“I have a project for us.” It was my mom calling from Shaver. My husband, Tim, and I were getting ready to load our dogs into the car and head up to my parents’ house to spend Labor Day weekend like we do almost every year. This year it was different. Covid 19 had closed down almost everything in 2020 so we were looking forward to being able to roam around in the mountains. “The Elderberry bush down the road is full of ripe berries so I want to make Elderberry Jelly,” she said. “Great!” I replied, thinking that sounded like fun. We packed up the canning supplies and headed up the hill Friday after work.
Our dogs always start getting antsy once we’ve passed Cressman’s. They know we are getting close. My parents, Cissy and Peter Van Vleet, live in Ridgetop, which is just beyond Shaver Ranch. It is the first development my dad did in Shaver and is right next to the property his grandparents used to take him to as a kid. Finally, we pulled into their driveway and unloaded the car. After dinner we grabbed our bags and headed up the road to pick our berries.
Later that evening while we were watching TV I noticed a text from my sister, Keri, who lives in Texas asking if I had heard about a fire in the area. I told her that I hadn’t. She had heard something about a fire in the Big Creek area from a Facebook app and noticed the same post plus others from people who have cabins in that area. I told my parents, and we checked the local news feeds but didn’t see anything about a fire.
The next morning we got up early to start our project. My dad said he had seen a report on the fire but at this point it was small and the fire crews would probably be able to contain it. Saturday went on. We went about washing our berries and picking them off of the stems. We kept hearing reports about the growing Creek Fire. It was spreading but still nowhere near us. My parents’ house is on top of a ridge and we could see smoke. Dad pointed to the top of the next ridge and said he would be worried if he saw the fire there. Still no worries.
As the day progressed we kept hearing evacuation notices, first Big Creek then the town of Shaver Lake. When they issued the notice to evacuate everything north of Littlefield Road I started getting nervous. Ridgetop is just south of Littlefield Road. My husband and I started gently suggesting that it might be a good idea to pack up a few things and head down the hill to our house for the night. By late afternoon we had talked them into it. My husband grabbed some family photos from the walls, we took some papers from my dad’s office and they packed a day’s worth of clothes just in case. We went down the hill with the elderberries.
I am glad we came down then. My parents got their official evacuation notice on their cell phones around 2am Sunday morning. We were all safe in Fresno. We continued our jelly making project in my kitchen all the while getting updates on the fire. Reports were all over the place ……the number of structures lost, where the fire was spreading, percent containment, etc. As the day went on, especially when we saw images of Cressman’s and then Shaver Ranch burning on the news, we thought their house was probably gone too. We started to mourn the things we didn’t bring down with us. By the end of the day we had 12 jars of Elderberry Jelly and still a lot of uncertainty.
It wasn’t until a few days later that my dad got a text from a relative on the Volunteer Fire Department showing a picture of our house still there with a big four-point Buck standing on our walkway. What a relief that was. Our family was lucky but sadly many of our friends were not.
It was almost six weeks before my parents were allowed to return home. They spent the time going between our house and my sister’s house in Texas. They still had a house in Shaver but no power or drinkable water.
I remember the first time we drove up to their house after the fire. The forest looked like a science fiction movie. I had spent a good portion of my life in the Shaver Lake area , raking pine needles, swimming in Dinkey Creek, boating, snow skiing and just playing games and hanging out at the old cabin. It felt like my backyard had burned up. I’m sure others felt the same way.
I can only imagine the beauty of the Sierra forest as I remember it. The big trees will not be there again in my lifetime. I came across this Native American proverb,
“We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” Our Mountain Strong community is replanting the forest for our children. We need to continue to work together on forest conservation to make sure future generations will have a beautiful backyard to play in.
My name is Tori Lysdahl-Goss. I was raised in Shaver Lake and graduated from both Big Creek Elementary and Sierra High School. After many years away pursuing my career as a professional singer and actress, in 2013, my husband, David Goss, and I returned to Shaver, becoming full-time residents of Ockenden Ranch. David is a tax attorney and CPA practicing in the Fresno area. Growing up here, my family and I never really worried much about a devastating wildfire due, in large part, to the expert management of our forests by professional foresters such as John Mount. However, by 2015, and after years of severe restrictions on logging, historic drought and millions of dead and dying trees due to the unprecedented Bark Beetle infestation, we had to face the fact we were living in a tinder box just waiting for the strike of a match. Given this existential threat, David decided in 2016 to join the Shaver Lake Volunteer Fire Department (“SLVFD”) in order to acquire the firefighting knowledge and skills needed to successfully defend our home and community from a catastrophic fire which, in our view, wasn’t a matter of if, but when. So, over the next 4 years, David and I, along with our closest neighbor, Pat Caprioli (a retired City of Bakersfield Fire Department Captain with 35 years of firefighting experience), began preparing to defend our homes from the inevitable.
