While several homes on Mill Creek Road and Wallace Creek could not be saved, some were, and Healdsburg Fire Marshal/Division Chief Linda Collister was determined Sunday afternoon to make sure the homes that fire crews worked so hard to save would not reignite from leftover hotspots or smoldering trees.
Collister tirelessly spent most of her day on Aug. 23 driving around the scorched and smoky areas of Mill Creek, Wallace Creek and Chemise Road, and the Tribune rode along with her while she worked on checking homes behind the fire front, a tactical term called fire front following.
Collister said it would be a shame to lose a home just three days after it was saved, which is why fire front following is so important.
“One of the things that they say is so important is once the fire is through to go back and make sure that those houses do not reignite,” Collister said after the Kincade Fire in 2019.
Our first stop in response to the Walbridge Fire, was an area of Wallace Creek Road where the fire burned through.
Collister had received a report that a fallen tree near the 3000 block of Wallace Creek Road was still smoldering, a concern for a house located just up the dirt driveway from the burning tree.
As we drove up Wallace Creek Road signs of the unforgiving fire and its destruction were everywhere, a blackened GMC pickup truck, a towering brick chimney standing among the graveyard-like remains of a home and an abundance of scorched trees.
Once we reached the sight of the fallen tree, Collister donned her gloves and helmet and utilized the hose that homeowners left out for crews, to douse the smoldering tree. As flames licked at the great tree she was able to get some water on the hotspot and said fire crews might want to check on the area again later.
From there she checked on another home and a vineyard in the area that managed to remain intact thanks to home hardening tactics such as defensible space.
Then we headed over to Mill Creek Road where mutual aid from Culver City, Beverly Hills and San Diego were working on checking flare ups and hotspots.
Another tool that has proven to be essential is pre-attack maps — detailed maps of the area that can also be downloaded and viewed on a tablet or device — created by Geyserville Fire Chief Marshall Turbeville along with the help of some Mill Creek residents in the COPE program.
Mill Creek Road can be a confusing place to navigate. The addresses are not in sequential order and so Turbeville poured his knowledge of the area and the landscape into the maps. Collister handed out countless maps to different crews along Mill Creek and they were all thankful to get local knowledge of the area.
As Collister discussed the area with crews she explained that she was from the local fire department checking on homes in the area and said, “These are our people.”
She explained that before new crews started coming in, teams had been on the same shift working the fire lines for two to three days, sleeping and working in the same set of clothes for days and maybe snacking on a granola bar once in a while.
As we made our way past Craig’s Head, the lush scenery of the forest started to change and around the 4000/5000 block of Mill Creek we were met with a grey and charred landscape that looked as if a nuclear bomb went off.
The smoke was so thick it made your eyes water. Ash and soot covered the entire landscape making it look like an apocalyptic snow fall.
Collister said once the fire got up the fuel ladder and into the crowns of the trees there wasn’t much crews could do to stop it.
The environment was eerily quiet. Trees had toppled across creek beds, power lines lay in the road, trash cans lay partially melted and mailboxes were singed. As we approached the remains of one property, a family of quail scuttled out of a singed bush to a nearby pile of pottery.
While some signs of wildlife started to awaken, a crew of Wilhelm tree maintenance folks drove by, along with a contracted crew from PG&E who was working on clearing trees. They said they were tasked with clearing trees with imminent failure and trees back into the hillside.
“A lot of these trees are going to survive,” Collister said. “Now that it has burned when this stuff comes back you can do fuel burns so it won’t burn as hot.”
We then made our way up a tight winding driveway across a small bridge to check on a home way up around the 9000 block of Mill Creek. The home was one of few that survived in the area and Collister said she had no idea how it was still there. Flames had come so close to the property that it had signed the wisteria that was climbing on the wall of the home.
We made our way back down to Mill Creek Road where Collister met the property owners Gregg Helt and Monica Munoz-Torres, who were equally as surprised that their home somehow managed to survive.
Helt and Munoz-Torres helped pen the Mill Creek community’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP), a detailed document that measures wildfire risks specific to an area and identifies ways to mitigate that risk in a comprehensive plan.
Mill Creek residents Mark Farmer and Mark Menne spearheaded the CWPP effort and the planning process started on Jan. 4 when around 60 Mill Creek locals met at the Healdsburg Community Center to discuss the community’s emergency preparedness priorities. In addition to creating a plan, the community identified an alternate evacuation route, created a neighborhood network and practiced their evacuation plan.
While some homes were lost, no lives were lost and their preparation paid off in spades as Collister put it.
“You guys should be so proud of yourself,” Collister told Helt and Torres before escorting them out.
As the red sun began to set we made our way up Chemise Road and saw a strike team from Kitsap, Washington stationed at a house, checking hotspots and protecting the home. It was one of the first nights up there for the crew and they too were happy to get a map and some local knowledge from Collister.
After looking at the eastern flank of the fire from atop Big Ridge way out on Chemise Road we made our back to the station in Healdsburg where Collister was able to take a break around 9 p.m. and finally dig into some dinner and while that was the end of the ride along for The Tribune, she said she was going to continue to check on places and on her fellow Healdsburg firefighters.
