At 10:35am last Saturday, I received an alert on my phone that said that there was a huge warehouse fire in Oakland, with 40 people missing in an EDM party that was going on inside.

The previous night. . . 

My first instincts as an older brother of a sister who enjoys EDM music and events and lives in Oakland (Emeryville, same shit), were to shoot her a quick text to see if she was not a part of this disaster. I waited about 10 minutes, no response. Then I shot another text. Then I called. No answer.

Then I scoured her FB to see if her boyfriend and/or any of her close friends would have gone to this event. I realized that I don’t know a single one of her friends. I post on her FB in an increasingly frantic desperation, asking any one of her friends who might know where she is to give me a call.

As I’m driving home on the freeway, I feel the real possibility of her being mixed up in this craziness. I think about the last time I had seen her, back home over Thanksgiving. I reminisce about our recent trip to Bora Bora with the family, and my trip up to San Francisco where I met her a few times amidst meeting all my friends. As I whip by the cars on the freeway at 90mph, vignettes of memories of the last 26 years of her life fly through my mind. I feel the bone-chilling possibility of what her last thoughts would have been while burning alive inside the building after having been trampled by drugged out ghetto-ass e-tards stampeding out of the building in utter chaos. I feel immediate regret for not guiding her adequately with the proper wisdom of an older brother, feeling my own imperfections of personality and decision-making throughout my own life.

Just as I’m about to pop open a computer at home to research more information about this calamity, and plan my drive to Oakland (6-7 hours away), I get a phone call with my sister’s name popping up on the screen. It’s now 1pm.

“whaaaat’s going on?” cracks a morning voice of my sister waking up.

“Do you know what’s been going on sis!? Our whole family was worried sick about you!” I pined, very quickly deflating into the solace of knowing my sis was ok. I explained the news, and she let me know she had chosen a poor night to have a birthday bender last night at a friend’s house into the morning hours.

This event taught me a few things about myself.

First, I learned that when family gets impacted by things, everything else in the world suddenly pales to background noise. Life, friends, business, faith, whatever it is – all goes out the door real quick when family is involved. I imagine it will be this way when I start my own family someday- possibly even more so. It was kind of crazy – people were talking to me, but I was already tuned out to a different channel and in an extremely focused emergency mode of sorts. Needless to say I had to unwind a little after this episode ended in the affirmative confirmation of my sister’s safety.

Second, I realized that if this were an actual real event, I would have a hell of a time trying to track her down, so we instated tracking measures and emergency ways of finding each other in the event this were to really happen. This is a practical thing everyone who has a loved one should do who trusts them with GPS tracking information.

Third, after pondering the whole debacle that day a few hours later, I saw that there is a very real possibility that something could happen to my family in the future. Whether it is my girlfriend in a car accident with a semi on the 101 freeway, Lola getting attacked by a raccoon, or dad having a heart attack, or my mom tripping and suffering a hip fracture in the field when no one is around, or my sister is on the lower level of the Bay Bridge when the big one hits (knock on wood for all of these) – I have learned that as we get older, we do indeed have more to lose, and more to prepare for. This is not just physical preparation, but also mental/spiritual preparation with the understanding and respect of the inevitable.

Also, lesson learned, don’t step into large warehouses with kindling everywhere, no sprinkler system, and people rolling on E and smoking marijuana cigarettes inside, no matter how awesome or cool the DJ is. Screw that noise!