One of our reporters has been under evacuation for a week; she tells her story.
It began with a phone call.
Since I have a normal gig involving me being on call late at night, having my phone next to my head with the ringer turned up isn’t unusual, but no matter how many times I get a late night call, I’ve never mastered the ability to say hello in anything other than a coughing mumble.
“Heather, It’s Colette across the street, we gotta go man, there’s a fire, the hills are glowing.”
What? My brain strained to catch up. “What, where?”
“I don’t know man, the hills are glowing, we need to get out.”
By this point I stepped outside and sure enough the hills to the south of us were indeed glowing.
“Thanks,” I said to my neighbor. “Be safe.”
By now my husband was standing next to me looking at the orange red horizon.
“Call your parents; let’s get Wesley to them, then come back for the animals,” he said.
I called my mom, who was equally groggy and said, sure, come over and I rousted my 8-year-old son (did I mention it was his birthday? Some birthday).
As I attempted to reassure him that everything was ok, my wise child immediately cut to the chase. “If everything is OK then why are we ‘vacuating?”
As we pulled down our driveway in the dark, we quickly realized a roof had been ripped off one of our sheds in the screaming winds and tossed like a playing card through a fence. We repaired as best we could, but the fence held in our friends’ mules and we both knew mules have far too much sense to be near anything dangerous.
We raced down our road, but by the time we reached the end of it, the Nixle alerts on my phone told me that our usual route to my parents’ house — Mark West to Riebli to Wallace, was closed. Okay, I thought, we’ll go Fountaingrove Parkway. The ominous reality of that thought didn’t strike me until much later.
Halfway to their house, I realized we were getting closer to the flames, not further away, and the ones who really needed to evacuate were my parents.
“Mom, Dad, you need to get your stuff together and go. We’ll meet you at the bottom of your street, you take Wesley and you go,” I said firmly into the phone, hoping my voice wasn’t shaking as badly as my hands.
We barely missed the fallen trees laying across Wallace, and the smoke was thick and heavy. At the bottom of their road, we hugged and kissed our son, asked him to be brave, and loaded him into my parents’ car. My father gripped me tight, “When can you come with us?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ve got to get the animals.”
My parents and my son left, headed south, we followed for a bit, then turned off over Fountaingrove. At the top, the flames were visible near the neighborhoods and the road was lined with cars stopping to stare in mesmerized horror. My reporter’s instinct kicked in and I tried to snap a few pictures, but there was a moment when I realized the flames were on the move, right towards us. As if to punctuate that, we were suddenly surrounded by police cars screaming “get out, evacuate” over their loud speakers.
My husband and I spent a sleepless night, watching Nixles, watching the news and watching the horizon.
Mike Barbour, a guy who works for us, happens to be a retired Cal Fire firefighter, and he came over very early to discuss strategies and game plans.
“You’re OK for now,” he said. “I’ll let you know when you aren’t.”
He stayed all day, helping us fireproof the house and barn as much as possible, moving hay away from structures, trimming trees and pulling items away from the house. But in three directions, we could see the graceful, twisting smoke tendrils getting closer and closer.
Around 2 p.m. Mike said the words I think I’ll hear in my nightmares forever: “I think you are going to see fire today.”
This is where I should probably explain that I share my home with 20 horses, two mules, a donkey, four dogs, 21 goats and 20 chickens; it wasn’t really a matter of throwing a few things in the car and heading out.
Mike thought we could defend it, but I wasn’t willing to take that risk. I called for help, lots of it, and got a good response; but as I was doing animal head counts and numbers of trailer slots, I realized it wasn’t enough. I was faced with having to potentially choose who got out and who didn’t. In addition to that horrid math, I realized that my evacuation plan included taking our animals to the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, as recommended. However, with the road closures and direction of the fires, we weren’t going to be able to get to the fairgrounds.
And then the first of several miracles happened. As I stood there, crying, unsure, four trucks, two with trailers attached pulled in my driveway. They were all strangers to me. But a guy got out of the lead truck and said: “I’m Steve, do you want some help to get out of here?”
Their trucks were hitched up to our small trailer and a client’s small trailer, we hooked up our big trailer, and Anna Levenger, a friend and fellow horse professional, showed up with her rig and a student’s rig, along with our friends the Rainwaters and their trailer. Anna said she had found us space on the west side of Healdsburg, so a plan was formulated.
Looking back, I’m not sure how we fit all those trailers in our driveways but we did, and we got all 20 horses and both mules out in one trip. The dogs left on that trip also, including our Livestock Guardian Dog, Isis. Because she is a working dog and not a pet, things like being on a leash, riding in a car and being in a strange place are completely foreign to her. As we tried to get her in the car and she flailed and struggled (all 95 pounds of her). My husband said “She’s doesn’t want to go.”
“Too bad,” I said, tossing her unceremoniously in. She’s been under a terrible amount of stress with the move, not eating and spending most of her time hiding under our trailer where she is tethered, but even she is starting to accept the new normal, and will now go on leash walks with her more domesticated “brothers.”
That left goats and chickens.
“I promise we’ll come back,” Steve said (I never did catch a last name).
