This photo is from Sept 2008- You can see where the trees have died since the under growth was burned. This is the ridge behind our house. I have not had a chance to walk over to see the actual burned areas, but when I do, I'll take pictures and post them.
July 2, 2008
Things have settled down, though there is still a raging fire near by, but there is a strike team from So. Cal. at it, up on the ridge behind our house, cutting and burning brush. By the time the fire reaches the top, there will be nothing left to keep it going...
We are personally most grateful to the Elk Volunteer Fire Dept. They were the ones who came up here to Sky Ranch and valiently fought the fire below our house. It took them 6 or 7 days, fighting the fire which was burning on very steep, inaccessable land. The Anderson Valley fire dept was busy with other fires in the area, equally seriously threatening homes in our valley. The Elk fire fighters left jobs and families to fight this fire, called the "Cliff Ridge" fire, which joined up with the Maple Basin Fire. There was a huge stretch of fire all along the back and sides of Sky Ranch, where our house is located.
Bill and Olivia and I were in Redlands (an oasis in the SanBernardino/Riverside area of So. Calif.) helping my sister and her husband build a new kitchen, when Olivia's friend Lily called and told us there were a bunch of fires in Anderson Valley. One was threatening her home, and there was one maybe near ours. We called our neighbor, Lee, who was taking care of our cat and our garden while we were gone and found out that there had been a huge lightning storm the night of June 20. It started more than 150 fires in Mendocino County alone. There was one at each end of our area, and it was not looking good. We also called Rosi and she concurred. So Bill and I left Olivia with Betsy, and drove home a week early to see if there was something we could do to protect our house, or at least take away certain irreplacable things.
As soon as we got over the Grapevine and into the Central Valley, we were in smoke. Napa and Sonoma also had big fires, as well as Monterey and quite a few other counties, and the smoke was blowing all over Calif. We arrived home Tuesday June 24 at about 3:30. It was a 12 hour drive, we left early that morning. We packed up the car and the truck with important papers, photo albums, our computer and various other things. Lee had taken Reikia to a neighbor's house that was out of immediate danger, so we picked her up there, then drove the truck to the tasting room where we left it and we headed out to Rosi and Charlie's to stay the night. We slept pretty well, then went back to our house in the morning. We spent the day moving piles of lumber away from the house. The fire fighters from Elk came over to check out the situation at our house. They told us to pile all our furniture in the center of the rooms, away from the windows. They said that the windows get so hot that the heat can ignite anything near them. The fire was going very slowly, burning only the underbrush, not getting into the canopy, but because of lack of resources they had given up hope of putting it out, and were just going to do their best to save houses. Our neighbor Swami's house was first in line, we were second. They told us what they wanted cleared away, what was a concern to them, what was not, where they would park their trucks, where they would lay their hoses. We decided to cover all of our windows with drywall that we had not yet had time to put up on our walls. First Bill covered each vent in the roof- all 150, in 52 bays- with little strips of drywall, as well as the basement vents, after the firefighters said vents are a common way for fires to get into a house. Elise came up from Cotati (thank you thank you) to help us prepare, and so did Rosi. Their help was invaluable! We stayed at Rosi and Charlies all but one night- one long, sleepless, worrisome night during which I kept asking myself, "Why did we decide to stay here tonight?" Elise took bedding and cushions, and things that could pick up the smoke smell. Rosi took other things that are "heat sensitive". My thought process was "Trust in Allah and tie my camel". It was like I knew it would be ok, but not 100%. I was kind of in a surreal daze, but stayed quite calm, just working to do what I felt was necessary- make it easier to save our house, for Whoever was going to save our house...prayers for no wind from all over the place, thank you very much! The radio reported that there was going to be serious wind on the 2 critical days for our house, but instead, there was no wind, and the Elk Volunteers were able to do a successful back-burn, and contain the fire, and now it is pretty much out. and, I am totally exhausted and cannot possibly finish this now. I put the photos and captions in this am, you can go down and look at them, and I'll finish what I'm saying another day...
