Today I watched a video that inspired me to voice my thoughts about the massive wildfires in California. The video was the view from the driver's seat of a man and his daughter who you can hear talking in the background, some of you may have seen it. In the video, you hear the conversation between the father and his child as they drive down a road surrounded by flames on both sides of them.

The man is speaking to his daughter in a calm and positive tone, telling her that everything will be okay and that they're going to stay away from the fire."I'm gonna stay away from it, okay?" he tells her. At the end of the video they drove out of the fire-surrounded road and he says "See, we're out of it everything's okay." his daughter replies "Yay!!! You did it!" and he says to her "No WE did it."

This video gave me chills head to toe, and I even cried a little bit. I am amazed by how calm this dad stayed during this situation and how he made his daughter safe during such a scary time.

Living in Chicago and just the midwest in general, there aren't a lot of intense and dangerous weather conditions we have to worry about. Yes, we deal with blizzards sometimes and very cold weather, which I guess can actually become very dangerous but not necessarily life-threatening, but there are no natural disasters we have to worry about like hurricanes, earthquakes, and wildfires.

Sometimes I catch myself taking this for granted, I think all people in the midwest do to an extent. We complain about the cold and the snow, which makes sense because it's a total pain in the butt. Although it's not until we see on the news what other states have to deal with that we realize that we are lucky to live where we are.

For those dealing with the wildfires in California, my heart goes out to you.

I cannot wrap my head around what is happening there, to be honest. It is mind-blowing and absolutely terrifying.

If you were affected by this I am so sorry I can't imagine what you are going through.

I have the utmost respect for the firefighters and heroes trying to fix this mess and keep everybody safe. Your job is incredibly important and I'm so grateful to live in a country where there are people like you to protect us.

You all must have very thick skin to handle this chaos and manage to function while this was going on, and manage to keep your children feeling safe like the father did in that video, you are heroes also. It blows my mind how many things nature is capable of. If you are dealing with this I really hope you can evacuate and get to safety, my heart is with you and so does the rest of America's.