During the longest 40 minutes of my life, Mike and I caught chickens and put them in pet carriers; when those were full, I started putting them in pillowcases and tying the tops shut. (I credit Hurricane Irma for that idea; I saw on Facebook it had been done to the local Key West chickens).
Mike explained that soapy water worked well as a fire retardant, so he filled wheelbarrows with soapy water and dumped them on things like our manure pile and barn aisle.
The smoke was now choking thick, and I couldn’t see the ridgelines around me. I prepared to contemplate leaving the remaining animals behind.
As I started to cry, the Good Samaritans, led by Steve, returned. We shoved all the chickens in one trailer and I put some in the back of my car. We then turned our attention to goats, and it became clear to me that my rescuers were out of their element with my herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats. Luckily, they are small.
The mature does are easy; they walk on leads and loaded up in a jiffy. The weaned babies are tougher; like all teenagers they aren’t interested in being told what to do. If you’ve ever seen a marlin at the end of a fishing line, then you’ll know what their attempts to lead looked like.
But they’re small, so I just started picking up babies and handing them to startled rescuers. There was some screaming (goats can be dramatic) — and some frightened human faces — but soon the babies too were loaded up. Last to go were the bucks, or mature males. I knew all but one of these guys were going to be extremely difficult to deal with, because in addition to their normal standoffish personalities, it’s the middle of rut for them, so the were stinky, worked up and not in the mood to be handled.
Luckily, our scariest buck, the one with the gigantic horns, is also our friendliest; he was caught and loaded up with his friend the donkey immediately. As I watched my remaining bucks stampede around their pen snorting in alarm, I pondered that I might have to leave them. Echoing my thoughts, one of the rescuers said, “We need to go in 10 minutes, tops.”
So I just started tackling them. When they started to struggle on the end of their leads and the rescuers didn’t know what to do I just screamed, “Drag them, they’re small, one minute of dragging is whole lot better than burning to death. “
In the end, we got out all the horses, goats, donkeys, mules and dogs. I got out 10 chickens but couldn’t round up the rest, and the two semi-feral barn cats were nowhere to be found.
We’ve been shacked up at Anna Levenger’s place since Monday, living out of our show trailer, which has a small RV section in front of the area for the horses.
My parents and my son are with relatives in the East Bay, but on Thursday, we confirmed that their house is gone. The aerial photo shows only a pile of ash where their beautiful home once stood.
As if to confirm, a neighbor of theirs, who had foolishly stayed behind but had somehow defended his house with a garden hose, called to tell us that all the houses on the road were gone. But then one last miracle — the guesthouse my parents had just finished building was still intact and likely livable. So while they have lost virtually everything, they aren’t completely homeless.
Our house remains. We’ve stayed evacuated, but have been able to get to our farm for short periods each day, we’ve taken a few things out of the house, mostly photos and artwork, but there came a point where we had to decide to be willing to lose what is left. As of this writing we are still OK, though we can still see fire in three direction around us from our back porch and every day it gets closer.
The effects of living for days in a state of high adrenaline are starting to take their toll. My husband and I find ourselves staring blankly at nothing for minutes at a time. We can’t think of words, “Pass me a … thing, you know, the thing there … you put drinks in … a glass, yes a glass.” It’s an odd sensation for two people who have made their life’s work with words. I cried a lot in the beginning, but now six days into this tragedy, I’ve lost the capacity. I simply can’t anymore, because everyday is more terrible news.
Several families in my son’s class at school have lost their homes. Every few hours I think of a friend or a friend’s family in the danger zone, and find out they too have lost their home or business. Or, I think of something at my parents’ house now gone forever. Their photos. A lifetime of artifacts collected from travel all over the world and irreplaceable. My dad’s guitar collection, including one signed by Eric Clapton and another by all the members of the Beach Boys. His precious golf clubs. Our childhood toys and books saved by Mom all these years for when she had grandchildren. The extensive gardens, including a labyrinth, she had cultivated over the years. Now, nothing but ash and soot.
And just when I thought I’d thought of every sad thing, I remembered my mom’s Christmas room. We adore Christmas in our family, and she has collected ornaments and decorations for over 50 years. She has sets for multiple trees and themes, and a Santa Claus collection. All gone. What will Christmas look like now?
But amidst all the horror and sadness, there has been incredible kindness and humbling grace as well. From the Good Samaritans who swooped into save us, to the caravan from the East Bay who brought hay, grain and bedding to our evacuation site, where my horses, goats and dogs now share space with other evacuees. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on all the first responders, dispatchers and others who continue to battle this monster.
I am bone tired, in mind, body and spirit. More tired than I thought it was possible to be and still function. I watch the horizon. I stare at my phone. I look through social media, every day seeing another friend or acquaintance who has lost everything.
On Thursday I drove down 101, not crying exactly; I can’t do that anymore, but breathing heavily to see the destruction.
The places I attending elementary, middle and high school, save one, are gone. The barn where I first learned to ride, as a tiny child, is gone. The place I had my first legal drink. The restaurant we frequented with my parents, where I’d spent more than one birthday. Burned to dust. And amongst all that sadness, I know we are luckier than many. The landmarks and memories and places of my childhood are gone.
But we are not.
And that is enough.
Heather Bailey is a wife, mother, sister, daughter, horsewoman and reporter.
Originally published on October 16
