The Shirley Jackson Project by Robert Kirby

In this unforgiving new reality simply surviving the day-to-day becomes crucial.įies acknowledges that he and his family have enough resources to weather the worst material losses and can rebuild their home expanding the story’s scope beyond his circumstances, he smartly includes 2- and 3-page illustrated oral histories of other victims, some of whom are not as fortunate as he. We learn that the catastrophe killed 44 people and destroyed about 8,900 structures, including over 6,200 homes, in eight counties. Though the first 25 pages of A Fire Story give a vivid description of the disaster, the bulk of the story focuses on the aftermath: the steady drip of logistical, financial and emotional trials with which Fies and other survivors are faced - the scramble to locate temporary living quarters and procure basic necessities (“ underwear, socks, shoes, bottled water, toothbrush and toothpaste, one light shirt, one heavy shirt”) salvaging, relocating and/or rebuilding and, above all, coping with the devastating personal and communal sense of loss and grief. He later expanded upon these early pages and the result is A Fire Story - a scary, sobering, and thought-provoking memoir, infused nonetheless with a can-do sense of optimism and hope. He posted them online and they went viral, covered by many major media outlets. He calls it “ bearing witness,” but it becomes clear early on that drawing his experience of this maelstrom was also therapeutic.įies produced 18 pages in four days. Fies was existentially dumbstruck: “ Everything we owned now fit into the back half of a Prius.”Ī die-hard cartoonist, Fies immediately acquired a cheap pad of paper, a permanent marker, a felt-tip pen, and some highlighters, and began writing and drawing comics about the fire. But by late morning they discovered that their house and entire neighborhood had been completely destroyed, incinerated in a literal firestorm.

They grabbed their pets, some clothes, and a few other items, and headed for refuge a few miles away, fully expecting to return very soon.

on October 9th, 2017, cartoonist Brian Fies and his wife Karen woke to a nightmare: the wildfires that had been raging throughout Northern California had reached the vicinity of their home in Santa Rosa, heralded by a power outage, the smell of smoke, and an ominous orange glow in the sky.

The Shirley Jackson Project by Robert Kirby