Drive and bordering Kaiser was still standing.
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\nIt was a small miracle amid a night of horror. Or was it?
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\nCalifornia had never seen the like of the Tubbs Fire, which killed 24 people and leveled 5,600 homes, businesses and other structures in Sonoma County.
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\nThe flames killed two residents of Journey\u2019s End, incinerated 121 homes and melted the new gas and electric system. The 40 surviving units \u2014 the ones Morgan helped save \u2014 were contaminated by smoke and asbestos and red-tagged.
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\nTen months later, the residents of those units are stuck. Those who had insurance can\u2019t collect a settlement because the units are standing, and they can\u2019t go home because the land is condemned. A nonprofit housing organization plans to build a mix of affordable and market-rate condos on the wrecked lot.
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\n<\/a>In a sense, this insurance debacle is the actual story, a story you covered in \u201cDisplaced seniors\u2019 homes survived Wine Country fires but residents can\u2019t move back.\u201d But what makes this story indelible is the intimate narrative of how this debacle scorched the psyche of Priest Morgan. Do you have a gut sense of what will make readers care or do you use sounding boards\/trial and error?<\/span>I can sense a good story, and I\u2019m always hunting for the stories that are strange or will help make sense of the tragedy of a wildfire. I get so excited when I find one that my finger tips start tingling. (Maybe I should work on breathing.) When I talked to Priest, I immediately knew there was a story within his narrative. At the time, I didn\u2019t know what it was. But I could tell it would be powerful.<\/span><\/span>
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\n\u201cInsurance companies don\u2019t cover that,\u201d said Ronit Rubinoff, executive director of Legal Aid of Sonoma County, a nonprofit group that helps low-income households. \u201cBecause the park was closed by government action, they said the condemnation applies, and we don\u2019t have to cover it. But the reason the park closed was because a wildfire destroyed it first.\u201d
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\nA cluster of residents lives in the Sandman Hotel, just across Highway 101. Sometimes, they leave voice mails on Morgan\u2019s phone. They talk about suicide. Most don\u2019t blame Morgan, but they wish their homes had burned down.
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\nHere is the agony of doing right and then seeing it turned upside down. Morgan is consumed with guilt.
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\n\u201cI don\u2019t know a single fireman that has ever regretted saving someone\u2019s house,\u201d he said, crying. \u201cI feel like I should have minded my own business. It\u2019s been a thorn for me. The tears, that\u2019s not me. I\u2019m a pretty bad-ass dude. But I\u2019ve seen and suffered and hurt and anguished over this.\u201d
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\nAnd so Morgan thinks back to that night, over and over. He is in the truck speeding away, and he doesn\u2019t stop. He drives until the glow of Journey\u2019s End is a smudge on the dark horizon.
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\nOn a recent morning, Morgan paced across the carpeted floor of his trailer at Lamplighter Mobile Home Park in Santa Rosa. His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked with gel, and tattoos snaked under the sleeve of his T-shirt.
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\nHe has a new unit that he rents for $1,200 a month, a good bit more than the $905 he paid before the fire. Bird feathers and knickknacks fill the space. He has a home, but his community is gone.
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\nMorgan is retired from his various former jobs and pursuits: a combat medic with the U.S. Army, a paramedic firefighter for the Diamond Springs Fire Department in El Dorado County, a physical therapist, a law school dropout and a drug counselor for Lake County. He once started a production company, and he managed rental properties. He\u2019s divorced and lives alone.
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\nHe funnels his anger and guilt into helping the seniors from Journey\u2019s End. It\u2019s his atonement for saving their homes that night. It\u2019s also just who he is.
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\n\u201cI should\u2019ve died that morning,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have woken up. Nobody wakes up who is sleeping in that kind of smoke for that many hours. Mom tells me, \u2018God puts you in places to help people.\u2019 She\u2019s always told me that. That\u2019s what I\u2019m here for.\u201d
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\nAs he paces, he plans.
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\nAfter the Tubbs Fire, he wrote what he calls the Martha Sue Sinnott Law. In the confusion of those early morning hours, Sinnott was left in her trailer, and she might have died if Morgan hadn\u2019t heard the yapping of her dog and helped her evacuate. Two other disabled residents died in the park that night.
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\nSinnott\u2019s law would implement a universal sign system for people with mobility issues, with emergency placards affixed near their front doors. Morgan has written to the state Department of Emergency Services, as well as Sen. Kamala Harris and others, seeking support.
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\nThe text of the proposal is littered with random capitalization, because some things are too important to lowercase. He sees his friends from Journey\u2019s End suffering, and he has to do something.
