Silence, Before the Storm
When a firestorm suddenly thunders into your community, driven by massive winds, you have minutes to grab what's dear to you, then join thousands of others in a chaotic exodus.
Author’s note: These are excerpts from FIRESTORM - A Personal Narrative From The Epicenter of the 2017 Sonoma County Tubbs Firestorm.
California was in the grip of a five-year drought when we bought our home in the foothills of the Mayacamas Mountains north of Santa Rosa in 2014. My family had been in Northern California since 1849 and saw droughts come and go over the decades. We were a little skeptical to buy hill country land in the face of a drought, but historic experience showed that patterns break, the rains come back in enormous patterns and the land recovers.
California has always been a place of extreme swings, in weather, economy and politics.The year after we bought our home a series of devastating wild fires broke out across Lake County to the northeast. I sat on the high Sonoma ridges and watched the firestorm thunderheads form over the Valley Fire as it swept across Lake County, driving thousands from their homes. The cycles of change were getting more extreme. It was sobering and chilling, but at a distance it gave me some false sense of security farther west in SonomaCounty.
We thought the drought was broken during the winter of 2016, when huge atmospheric rivers rolled in from the Southern Pacific Ocean and unleashed unprecedented volumes of rainfall. Lakes and reservoirs reached maximum capacity. Rainfall records for the region were shattered, reconfirming the notion that California has big swings.
The seasonal creeks on our land were running full force with white water cascades and waterfalls. We thought it had broken the back of the drought with a sense of great relief. But the summer of 2017 returned with a vengeance. It was hot. Very hot. Temperatures on our property reached 115 degrees in September. But we still felt that the seasonal patterns had changed and hoped that one more winter would set the record straight.
I will forever remember the evening of October 8th, and the winds that came in the night. I’d just returned from a weeklong trip to the East, glad to be home. I was raking up oak leaves outside the front gate of our property that warm Sunday afternoon. The air was very still.
A couple drove up in an SUV to the neighbor’s gate. The neighbor’s home was for sale. A man and woman got out of the car and walked around with a small dog. They came over to talk with me and ask about the area. They were from the East Bay, looking for a home in Sonoma County. I said it was really a very quiet place and with great neighbors along the road. People look out for each other here, I said. And that the location was ideal, so close to Santa Rosa, the vineyards, the ocean and San Francisco, but not too far in the hills. We chatted in that warm October evening with no idea that it was all about to explode in a few hours.
The Storm
It was massive and already on its way. But we didn’t know yet. We were in the death zone. The initial frontline of impact Sunday night. I was lying awake reading ‘Alone On the Wall,’ bivouacked in the world of a solo free climber of vertical rock who defied imagination. That’s when the scent of smoke wafted through the open window. I noticed it, but kept reading. It was a breezy, balmy, inland California valley evening with no clouds and a star-studded sky. We felt safe, in the twilight. Our house, anchored into bedrock. More than a quarter century standing watch over the Russian River Valley below. We were in the foothills of the Mayacamas Mountains.
Earlier that evening, my wife and I had watched the sunset turn tangerine against a cobalt blue sky. But twilight fell eerie as the last rays slipped away. All of the sounds stopped. The earth paused, like a pressure drop, into silence. No wind. No crickets. No birds. No cars. No dog barks. No coyote howls. No frogs. No voices. No train whistles. No chainsaws. No fox cries. No hawks. It was dead silent. Even the ambient sounds of Highway 101 and Mark West Road, gone. We’d never heard it so quiet before.
“Might be earthquake weather?” we joked nervously, letting it go at that, listening to the absolute silence.
Then our neighbor opened and shut a door. You could hear the door knob turn. A latch release and then the door’s dry hinges squeaked. Slowly opening, from a hundred yards away, through the trees. Then we heard a plane high overhead in the distance. The wind began to stir. Crickets started up. Sounds were coming back. And with the sounds, winds started to build. We sat under the emerging stars, unaware that something was beginning to go wrong.
But there would only be silence during those unsuspecting hours.
The storm gathered in waves, rolling into the forests, fanning out across the brown tinder grasslands to the east. Stealing across dry creek beds, illuminating the night, its roar building, gathering its energy in the hill country while thousands slept to the west, unaware.
As I lay reading at 11:30pm the smoke intensity increased. Now it had my attention. I put the book down. It would never be picked up again. Wind gusts were getting stronger, starting to rattle deck furniture and sway oak and redwood trees. I got up and went to the veranda, looked down to the valley. It was warm. Lights twinkled below out west along River Road. Otherwise, it was pitch black as far as I could see. But the smoke was there and it was thickening. This smoke seemed different. Not the smoke of the Valley Fire that drifted down from Lake County two years before, a light odor, high overhead. Nor the smoke of the Helena Fire that came south from the Trinity Alps, diluted in the winds by miles of travel. This smoke was dense and fresh. Primal, a deeper body to its scent. Alarming in complexity. An ode to wine country.