Preparing For The Worst Case Scenario
With the training and experience David was gaining as a SLVFD firefighter, he and Pat began to regularly discuss and strategize on how best to defend our homes and neighborhood. Initially, Pat was able acquire several hundred feet of surplus fire hose, nozzles and connectors from the Bakersfield Fire Department. David and I purchased Class A foam and applicators (the same type used by fire departments to suppress wood fires) to prevent the falling embers of an approaching wildfire from igniting “spot fires” on our decks and surrounding trees. We then strategically deployed three foam applicators (each attached to 300 feet of hose) around our house. In addition, as highly recommended by CAL FIRE for creating a “defensible space,” we limbed-up (cut and removed the lower branches known as “ladder fuel” from the bottom 10 to 12 feet of a tree) all the trees within a couple of hundred feet of our homes. This tactic ultimately gave us a big advantage during the Creek Fire by denying numerous spot fires the ladder fuel needed to get far enough up our trees to fully ignite them. Fire preparation didn’t end there. David sought and received expert tree falling instruction and coaching from local residents Jeff Young and Doug Koerper. They taught him how to safely drop, limb and buck almost all of the standing dead trees within 200+ yards of our homes. Getting those drought and Bark Beetle victims on the ground was extremely important because, as David had learned from fighting several small wildland fires in the Shaver Lake area, if dead trees are on the ground when they’re ignited by wildfire embers (sometimes called “firebrands”), they can often be successfully extinguished, or at least managed, with the application of water or foam from a fire hose. However, if those embers ignite a 100-200 foot tall standing dead/dying tree, it’s almost impossible to extinguish the resulting explosive fire (called “torching”) in the top of the tree, because wildland firefighting engines generally cannot pump water much higher than about 60 to 70 feet, thus leaving the top 50 to 100 feet to torch and produce enough radiant heat to then ignite other nearby trees, even if they’re green and healthy.
Worst Case Scenario Realized
Sadly, on the evening of September 4, 2020, our worst fears were realized. The Creek Fire erupted at Camp Sierra, growing from a 2-5 acre burn to a raging, out of control inferno within hours. The fire rapidly expanded over the Labor Day weekend and, by Sunday, September 6th, as it threatened Shaver Lake’s West Village, David and his fellow Company 60 SLVFD firefighters were called on to join CAL FIRE and US Forest Service crews in defense of several homes along Limber Lane. By then, Shaver Lake was under a mandatory evacuation order and, to my knowledge, I was the only civilian resident of Ockenden who’d refused to comply with the evacuation order, choosing instead to stay and help David and Pat defend our homes and, to the extent possible, our community. By 8:00 PM that evening, while David was battling the blaze in the West Village, I could see from our top floor the Creek Fire rushing down Stevenson Mountain and appearing to be heading towards Ockenden Ranch. I called David to alert him to the gut-wrenching sight I was witnessing. We both knew he couldn’t leave his post in the West Village, so he suggested that, to prevent wind driven embers from starting spot fires on the hillside below our home (which sits about 300 feet above Highway 168), I should start wetting down everything our hoses could reach. I immediately began doing that, continuing alone in the dark for the next 5 hours until about 1:00AM, when David finally arrived home after Company 60 was released from the West Village. Although exhausted, the imminent threat of fire was in the forefront of our minds and resulted in a sleepless night while we constantly scanned the surrounding dark wildland for any signs of approaching flames.
We’ve Got Fire
Fortunately, the fire spared us that night. However, by the next morning, Labor Day, September 7th, we could see and smell the smoke as it steadily advanced uphill from the Dogwood area below us. Given that, we worked feverishly to complete our final preparations. While Pat and David fine-tuned their placement of the approximately 500 feet of fire hose they had deployed around all sides of our home, I served as lookout, continuously hiking and surveilling the nearby landscape for any signs of fire. Suddenly, at about 1:30 PM, I caught the heartbreaking and knee-weakening sight of numerous spot fires popping up on our side of the highway. I yelled, “We’ve got fire!” to David and Pat, causing them to immediately shift from adjusting to activating the fire hoses. As the fire picked up momentum and marched towards us, bushes and trees instantaneously exploded into flames like Roman candles. It was about that time the very sobering realization hit me that we were likely going to be fighting this fire on our own because, from all indications, we were the only ones who knew that the Creek Fire had arrived in Ockenden Ranch. That is until, while David was out at the road charging (opening) the hydrant, a CAL FIRE Battalion Chief happened to drive by on patrol and asked him what he was doing and why on earth was he still here?!? David rapid-fire explained that the three of us had been preparing for several years to defend our homes against a fire like this and that we were currently doing exactly that because the fire had only moments earlier crossed Hwy 168 below us. Upon learning that the fire had jumped the highway (he’d been patrolling too far away to see this breach), he said he didn’t have any resources immediately available, but he’d try to secure some for us ASAP. We continued fighting the fire as it raced towards our home, eventually burning within 20 feet of our lower back deck at its closest point. Then, after about 20 minutes, as we desperately struggled to keep the fire at bay, to our utter amazement and eternal gratitude, the Battalion Chief returned with a CAL FIRE Strike Team, consisting of three engines, their crews and two bulldozers. The dozers went to work cutting a 50-60 foot wide arc-shaped fire break between our house and the flames. While Pat and the CAL FIRE crews fought the fire from the ground, David and I sprayed foam on our decks, windows and siding facing the fire, and on all of the trees within 20 to 30 feet of our structure. Each time a tree below us torched, exploding violently into 150+ foot flames, there would be a subsequent shower of burning embers and concussive blast of heat which would almost knock us off our feet. The firestorm’s deafening roar was akin to that of a jet engine, while it’s blistering heat burned like a blast furnace. Having no regulation fire gear myself, several times my hair and clothing ignited from the searing wind-driven firebrands, causing me at one point to scream at David to “FOAM ME!” He quickly did and it worked! Not only did it immediately smother the burning embers on me but, although there were thousands of them constantly raining down on everything around us, the foam prevented them from causing any damage.
