Alerted by smoke and a network of Facebook friends, famed mezzo-soprano Kimball Wheeler twice drove up a mountain near her home on Guadalajara’s south side to drop off supplies for people fighting the huge fire that raged in the Primavera Forest April 21 to 26.
“It was reflexive,” said Wheeler about her first trip. “I wasn’t thinking charitable acts.”
The U.S. born singer, who settled in Guadalajara in 2006 with ideas of possible retirement, said her story was essentially good news — “people coming together to help.”
Of course the fire was a bad thing, she underscored, noting that it was almost certainly started by arson. But her involvement was a positive experience, Wheeler said, that left her reflecting about charity and why she likes living in Mexico.
“I’m sensitive to the smell of smoke because I grew up in west L.A. and I had to evacuate several times, once when I was 13 or 14 on horseback, when we had to evacuate horses,” she recounted. “On Monday [April 23] I smelled fire and felt it in my eyes. I went on Facebook and saw that a former [voice] student Adriana Najera Fuentes has created a special page about the fire. She posted a list of what the brigadistas needed. I went to Farmacias Guadalajara and got as many things as I could — food and drinking water, eye drops, face masks and snacks.”
Wheeler said the people at Farmacias Guadalajara were well informed and helpful. “They knew right away what to get,” she said.
The trip up the mountain to a primary drop-off point was eerie, she said. “I just followed Mariano Otero, near where I live, and it turns into the road into the Primavera.
“It was like being in a fairy tale. It was late afternoon and I had the AC on, using recycled air. At the bottom, the visibility was almost normal. There were a lot of people on the road, I think most of them doing what I was doing. So I just followed the car in front of me. We all put our lights on. I was freaked out because on the other side of the road, a lot of ambulances were coming down with their sirens going. By the time we got to the drop-off point, the visibility was so bad, I wasn’t sure I’d arrived. Then these creatures in orange fluorescent vests emerged from the smoke. I stopped to drop off the stuff and I got out of the car. I shouldn’t have because I didn’t have a mask and I started coughing.
“I was so moved to see all these kids standing around in the horrible smoke. They were organizing the stuff in makeshift shelves. Mostly just kids, not firefighters, at that time.”
Wheeler said that when she got home, her adrenaline was pumping and her heart was beating hard, but not from the smoke. “I wondered, ‘Do people realize what’s going on?’ I looked on Facebook again and saw that there were new requests, this time not for food, but for heavy boots and gloves and intravenous solutions for dehydration. Veterinarians were up there trying to help the animals and they needed tents.”“I had already spent a lot of money,” she said, noting that at the time of her first trip, she hadn’t given a thought to money, and that one of the things she liked about Mexico was that economic factors made it easier to be generous without putting a big dent in the wallet.
“But now I didn’t feel like I could shell out a lot of money for boots and tents. So I sent around an e-mail to local friends, many of them foreigners, and I got an incredible response. I got a whole carload of heavy boots and gloves and medicines. One American lady bought three sets of boots and gloves.”
It was Wednesday when Wheeler made her way up the mountain for the second time. “That time there were no ambulances and I knew better than to get out of the car. The people there helped me unload and they were incredibly grateful and gracious. This time, they weren’t kids but grown men. And the fire was farther away now — it had gone over the crest to the other side of the mountain.”
By the next day the blaze was contained, Wheeler said, adding that at Hewlett Packard, they took up a collection and got 40,000 pesos to give to the brigadistas who were not being paid.
“There was some anger because people said the authorities were slow to get involved,” Wheeler noted. Yet she saw her ability to get involved as one of the positive aspects about life in Mexico.
“If I were in L.A., the authorities really just want everyone to get out of the way. I wouldn’t have gone to a drug store and bought six or eight bags of stuff. We grow up reading in the Bible about faith, love and charity and blessed are the poor. But a lot of times in the U.S., charity becomes a tax write-off, or it can be social climbing and putting on evening clothes. But here, I believe true charity is practiced more. People give to beggars without thinking, oh no, they’re just going to spend it on alcohol.
“The fire was interesting. Once I calmed down, I wondered why I felt compelled to get involved. It made me feel good. It even made me feel more financially solvent, because I bought things that were needed without thinking how much it cost. It’s really like St. Francis said, ‘It is in giving that we receive.’ Now I’m more grateful for my green garden.”