With midterm exams, a looming Parents Weekend and the start of Major League Baseball's World Series packed into a couple weeks, the end of October can be one of the busiest stretches of Brown's academic year. But as students hastily sweep dust under their rugs and pull all-nighters until their eyes are as red as their Sox, a few students' Octobers have been tinged with a far more urgent shade of red.
In another ocean state 3,000 miles away, wildfires have ravaged large swaths of southern California since Sunday, destroying thousands of homes and displacing about 500,000 people so far, some of whom are the friends and family of Brown students.
"My family had to evacuate and go up north," said Doug Jacobs '11, whose family resides in Carlsbad, a suburb just northwest of downtown San Diego. "Pretty much everyone I know who was down there had to evacuate."
Jacobs said his home isn't in the direct paths of any of the 16 fires devastating the state, but unusually strong Santa Ana winds have brought polluted air to his family and stress to him on College Hill. Several of his high school friends live in Del Mar, a suburb of San Diego that was hit by the Witch Creek Fire.
"I've been calling all my friends," Jacobs said. "But I can't reach all of them - phone lines are down everywhere."
Robin Davis '10, who lives 25 miles north of San Diego, said her family was evacuated from their home in Encinitas, a coastal suburb.
"My house was about six miles from the Witch Fire," Davis said.
Though her family was warned well in advance and was able to escape without much panic, Davis said a close friend of hers had a more harrowing experience.
"Her house was about 500 feet from the burn line," Davis said of her friend. "Cell phone towers and phone lines were down so she couldn't contact her family. It was really scary."
The American Red Cross has spearheaded efforts to find temporary homes for evacuees, who number in the hundreds of thousands in San Diego County alone.
One of Claudia Carranza's '09 uncles was evacuated from Mount Miguel, a small neighborhood in southeast San Diego County. But when the fires encroached on the evacuation site, Carranza's uncle joined 10,000 other displaced residents at Qualcomm Stadium, the home field of the National Football League's San Diego Chargers.
Though her relatives' house might still be in danger, Carranza said her immediate family can breathe easier knowing their cousins are safe.
"As long as the kids are fine, we're not worried," said Carranza, an ethnic studies concentrator. "The material stuff can be replaced. Life can't."
Despite the widespread effects and imminent dangers the wildfires have caused - at least six people had died and 70 more had been injured by late Wednesday night, according to the Los Angeles Times - most students interviewed by The Herald said their peers at Brown seem ignorant of the situation unfolding on the nation's opposite coast.
"I'm kind of surprised at the lack of awareness here. It's such a huge disaster, but I guess it's so far away that nobody's really talking about it on campus," Davis said. "It's really interesting when half a million people are being evacuated and nobody talks about it."
Elise Yip '08, who lives 10 minutes from Rancho Santa Fe in northwest San Diego County, agreed. "My mom called me Sunday and said, 'There are fires again,' " said Yip, who missed a week of school in 2003 during a similar period of wildfires called the "Fire Siege."
"Within 24 hours she was evacuated," Yip said. "No one seems to be aware of how severe and stressful it is."