It is now Wed,. July 9. The fire to the east of us, 2 or 3 miles as the crow flies from us, is blazing bigger than ever. We sat on our deck Sunday evening and watched helicopters dumping water on it, but it is still huge. They have sent 285 National Guardsmen to help, but it turns out training in fire fighting, at least on very steep terrain, is not part of their traditional training, so they have spent the last 3 days training, and tomorrow morning very early, they are supposed to to come here and fight this fire. I sure hope they can get it out quickly. It has been 105 degrees up here, which makes the situation less favorable than earlier, when we had more accomodating weather. It's not cooling down at night, either- well, it did a little- it cooled down to 83 degrees...So, in order are more prayers for no wind, and for rain...
The sun was bright red in the middle of the day, and you could look at it the smoke was so thick. For some reason, the camera would not pick up the red colour. We took a lot of red sun pictures, but deleted them all but this one because of that.
This is the N-east side- drywall is screwed over the upstairs windows, ridgid insullation is stuffed into the door openings.
This is the s-west side, the side the fire was headed towards. Sara, Justine, Allan and Brent came from Emerald Earth and helped get these pieces of sheetrock up. They also helped protect our pump and backup-generator, and Sara put mud up on some of our bales that still had uncovered straw! Thank you all so much! (Boy, we shoulda had more kids so we'd have help around the homestead, like they did in the old days! ...give birth to the farm hands!)
The back and side of our house with drywall screwed over the windows and ridgid insullation over the french doors.
This looks benign, but there is so much smoke that the ridge on fire cannot be seen. This is the view from our deck. We were so lucky that the smoke was blown away from us until the last few days, so we were able to work out in the yard without breathing foul air. The day after this was taken, however, the smoke was thick around our house as well, and we couldn't go out without a mask- for Bill and I, that meant one of Sebastians bandanas soaked in water.
Rosi and Serena after a day of moving wood and clearing brush. Thank you guys SO much!! We sure do appreciate it!
You can see the silver of the insulatin pushed into the window openings on the inside. We didn't have enough drywall for this side, the insulation is too thick to screw onto the outside of the windows, and these windows are placed at the outside of the walls and don't have cavities to shove them into on the outside. The light quality was really eerie because of the smoke obscuring the sun, but inside it was- still is, they're not down yet- really creepy, because it is totally dark during the day, and it just feels icky. Thurs. July 9- We've taken the covering off some of the windows now, but we're leaving the hardest to reach windows covered until the east fire is totally out.. If a wind comes up, it could ignite again, possibly getting into the canopy. This fire has been like a lava flow... The last 3 days have been exceptionally hot, so we've pretty much stayed indoors, but before that all we did every day was cut underbrush. Now we have alll these flammable piles! We have a neighbor with a chipper, so next week he said we can use it. We'll chip what we've got and spread the chips on what will be the "chicken run". We still will be far from done, however. It's incredably slow work, cutting underbrush, and pruning the trees- but it's looking really nice! It was always something we intended to do after we finished the house... but I can also see that having trails all over the property would also be good to help in the event of fire, and that's another thing we've been putting off until the house was done. I actually love digging trails...so maybe this winter I can work some on that, with a guilt-free conscience. We really want to get a trail down the property to the fire road and creek below. (about 2,000 feet) Of course, it only takes days and days to do... Ah well, at least it's enjoyable! ...One of our latest ideas now to generate income, is to finish the house and then rent out the first floor as a "vacation rental", like a week at a time or something. (We have the kitchen in the basement that we've been using now coming up on 3 years! So we'd live in the basement and the top floor- plans include a separate outside entrance for the top floor, for a fire escape and so Olivia can sneak outside at night without us knowing...) [Don't worry, she will never see this, is totally uninterested in my blog!] ...Stay in a genuine straw bale house run by solar energy in beautiful remote countryside, lots of gorgeous trails for hiking, a waterfall that looks like Hawaii but is freezing(!), only 15 minutes to river swimming, 35 minutes of fabulously beautiful road to the beach, winetasting at "mom and pop" wineries only 20 minutes away...I'm sure that sounds really attractive to people with a fire breathing down our necks!... well, at least next year, with all the underbrush burned away, the fire danger will be minimized...I guess breathing smoke so many days- even though it's certainly not constantly smokey, it's enough to addle my brain...
Anyway, I'd love to hear from any of you who care to write! love, Nancy
ps. No photos of fire. When we did see it, I didn't even think of photographing it! Smoke doesn't photograph so dramatically...ah well...After it's all over, I'll go take photos of the burned areas and put them up here...
