Fire in the sky

As much as I complain about Facebook, it really has brought a lot of good memories and acquaintances back into my life.

Just today, my favorite former boss found and friended me. And a few months ago, my very first boss and I reconnected. He was one of the two Creative Directors I assisted at the ad agency where I worked right after college; as the younger and hipper of the two, he naturally was the one I bonded with first. (It didn't hurt that he was also from Boston).

Now that he heads his own agency here in LA, he's quite involved in a lot of online media/social networking sites - he typically updates on Twitter/Facebook at least 10 times per day. In the weeks leading up to the election, he'd sometimes post 10 times per hour, linking to relevant news stories and adding commentary of his own. It is no exaggeration to say that much of the media I consumed in those weeks was through him; at the very least, he fed the hunger for information I was already craving.

I logged onto Facebook this morning and saw he had posted a steady stream of status updates since last night: he lost his home in the Sylmar fire. Watched as it grew closer, tried to save it with the firefighters, was humbled as it went up in flames, evacuated with his wife and dog, slept at Best Western for the night, and so on. I didn't see his updates until this morning, when he was already posting new ones, post-devastation, but it's incredibly jarring reading this in real time.

I emailed him immediately, offered my support, asking if there was anything I could do. What can I do? The loss of a house in a wildfire is incomprehensible to me. I assume they have their car, and little, if much else. I remember his office ten years ago was filled with prized prints, artwork and memorabilia - I can only imagine what other mementos he's accumulated by now.

Since this morning, he's added an album of photos he took - apparently from the scene - that literally look like they came off the set of Backdraft. Only scarier, because they are real. I don't know if I'm more amazed that he took so many photos so entrenched in the embers, or that, among everything else, he's found the time and resources to post them to Facebook. I do know that many of them are also posted on the AP wire.

It's weird. In a pre-Internet - pre-Facebook time, even - I never would have known about him being affected like this. Wouldn't have been back in touch. Certainly wouldn't have been able to follow along. But now that I do, I feel some obligation to do react, help however I can. Though I haven't seen him in person in ten years, the last six months of status updates and dog photos have given me a brief window into his life, and fostered a familiarity that makes me kind of feel like a part of it.