Ellen Henry’s home threatened by California fires
Ellen Henry’s separation anxiety is a little worse than your average freshman’s.
Sure, she has to deal with the usual adjustments to college life: the laundry, the dorm food and the studying.
But the CU volleyball player has another reason to worry.
Henry is from Long Beach, a city under siege from a series of wildfires that roared up last week in southern California. Her family is still there.
The wildfires, which have caused nearly a million people to flee, scorched over 800 square miles of land and destroyed over 2,000 homes as they’ve ripped through the area between San Diego and Los Angeles.
The State of California began the most extensive evacuation in state history, while much of the state has been shrouded in a noxious cloud of smoke and ash.
“My mom says it looks like the world is going to end,” Henry, 18, said.
Henry said her younger brother Michael, an avid surfer, hasn’t been able to spend much time outside at all because the air has been so bad. In just a week, the fire has spewed out about 8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and even more ash.
“When the smoke gets in your mouth, it burns your lungs,” Henry said. “It’s awful.”
There are no flames on the horizon in Long Beach and no plans for her family to uproot, Henry said. But much of the area sits underneath a dark cloud.
And it’s left Henry nervous.
“I call my family every day,” she said. “I ask them, ‘Is it getting any closer?’ ‘Are they fighting it back?”
For Henry, who has lived in California her entire life, the fire anxiety is nothing new. She’s lived through fire season after fire season, and recalled fires in the area last year, among the worst she had seen.
“The ash was so thick,” she said. “You’d walk outside and it would look like you were covered in dandruff.”
As Henry has traveled with the CU volleyball team and lived in Boulder, a thousand miles away from home, in her first year away from home, she said it’s been tough. But she’s gotten some comfort from sophomore Mallori Gibson, who grew up in Bakersfield, just north of Los Angeles.
“I heard you can see the smoke from where I’m from,” Gibson, 20, said. “But it’s not close enough to see much else.”
As firefighters are working to get the blazes contained, Henry said she is cautiously hopeful everything will soon be back to normal.
“I’m just hoping it doesn’t get any closer,” she said.