My wife and I went outside and walked the property with flashlights. Nothing. The dogs were alert, but stayed close. I walked down to the road and could see three neighboring homes. Again ... nothing. But the veil of smoke was creeping everywhere. So I called 911. First time in my life.
Dispatcher said they were getting hundreds of calls about smoke and fire. From all over the region. “Clear the line,” she said, “Watch the hills, look for orange glows. You are on your own.”
I saw no signs of fire in the valley below. But I felt the beat of a warning drum, a growing sense of alarm. I rushed to the car, drove fast down the winding foothill road to Reibli Valley, over to Mark West, gunned it up the Mayacamas, east toward Calistoga On Porter Creek Road. Driving into higher country, just above our home, hitting 70 in a 45 zone. I saw people wandering out of their homes, looking up into the dark sky. Bewildered. Not comprehending what was coming in the night. I had my car roof cracked open, smoke was getting stronger. I drove fast in the narrow turns
I passed Mark West Lodge, Franz Valley, Safari West, moving toward the Petrified Forest. Hit a turn hard. A sudden chill. Disbelief at the wheel. The scale of it all, before me. An Inferno. Some crimson hell as far as I could see to the north. Plumes of fire billowed and rose, smoke spiraled into the night, blotting out stars, making a blood moon above. Flames 80 to 100 feet tall.
I stopped the car. Stepped outside. Felt the hit from Diablo Winds, enormous gusts, carrying destruction in their midst. Fire balls were lifting off from tree tops. An otherworldly roar. The forest disappearing, consumed in the jaws of an inferno, thundering its way forward. The mountainside ablaze. It was Insane to contemplate. The display dwarfed me, left me dazed. Cars and people were beginning to flee from Schlictman Road and Porter Creek.
Tiny headlights, illuminating a pathway, a flight to safety against a wall of fire. I froze, overwhelmed, trying to contemplate winds of hysteria, driving flames. Should have been Banshee screams. Enormous. Wild. Nature coming in a rage. Laying waste and reclaim.
My chest sinks. A certain realization that nothing would stop this fire’s march west. Now, I raced to get back to our place. Only a mile or so as the crow flies, but 10 miles on canyon roads. Tires howling into the curves. My mind fogged. Thinking, this can’t be happening. Denial setting in. I felt puny, insignificant in the face of the beast. My mind ripping every blade of destiny, leaving me bewildered under the stars. A looming uncertainty.
I glanced in the mirror. Coming up from behind me was a CDF fire truck closing in at a crazy frenzy pace. Flashing lights to clear the path. I pulled over and let them pass. Then five sheriff’s trucks in the eastbound lane, lights blazing, but no sirens, only silence in their wake.
Why weren’t their sirens blaring??
Got home at midnight, said we may have to leave our place. Thought we had an hour, maybe two. Couldn’t have been more wrong. My phone lit up, with a text at 12:15am from RJ, in the neighboring vineyard.
“We all have to run now!!” he posted.
Fire was over the ridge above where he and Crystal stood with their farm manager who had a wife and three kids. They were piling the dogs and kids in the cars. Told their guests to run for their lives. There’s no time to waste. It was coming.
Shell shocked, I couldn’t comprehend how fire had moved so fast. We wrenched open car doors. Both dogs were scared. We put them in the cars first. Started grabbing a few heirlooms, paintings, photos, a guitar, hard discs, computers, running back and forth, an old clock … fifteen minutes ... to preserve a life time.
Got a text from our neighbors Donna and Rod over in their new home in Fountain Grove, said “Come stay with us. We hear fires are at your door.”
Five minutes later they text back, said, “Now we’re evacuating too!!”
We called our other neighbors. Everybody, in pandemonium. Horns were blaring as RJ and his people descended from the vineyard above, texting “You’ve got to make your run! Get out now!”
The smoke was all around. We took one last look at the home. I even went back and locked the front door, a last grasp at hope, in the final seconds. Then we launched down the road, the steel gate rolled open. We passed through and then it closed, like a door slamming. No going back from here.
Met another sheriff’s truck racing up Crystal Drive, lights flashing, no siren. Surreal silence. It was the beginning of another time.
And to think I locked the door.
Author’s note: Excerpts from FIRESTORM - A Personal Narrative From The Epicenter of the 2017 Sonoma County Tubbs Firestorm.
https://moonstonepublishing.com/home/books/firestorm/