Clayton Fire / Final Part 4

  Ashes and soot

were all some found left of their homes when the repopulation to Lower Lake happened after the Clayton Fire. I came home to a lost yard, pool and deck area, blown windows, and fencing for the paddock. Others lost so much more! They lost it all!

I knew the clean up could be extensive, but I was anxious to return and happy to get going with it. I just wanted to be home! No matter what the condition of my house, I just wanted to try and make it pretty again. I found a new appreciation for what I had!

I admit, I made a deal with God. I simply said, “I know it’s not much. I know I’ve complained in the past that I wanted more or something else, but it’s ours! Please save it! It’s been our home all my married life!”

I wanted it saved because it’s where we became a family and it’s where my children still had their things, even though they are grown. Their life’s accomplishments were still in our house! I prayed and prayed. I don’t know why my home was saved and others were not, but I was still grateful. I harbor guilty feelings because I love my friends and neighbors who have such loss, but all the more for me to be grateful for what I have!

My father says something that I believe he coined the phrase to. He says, “You never go from what you have to what you want. You only go from what you want to what you GET.” I personally am now grateful that what I got was what I had to begin with. I don’t need what I use to WANT.

Driving up our driveway the first time I was allowed home was like driving up to the moon. It was ashen, dark, skeleton trees of black, and smelled of a campfire gone wrong. Our gate was tossed aside because the posts that it hung on burned. The driveway, gravel road before, had been turned to talcum powder from the heat and heavy equipment driving back and forth, trying to protect the area.

 My backyard

looks like someone has been testing bombs there. Our fencing is gone, our creek full of debris and dead foliage, and the smell is beyond explanation. Not just smoky, but you can smell the dead earth!

The first order of business was to clean out the rotten refrigerator. It had sat without power for a week! The smell was atrocious!

Once I tackled the fridge, to my surprise, people came by to check on us from the Sheriff’s department to see if we needed anything. I also had random people sent from town that were working closely with the Lake County Fire Protection District to see if I needed to take things to a dumpster. Funny thing was, my own daughters and their boyfriends were working with them too, so I didn’t have to worry about getting all our garbage to a dumpster. And it was rank!

Later, I had the task of deciding what to tackle first. The place we put our faces to sleep came to mind. I washed bedding, curtains, flooring. I was glad the windows in the main house stayed in tact and the ones that blew were in our guest house, that was currently unoccupied besides my recent attempt of renovation to make it my writing office. Fallon, my oldest, had her bedroom pretty much violated with smoke out there. It’s something I haven’t yet begun to rectify.

Days went by and we had to go back to our normal lives, ready or not. Before I started school, (I’m a public school librarian), I had to go into my town, which my husband and I both grew up in, and take pictures of the places that burned before someone tore them all down. I was determined to have some kind of photographic proof that they were there, burned or not!

Driving and walking through some of our town, I stopped at my step-grandma’s house that I have many memories from, just off Main Street Lower Lake.

 This Victorian

was well over 100 years old with history to both the town and my family. Now it is nothing more than a pile of rubble, burnt brush, and ash. I can still smell in memory, the house living room with a bear rug. The damp smell of my stepmom’s teenage bedroom, and the feel of the rickety stairs leading out back behind the house from her room, still are fresh in my mind. Now it seems so small. It was once this large, town icon, and now it’s footprint is so small in comparison.

 The old firehouse

was so large in us kids’ eyes. The remains seem so small. I remember as a child, when my dad was a volunteer, that we would run around this pool table that was set in the middle of the firehouse. We’d wait there while our fathers were out on calls and if it got too late, the women of the area would come in and bring us food. I guess my father wasn’t the only single father of that time that was a member of the volunteer fire department in Lower Lake. But now the building is gone.

Here’s a little known fact! My husband’s father, Bill Diener Sr., was the fire chief of Lower Lake when my father was a volunteer fireman. My husband is 4 1/2 years older than me. We calculated that he and I were probably both running around the same fire department during the 70’s and never even met! Mostly because I’d have been considered a little kid to him, when I was running around there. But I wonder if his step-mom had been one of the women that fed us kids when we got stuck waiting there for our dads to come back from a fire. Even so, I wish I could remember if I’d ever seen him there when I was a kid.

Such memories! I grew up in Lower Lake and seeing the town burned made me very melancholy. Our friends, Phil and Betsy had lived in an old Victorian on Lake and 2nd street when I was growing up. It’s gone! Their property butted up against the Methodist Church that burned too.

 This church

was where my children were baptized. This is where I taught Sunday School, and where I eventually received marriage counseling. It was a special place for me and my family. From my house, I could hear the bells ring each Sunday morning. Now, it is all gone!

On, and on it goes! I drove and saw good and bad. I saw that some of what was reported, (like in the Valley Fire) as burned and gone, still stood!  Like the School House Museum was told to be burned and still stands! Some of what burned still surprised me. It was all very emotional.

My husband’s father’s home caught fire. It lost the garage and vehicles, and the back of the house was all that burned before fire personnel put it out.

Although his Dad

is long gone and my husband has nothing to do with this house, it is comforting to see it still stands. We don’t know the extent of the smoke damage or the integrity of the house at all, but it’s hopeful that it will still exist.

Life as usual eventually had to happen. We had to go back to work and try to live our lives as normal as possible. Whether you were blessed or cursed, you had to go on living life as usual eventually. It wasn’t, and isn’t all that easy.

Today, I still cry. I went to our friends, Barbara & Mike Haas’ house just last evening with my sister-in-law Kari, to give them flowers and cookies with a thank you card, just for letting us stay with them during the ordeal. Now, you might remember, we helped them save their house, but even though they brought that to our attention when we were there to say, thank you, we couldn’t let them forget that they saved us, when we needed sanctuary! I could never repay that kindness!

Time heals all wounds, they say. I often feel like I have nothing to heal from. I feel guilty for my tears of anxiety. I feel like I should be able to buck up from what we went through, when so many others lost it all! But the truth is, we all have our own demons and we heal in our own time.

My solution is to try to pay it forward! I’ve given to many folks that needed help. I’m still not done. I ask others, in my quest, to help our fellow neighbors and have so far been very successful. We’ve together, given a lot to many. I hope when our friends begin clean ups that insurances won’t pay for, that we will again help out! There is nothing we cannot do together.

Moving forward can be daunting. We must find the strength! I am ever so grateful to my community, for being the brave warriors who will not lie down in the face of adversity! They give me strength and make me want to give them strength too. Just like in a chain, we might have a weak link, but even a weak link gives a chain strength! We can do it together!

The Homecoming Parade and football games of Lower Lake made our town even stronger! I watched the channel 2 KTVU news with the segment of our tiny little town and thought, YES! THIS IS WHAT WE DO!  We press forward and kick ass! I was oh, so proud!

http://www.ktvu.com/news/204162777-story

I’m hoping the website above works because it’s a video of the wonderful newscast of Lower Lake’s Homecoming Parade, less than a month after the terrible Clayton Fire.

In closing, I’d like to say, I probably will periodically put some of my thoughts on the Clayton Fire into this blog, but mostly I’m going to try to get back to why I started writing this in the first place……………that was to gain perspective in the Valley Fire and work on my romance novel called, Out Of The Ashes.

God bless, each and everyone of you! I hope the future proves to be less California wildland fires, and more peace for our people who have stressed for over a year now.

I’ll be talking to you!

Please, if you have a story you’d like to share regarding either the Valley Fire, the Clayton Fire, or just a comment in general, you can put it in the comments and I will get to it soon. I pray for each and everyone of  you to have peace.