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.”
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