Proceeds to help firefighters who lost homes in fire
Healdsburg resident and past Healdsburg Fire Department volunteer firefighter Tenaya Fleckenstein has put together a photography book, “Remembering the Valley Fire,” to serve as a reminder of the deadly blaze and to help support firefighters who lost their homes in the fire.
“With all the people who have lost homes, especially the firefighters, I wanted to do something to help even a little bit,” Fleckenstein said.
The Valley Fire began on Sept. 12, around 1:24 p.m. and ended up burning 76,067 acres. Fleckenstein took all the photos in the book on the first day of the fire. She arrived at the scene about an hour and a half in and stayed until almost 10 p.m. that night, moving around in Cobb, Anderson Springs and Whispering Pines. Most of the fire photos in the book were taken in Whispering Pines.
“It was a little surreal. It was probably one of the fastest moving fires I’ve ever seen personally,” Fleckenstein said. She watched the firefighters work tirelessly.
“You could tell everybody was extremely stressed out and emotional trying to do everything they could. All the things that usually work weren’t always working,” she said.
Healdsburg Fire Engineer John Sullivan fought the Valley Fire on the first day. A photograph of him also appears in the book. He said that the weather conditions made the Valley Fire unlike other fires he’s fought. “The wind made it a lot more challenging. We pulled up on a spot fire that we normally could have picked up on pretty quickly but the wind pushed it down the valley and it just ran from us,” Sullivan said.
Fleckenstein knew many of the people dispatched to the fire, including Sullivan. She was a volunteer firefighter in Healdsburg for nine years and her husband is a Healdsburg volunteer firefighter and employed by Cal Fire.
Fleckenstein began putting the book together about a week after she photographed the fire, with the goal of remembering the losses caused by the fire and supporting firefighters who lost their homes while battling the flames.
Sullivan said the book is a useful source of information and a reminder that natural disasters like the Valley Fire can happen in any area. “We all need to know what happens in our own area so we can keep track of our family, friends and neighbors,” he added.
Sullivan said that the more information people have on the fire, the more they can help and heal in the aftermath.
Fleckenstein completed the book in around four days and had it published at the tail end of the fire.
Proceeds from “Remembering the Valley Fire” pay off publication costs, and the rest, roughly $14 per book, goes to the Forestry Crab Feed FF Relief Fund for firefighters who lost homes in the Valley Fire.
So far, Fleckenstein has raised $700 for the firefighters who lost their homes. She does not make a profit off of sales.
To purchase Fleckenstein’s book for $49.99, visit www.tenayaf
photography.com.
