On the parallels between far northern California and West Virginia

Mackenzie Mays writes in today's Los Angeles Times in the wake of a magnitude 6.4 earthquake in Humboldt County, California. The 6.4 quake made even national headlines on Tuesday this week, but in this piece, Mays, who grew up in Appalachian West Virginia, is comparing California's far north with her home state. She begins by telling of her response to the urgent call from her editor to get to Humboldt after the quake:  

I opened my map app and typed in Fortuna — a historic logging town, population 12,000 — that I hadn’t been to in my eight years of living in California.

I didn’t have time to do much research but knew it was a magnitude 6.4 quake that led to two deaths, 11 injuries and the closure of a bridge over the Eel River. I knew that people had gone to bed the night before with a very different life than they woke up to.

What I didn’t know was that a new place would feel so familiar and that the reporting would be easy because of that sense of community. This coastal county, about 55 miles from the Oregon border, surrounded by giant redwoods, reminded me of my hometown in West Virginia, at the heart of Appalachia.

Both are regions defined by a connection to nature, fading 20th century industries and people who are resilient as hell.

When I arrived in Fortuna just before 2 p.m. — after a long, winding drive that included a snowy detour through the Shasta-Trinity National Forest that only God and my GPS can explain — I pulled into the first restaurant I saw. Double D Steak & Seafood was closed but full of people cleaning up broken bottles of liquor and wine — the smell hit you in the face.

Most of the folks helping weren’t employees but volunteers: The owner’s son had gotten his buddies to help sweep and take out the trash. The owner, wearing a camouflage Santa hat despite being awake since 3 a.m., welcomed me in and showed me the dining room that days prior had been readied for holiday cheer, now filled with shattered ornaments, crooked photos and a toppled Christmas tree.

It was my first glimpse of a town that had been wrecked by nature but was full of people helping one another get through the crisis while grasping for a shred of normalcy.

* * * 

In West Virginia, we don’t have earthquakes, but we have floods. Instead of old lumber-company towns, we have remnants of a once-booming coal mining industry.

Both places have immense natural beauty and are home to people who struggle with poverty but are proud of where they’re from. They are places rightfully leery of outsiders but astoundingly welcoming.

In this part of California, like West Virginia, communities are tight-knit in part because they believe no one else is coming to help them. I sensed a relatable frustration with feeling overlooked and misunderstood.

But I knew I wasn’t one of them. I was there for only two days. All I could do was listen. I always asked about more than the earthquake: What’s this place usually like? What do people get wrong about it?

“The more densely populated areas tend to speak for all of us,” Mcniece [a resident and source for her story] told me. “The Bay Area and Los Angeles and Sacramento — they get to be the face of what California has on its mind, but over here behind the redwood curtain, we have different needs.”

* * *

Both [Humboldt and Appalachia] have immense natural beauty and are home to people who struggle with poverty but are proud of where they’re from. They are places rightfully leery of outsiders but astoundingly welcoming.

In this part of California, like West Virginia, communities are tight-knit in part because they believe no one else is coming to help them. I sensed a relatable frustration with feeling overlooked and misunderstood.

Don't miss the rest of this poignant and charming read.