Others were less sanguine. In conversations with friends, on social media, at my local coffee shop, the most common reaction has been exasperation bordering on anger. Sure, PG&E is in a tough spot, caught between potentially causing a wildfire and cutting power to millions of people. Sure, it is going through bankruptcy because of insurance payouts from previous wildfires. Sure, it’s a tough job, providing electricity for millions of people. Still, why can’t PG&E get it together and do that job safely? And, if it really does have to cut the power, can’t it manage to do so without giving much of the state a panic attack?

Over the past few days, I’ve noticed a marked uptick in my own anxiety. I’ve been sniffing the air at the slightest scent of smoke and checking the Air Quality Index nearly as much as my email. More than once, I’ve found myself deep in conversation with friends and neighbors about the relative merits of various air filters or what to eat first when your refrigeration goes. But these anxieties are really just a mask for a deeper fear: that a stray piece of charcoal from someone’s barbecue will ignite one of the regional parks nearby, that we’ll be woken up in the middle of the night with 20 minutes (if we’re lucky) to gather our most important belongings and leave.

Wildfires are nothing new to California, and the West in general. They’re as old as the forests themselves. But the long droughts, intermittently wet winters and elongated dry summers brought about by climate change have supercharged an already dangerous situation, creating bigger, deadlier, more frequent blazes. Eight of the 10 most destructive wildfires in California history have occurred in the past 12 years, six of them in the past two years.

When I was growing up, wildfires felt like a chance occurrence, a random act of God not unlike the earthquakes we spent so much time preparing for. In the past few years, however, the fires have morphed into a more perennial disaster, a regularly occurring menace like hurricanes in the Southeast and flooding in the Midwest (both also supercharged by climate change). The threat of smoke and devastation, the power outages and the face masks have all become an inevitable part of fall in California, as dependable as back-to-school sales and harvest festivals.

As a Californian, I’m used to the fear of earthquakes. It’s mixed into my DNA, the constant low-level anxiety that, at any moment, the earth might slip. We did earthquake drills in elementary school, hiding under our desks with our hands clasped over our necks, after which I performed late-night incantations to ward off the Big One. But at the end of the day there’s not much you can do to predict or prepare for an earthquake. Once you’ve made your earthquake kit and bolted your bookcases to the wall, all you can really do is sit back and wait.