The 'hell' that was the California fires comes alive in gut-wrenching web comic
Brian Fies lost everything when his house was consumed by the California wildfires: family heirlooms, photos, ornaments made by his children.
He’s taken the painful tragedy and turned it into a gut-wrenching web comic with details that capture the hellish experience.
His account of losing his house to flames last Monday is relatable, telling, and haunting. One of the comic's panels lists what he gathered from his house with only 15 minutes' warning, another shows what he bought to survive once he realized he was homeless.
A list of everything he'll never see again from his destroyed home is painful to read. It includes "a time capsule to be opened in 2030" and "a series of photostrips taken by cramming our family into a booth at the county fair every summer for 18 years." A simple drawing of his keychain shows how the littlest things can be a reminder of what's gone forever. A short line recounting his trek through the neighborhood to check on the house stands out, "I inhaled my neighbors' lives."
In a phone call Wednesday afternoon, Fies, who safely escaped the firestorm with his wife and two pets, said the couple is still "dazed and confused." The two are staying with their daughter in a nearby city north of San Francisco.
"I was there, I saw these things," Fies said about the comic. He sees his work as a form of journalism, documenting the destruction and bearing witness.
The response to his work has been supportive and kind, he said, with more than 400,000 views on his personal site. Many have told him, "You say what I wanted to say but I couldn't find the words."
The piece came together "extraordinarily quickly," Fies said. But that was part of the point, to show the immediacy and crudeness of being displaced and burned out. His usual cartooning tools were lost to the flames. "The lack of polish is part of the story."
Like one of his drawings with a simple caption over a barren, smoldering wasteland that once was his neighborhood, this simply is, "Hell."
Topics Comics
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
