Good Morning! 89F @ 10:00AM. Sunny. High 96F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.
The weekend motorcycle ride went just fine with the usual assortment of lightly traveled twisty mountain roads, OK food, lumpy camp beds, and great company. No tickets, break downs, or crashes on my part, just very tired when I returned Monday afternoon.
I'd just laid down for a nap when I heard airplanes circling overhead, never a good sign here in wildfire country. When I peaked out the window I saw a column of smoke rising to the south on the other side of the canyon, to I got up to take a look around. To my horror the other side of the canyon just across from the house was completely engulfed in flame, sending a towering column of smoke into the sky. It was moving north toward a pair of houses built just under the canyon rim. As it turned out, neither had sufficient fire safe clearance, and both were lost to the flames.
Not long after that my bulldozer buddy/neighbor called to check on me, and when he heard the news he came down with his little fire truck. Just before he arrived, a Calfire truck came down the drive, followed by several of their pickup trucks with the fire planners. Turns out my side yard offered a front row seat to the fire situation, and crews were here all night watching. Then at about 5PM the fire spotted across the canyon to my side and to the north, and the helicopter and airplane water bombers were on it right away. It seemed to be out but about a half hour after they left at sunset, it sprang up again and was soon running for the top of the canyon. By that time Calfire had a fire line in place at the top of the canyon, which it reached two hours later where forward progress was stopped.
The fire also started burning down hill, and toward my home, down into the drainage below me. Progress was slow, but it was enough to get me thinking more about evacuating. I'd already put an overnight bag and laptop into the truck to be ready, but with the extra time I realized I might really lose the house and if I was going to save anything more now was the time to get it into the truck. So I went through each room, sometimes removing expensive things like old bottles of scotch or a coin collection, or something that would be hard to replace like a rare motorcycle part or tool. I also realized I hadn't packet my will and trust paperwork, and the bigger bottles of my meds. Once that was done, I walked around the house pulling combustible things out away from the walls, making little piles at the edge of the gravel fire safe pad. By this time it was 10PM or so and other than the fireballs in the distance and orange glow in the sky, it was pitch black around the house. The two firefighters coached me and helped move some of the heavier things, and were a great comfort to have, but I gotta tell you they didn't try to minimize the gravity of the situation either. By 2AM or so we'd done the best we could, and settled back to see what the fire would do next.
About 3AM police from the state park came by to notify me that mandatory evacuation orders had been issued, but I turned to the Calfire personnel to my right and said I'd let them make the decision for me. They said for now everything was safe so I stayed. About 5AM I did get an hour or so of sleep on the couch, but was up again just before dawn to make coffee for me and they guys outside.
The canyon was full of smoke and we couldn't see anything of the other side. More management types were arriving by the minute, and soon a dozen or so of them were comparing notes and looking north through the smoke to try and assess damage. After an hour or so it was clear that the west wall of the canyon was a total loss, and that two homes and a mobile home on that side had been reduced to ash. Everyone got out OK but there was nothing left of the trailer and only the chimneys showed where the houses once stood. The fire had continued to burn to the north on the west wall until it was out of site. The burn on my side hadn't made it back up to us, but it had completely destroyed everything on the east wall to the north as far as we could see.
During the night crews had managed to widen the old road down to the boat launch below me for about half its length, but when the sun came up the brass decided that it wasn't a defendable position because it was steep and still too narrow. With no fire line in place between my property and the still smoldering remains, only a small shift in the winds was needed to bring it right to the edge of the defensible space my bulldozer buddy created a few years ago. So it was decided a dozer would be used to push out the boundaries another hundred feet or so, and on the west and south side that would be well onto state park property where we couldn't go back then. A big silver lining is that the last time I had a dozer on site it cost me sixty-five bux an hour, and now it would be free. All of a sudden paying that extra fire protection fee on the property each year didn't seem like such a bad deal.
Another crew was assigned to reopen an old fire line that extended out the south end of the property, and which the dozer then linked to a new line ripped up the hill through the center of my upper pasture. That same crew later cut down brush on both sides of my driveway through the easement, the very thing my "dear" neighbor had threatened to sue me for five years ago. Oh, and the upper end of my meadow fire line goes right through the middle of his lot, too. Love to see the look on his face when he sees it the first time (they evacuated the first night). And a second crew cut a new fire line from the top of the canyon to the lake, separating the burned area to the north from the bottom of the drainage below the house. When I rode down the boat launch road later I could see plenty of places where the fire had made it down into the drainage, but could see no sign that this crew had checked them for embers. So that made me feel better about the dozer work on my place, even though it would be a real PITA to clean up the mess and replant this fall. At least I'll still have a house to replant around, and some folks came out of this not nearly so lucky.
Speaking of luck, if the fire had spotted a quarter mile south of where it did, it would have been on my back doorstep Monday night and my old defensible space would have gotten a real test. I have no doubt that Calfire would have done their best to save the place, but even if they'd managed to do so, the damage to the house and property would have been considerable. I sure do have a lot to be thankful for!
