Last month, fires swept across more than 743,000 acres of southern California, causing at least 20 deaths and destroying more than 3,570 homes. Now that the smoke has (literally) cleared, PW checked in with some bookstores in that area.
"Our new greeting is no longer 'Hi, how are you?' but 'Hi, do you still have a home?' " said Maryelizabeth Hart, owner of Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego. "At about 11 a.m. on Sunday, we looked at the condition of the sky—which was blotted out by smoke and falling ash—and decided we needed to close and be with our families in case anything happened. We had a relatively close call. The fire burned to within five miles of the store."
So far, all of the customers who have checked in with the bookstore have sustained relatively minor losses. "Many had to evacuate," said Hart. "One customer's daughter lost her home, and I heard of many people standing on their lawns wetting down their houses."
Mysterious Galaxy's manager Patrick Heffernan was on a plane coming back to California. "We were held up in Atlanta because they weren't sure the airport would stay open. Later, we flew through the smoke, and the pilot announced that the burning we smelled was not coming from the plane."
The store reopened on Monday and held author events Tuesday and Wednesday. "John Ringo, the author of There Will Be Dragons [Baen], got on the plane to come here not knowing if there would be a bookstore or a hotel when he got to San Diego," Hart said.
Southern California Booksellers Association executive director Jennifer Bigelow was beginning to relax after the organization's Movable Feast on Saturday, October 25, when she got a call at 3:30 a.m. notifying her that her children were being evacuated from their boarding school in Claremont. "It took them an hour to move 350 kids a mile to an evacuation center, and once they got there, they decided that they should call parents to come and pick them up. It was a scary mess. We ended up bringing home some other students who couldn't reach their parents."
The border of the evacuation area was Claremont, home of Huntley Bookstore, which serves the Claremont Colleges. "It was scary and very close to us, but the fire stayed in the foothills and canyons above us and didn't reach the store," said assistant director Linda Labrouche. "One staff member lost her home, and a couple of our customers lost either part or all of their homes."
Jamie Barsumian, general manager of Mrs. Nelson's Toy and Bookshop in Laverne, which is next to Claremont, also went unscathed. "The fires were more north of us so other than the fact that we're still dusting off soot a week later, we can't complain," said Barsumian. Although the store had a power outage at one point, there was enough light to continue selling books and issuing hand receipts.
"Fortunately our store wasn't affected by either smoke or fire damage, but our community was very affected," Susie Zlotnik, co-owner of Yellow Book Road in San Diego, told PW. "We have a lot of customers who don't have homes anymore. Yesterday we had a group of kids in for a signing and six of them are now homeless."
Karen Watkins, general manager of Vroman's in Pasadena, noted that the many different fires made the skies "very ominous. There were moments when you'd look at the sky and say 'Oh my gosh, it's everywhere.' It was amazing."
