If you don’t know,
my husband of 25 years, (we’ve been together 30), is a battalion chief for Lake County Fire. He’s been fighting fire since he was a senior in high school. Before I met him, my father was a volunteer firefighter when I was growing up. A scanner has always shared residence with me for as long as I can remember. It is because of this, that you must understand, I don’t get worked up easily over listening to calls anymore.
That is, until September 12, 2015.
It was an unusual Saturday, that we both would be home at the same time together. With rotating schedules and ranch work, my husband is on the run a lot. Charlie had his “little brother,” as we refer to his pager, nearby and it went off, toning a neighboring station. He wasn’t on duty but after the Rocky and Jerusalem Fires, he was a little nervous to be without it.
A fire was toned off and before long, mutual aid was being asked for. Charlie had a look about him and I turned up the volume on our scanner to listen more closely and also to hear what was being said on other frequencies.
The sound in the voices of the men on the radio sent my heart racing and a wash of adrenaline pounded throughout my body. This was no ordinary fire. I looked at my husband who had grown quiet and was quickly changing into his fire gear. Looking outside, the wind was picking up. Then we heard it. The panicked voice of a fireman over the radio like I’d never heard from a veteran firefighter. “Send me everything you’ve got. We need immediate evacuations!”
“It’s bad isn’t it?” I asked Charlie. He looked at me and gave me a quick kiss before running out the door.
“This is it! This is the one we’ve always worried about. I’ll try to call you,” and just like that, he was gone.
I was left standing in my living room glued to the scanner. The next few minutes seemed like an eternity went by, with me intermittently running outside to look at the sky, then running back in to listen to the scanner. What could I do?
Warning people to get out was all I could think of and I was wondering who I knew that might not have a clue how serious it was. I ran to my school’s phone list of numbers for a snow chain, in case school is closed due to snow. I looked down at the numbers and tried to remember who lived on Cobb Mountain, where they were evacuating.
When I found one of our teacher’s numbers I called her, half hoping nobody answered and half worried they would. On the third ring, a man answered. It was her husband. I asked if she was home and tried to not panic that they were there. He said she was out. That’s when I lost my cool.
“YOU HAVE TO GET OUT! THE FIRE IS COMING! GET OUT NOW! GO QUICKLY!”
All he managed was, “Ok, ok, ok,” then he hung up. I wanted to cry. Then I realized, I hadn’t even identified myself and I worried he wouldn’t take me seriously.
Alone with my dogs and bags still packed to leave from the previous fires we’d had, I tried to survey what else I’d need in case we too had to leave. The scanner was on full blast as I paced around nervously. I’d heard Charlie a few times coordinating with his department and Cal Fire for what they needed from him, but then didn’t hear his voice again.
The barrage of voices overlapped on the radio. Central dispatch was working double-time to keep up. Grown men’s voices cracked when they spoke, with urgency like I’d never heard. The calls were coming in for people requiring assistance in evacuating. People without cars. Elderly in wheelchairs. I felt helpless.
The next few hours were insane to say the least. I turned on the news as well as kept the scanner up. Calling my father, who lived in Clearlake to update him as much as I could, kept me company. I talked with my older daughter who lived in Clearlake Oaks, and told her our house was safe and it wasn’t coming towards Lower Lake as far as I could tell, but they were concerned about Middletown and were starting to evacuate there too.
When our younger daughter got home, she too listened with me and was concerned but not as alarmed as I was. This is where I get confused about whether she stayed or not, because I think she went to her boyfriend’s in Clearlake. All I remember of that night was staying awake until 2:00 in the morning, listening to the scanner and television, and realizing Middletown was burning, and it was headed into Hidden Valley Lake, where thousands of people lived as well.
There was a woman in labor trying to evacuate with a medic from Hidden Valley, and there was mayhem with hundreds of cars trying to flee the flames on a two lane highway. People were driving on the wrong side of the road in blind faith, trying to get ahead of others and escape the fire. Some abandoned their cars and started running. What I heard all night was nothing short of Hell and pandemonium!
Charlie eventually came by the house to let me know he was ok and headed up to our ranch because the fire was headed over the hill from Cobb and down towards Lower Lake. We have a 30 acre vineyard up there and around the same in walnuts, with countless more in brush land and a home place that’s been in the family over 100 years. Our neighbors that live up there range from middle aged to quite elderly, with one gentleman nearing 90 and living alone. Some of them had horses too. Charlie was very concerned for all of them.
With a momentary argument about whether or not he would recruit our kids and their friends to come up and help put out spot fires around the home place, ( I freaked out and said NO), he then realized it would put me over the edge emotionally and retracted his thought. Then he grabbed some snacks for his rig and was out the door again before dawn. I think I might has slept with the TV on for 2 hours fitfully that night.
By the next day, our yard at Diener Ranch was full of engines from out of town, (the pic above). They’d drove all night to help from everywhere!
These pics are awful since they were taken
by Charlie’s ancient phone, but this one was from Los Angeles County. I was amazed how far people came to help. We needed it too because our resources were stripped due to a simultaneous fire burning in Calaveras County. Northern Cal needed help in the worst way!
I didn’t see Charlie for three days. He didn’t come home to sleep and during this time he was an Operations Chief working a crew and three dozers going non-stop to make a fire break behind ours and our neighbor’s property, trying to keep the fire from running again. This saved all their homes by the skin of their teeth, burning right to the backyard of one of them, (thank God for the dozers)!
There is more I could say about the following days, but for now I can just say that I worried for the safety of our friends, their homes and animals, and mostly for my husband. He was working so hard without rest I didn’t know if he’d collapse or get too rummy in the head to make smart choices. But as he said, they ALL worked like that. He lived off caffeine and adrenaline. I will say though, when he finally slept, he was out for a long while!
Next Blog: I will share more about the protagonist from my book, Gabriel Hart.
Once again, please share your thoughts, feelings, and if you want, your experiences during or after the Valley Fire. I can put some of it in the book if you’d like me to create a character for you, or I will use your real names if you want. We were all in this together. You can post it as a comment here, or email me at punkandude@gmail.com with YOUR BLOG in the subject matter. I will get back to you as soon as possible. Remember, you can stay anonymous if you like.
Have a good week ahead friends.
Writing a synopsis that you pitch to an agent can be very daunting! Talk about rewrites! I must have written my pitch a ton of times then while standing in line to pitch it, I changed everything I was going to say! The worst part is if you ask me now what I actually said, my mind is blank because I was so damn nervous. Before I share the true synopsis though, I want to share with you a conversation I had with my dear friend over breakfast yesterday, in Kelseyville, California.