In the 70s Ginger Harold and friends happily joined demonstrators with  swinging bras in hand protesting for equal rights in front of City Hall. The 74 year old Californian is a survivor of earthquakes, wildfires and the passing of her own daughter, survived earthquakes and cancer. She is not easily dismayed – certainly not by the thick ash clouds raining down on her from the wind driven fire with the spooky yellow-red glow emitting ominous clouds of smoke on the mountain behind her house.

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Ginger loves nature and instantly identifies flowers, shrubs and birds. She will climb up that mountain as soon as ash and smoke covering it right now have cleared, as she likes to do every evening. Ginger laughs about evacuation plans. “They are totally obsolete! Traffic has changed, roads will be blocked as soon as I leave the driveway,” she says. In case fire should reach her tiny bungalow or embers fall on branches of the dried-out oak dangling over her roof, Ginger will cover herself with a tarp and jump into the community’s pool. That’s her plan. She hasn’t packed anything for an emergency. “I wouldn’t know what to take. Everything is important and nothing is important,” she says with a shrug, laughs and adjusts the breathing-mask over mouth and nose.

Fire fighters and other emergency responders are weary of people like Ginger whom they encounter much too often. In case of fire emergencies stubborn residents refusing to evacuate put those in danger who have to come and rescue them. Ginger is not alarmed by their warnings. She is convinced fires won’t reach her house. Why? She points to the mountain top behind her house where super rich own huge properties with horse stables and private trails. “They call the governor and very soon there will be so many planes dropping water out of the sky that they have to get air traffic to regulate them.” Ginger laughs again. “It is true. I have experienced it so many times. And thank God for it.”