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\n\u201cCome on, people, they\u2019re hurting,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cTheir friends burned to death. There\u2019s all this crap going on. Quit dragging them through the past for nothing. They\u2019re still no closer to moving on. Come on, really? I\u2019ve never cried this much in my life.\u201d
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\nHe\u2019s running out of time. Maybe that\u2019s why he can\u2019t let go of what happened at Journey\u2019s End.
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\nMorgan was diagnosed with advanced liver disease this year. It feels like the flu but \u201cmultiplied by 10,\u201d and the medicine sometimes muddles his head. He has hepatitis C, which became symptomatic in 2003. Some days, he can\u2019t get up. He\u2019s too fatigued from the dry heaving and the weight loss.
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\n\u201cThe doctor said, \u2018You have third-stage liver disease,\u2019\u201d Morgan said. \u201cWhat the hell, what happened to stage one and two? Come on. I don\u2019t care about dying \u2014 I\u2019ve had a full life \u2014 though a little more of a heads-up would\u2019ve been nice.\u201d
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\nHe doesn\u2019t talk about being sick because he doesn\u2019t want to worry his old friends. But the news spread anyway to people like Inger Simonsen, 72, who lived a few doors down from Morgan before the fire and is now in the tiny community of Hemet in Riverside County.
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\nMorgan used to trim branches from the tree in Simonsen\u2019s front yard every spring. It\u2019s still standing, as is her mobile home.
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\n“I didn\u2019t want to villainize the seniors who were leaving him angry messages. They were struggling to make sense of their new lives, and Priest was their scapegoat.”
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\n\u201cHe did the right thing for all of the right reasons,\u201d Simonsen said with a sigh. \u201cI know people are angry at him, and I\u2019m sorry about that, because he doesn\u2019t deserve that kind of heartache. People are bitter because they\u2019ve been floating in limbo. It\u2019s hard to live with. I think it\u2019s just going to take a while for them to come around.\u201d
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\nMorgan saved Lois Smith\u2019s trailer on Sahara Drive, too. She moved to El Christo Mobile Home Park, about 10 miles away on the opposite side of Santa Rosa. She doesn\u2019t begrudge him, though she admits life would be easier if her home had burned.
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\n\u201cIt\u2019s the way the insurance companies are,\u201d she said. \u201cThey are terrible. At least he did his best in saving the people. That\u2019s his nature. It\u2019s just the type of person he is.\u201d
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\nMorgan finds little comfort in their words. He listens to every victim\u2019s voice mail, agonizing over their plight and his own actions.
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\n<\/a>How do you decide where to sketch vs. fine detail\u2026for example, did you consider quoting voices from Morgan\u2019s answering machine or describing some of the knickknacks in his new unit?<\/span>In regards to the voicemails \u2014 I didn\u2019t want to villainize the seniors who were leaving him angry messages. They were struggling to make sense of their new lives, and Priest was their scapegoat. It is an impossible situation. I empathized with them, and I thought it would be better to sketch the scene. As for details, they always need to carry meaning. It\u2019s not effective to brush in details just for the sake of having them. I could have described Priest\u2019s new unit in more depth, but it wasn\u2019t as powerful as some of the other details I had.<\/span><\/span>
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\nWhat did God mean when he kicked Morgan awake? What was the right thing to do? Was there a right thing?
\n
\n<\/a>Although throughout you are unobtrusively reporting this, these questions feel so personal; maybe they aren\u2019t exclusively Morgan\u2019s, but yours, too. Or are they eveyone\u2019s?<\/span>These are the questions Priest is struggling with. I put our readers in Priest\u2019s head at the beginning of this story, and I wanted to put them back there at the end.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\n<\/a>One of the things that strikes me about this story is that “Regret haunts” combined with another of your features, “Ed Bledsoe couldn\u2019t outrace the Carr Fire…” in which a man turns around but can\u2019t make it back in time to save his family, makes an infernal pair of damned-if-you-do\/damned-if-you-don\u2019t scenarios. How do you keep from getting burned out on tragic narratives?<\/span>I try to find the humanity within them. They can be really sad, yes. But if you add in enough context and detail, incredible loss can lend itself to incredible narratives about despair, perseverance, love and the times we live in. If you set out to write a sad story, I think it\u2019s easy to get burned out on the tragedy. But hidden in the gloom is incredible grit and potential. I look at those kinds of stories and there’s so much else here. There’s beauty here, too.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\n\u201cMy main worry is one of them is going to die before they get their home back again,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s going to hurt. When you get that old, you don\u2019t have a whole lot. Your home is your safe place, your castle. And they don\u2019t have it.\u201d\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lizzie Johnson of The San Francisco Chronicle revisits the headlines to ask about the aftermath. 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