Threat Contained – Vigilance Continues
Finally, after about six hours of battling the blaze with CAL FIRE, the threat to our immediate area was considered contained, though our burn scar and many dangerous “smoker holes” (where tree roots can burn for months underground) continued to smolder, making the air toxic and nearly unbreathable for weeks afterwards. CAL FIRE remained on Cold Springs Lane near our home for the next few days and nights in case the fire returned or flared up, some nights sleeping in their engines or on camping cots that Pat loaned them. Their amazing heroism was first proven to us by their very timely “HERE COMES THE CAVALRY!” response and, then again, by their vigilant patrolling of Ockenden Ranch for the next week or so. However, even though CAL FIRE remained close by, Pat and David took alternating two-hour shifts throughout each night, looking for any new threats to our homes or the rest of Ockenden Ranch. And, each night, I periodically scanned the wildland with binoculars for any sign of fire re-emergence. Adding to our serious concerns, was the fact that the fire cut off power on Labor Day evening to the pumps supplying water to Ockenden. We will be forever grateful to our good friend and neighbor, Doug Koerper, for loaning us his water buffalo (a large, portable water tank and pump), so we could extinguish any random flare-ups occurring near our property until water was restored.
Creek Fire Aftermath
Because David and I were among the very few who hadn’t evacuated, many of our neighbors, friends and acquaintances with cabins in the area contacted us for Creek Fire updates. I’d awaken every morning to numerous texts, emails and phone messages from panicky, distraught homeowners begging to know the status of their properties. One day, after checking on several Ockenden homes as requested, I hiked down our charred and still-smoking hillside to get a broader perspective of the devastation from the highway. While I was taking some photos, a Clovis PD cruiser passed by (on looter patrol), suddenly making a U-turn and roaring back to me, screeching to a stop. As both officers jumped out, unsnapping their holsters, they demanded, “What are you doing here?!?” I calmly explained why I was surveying the area after having stayed to help fight the fire. Stifling a laugh, the senior officer said, “No, you didn’t stay. EVERYONE evacuated! So, I’ll ask you again, what are you doing here?” As I again recounted the facts, the senior officer interrupted with, “What color is the paper tacked to the front of your house?” I told him it was red. He curtly insisted that that was impossible because red was only for residents who’d refused evacuation and clearly, EVERYONE was gone! Eventually, after running my driver’s license on their computer, they determined I was indeed a legitimate Ockenden resident but, nonetheless, they left me with this rather grim admonition; “Okay, you’re free to go home, but if we catch you ONE FOOT off your property again, you’re going to be arrested.” With that, I lost no time hiking up our steep hillside, thinking our encounter was over. Well, that is until I heard their patrol car skid to a stop in my driveway while I was unlocking the front door. Their eyes scanned our scorched hilltop, the sight of Doug’s massive water buffalo in our driveway and the numerous fire hoses criss-crossing our property, with their gazes eventually landing upon the bright RED “REFUSAL” evacuation notice stapled to our front fence post. There was an awkward moment of silence, then the younger officer suddenly blurted, “Oh my Gosh! I just realized you’re the people I saw on Channel 30 news a couple of nights ago! You really DIDN’T evacuate! You guys actually helped save your whole neighborhood! You’re HEROES!!!” I responded with, “Well thanks, but we just did what we felt we had to do.” Then, after noticing a disapproving glare from his superior officer, he briskly added, “But still, if we catch you off your property again, you’re going to jail. We clear?” I simply smiled and replied, “Crystal.”
Don’t Try This At Home
In closing, while we are immensely grateful that our preparation and CAL FIRE’s assistance helped us spare our homes and those of others in Ockenden Ranch from the Creek Fire, David and Pat both stress that NON-FIREFIGHTERS should NOT refuse to evacuate in favor of staying to personally defend their home against a massive wildland fire. Instead, they should COMPLY WITH ALL EVACUATION ORDERS!
It was Friday afternoon and we had heard about a fire, but had no concern as it seemed to us that it would be put out well before it reached Cressman Road, after all it was pretty far away, nothing to be too concerned about. By Saturday night my husband and I would take turns sleeping while the other stayed awake, checking for updates and assessing the increasing smell of smoke that we were experiencing.
On Sunday morning as I opened my front door, I could not see my parent’s house through the smoke. This house was so close to mine that I could usually stand at my front door and talk to my parents as they were standing at their front door.
My husband’s older kids were visiting for the weekend so we got them calmed, packed and on the road assuring them that everything would be ok and to head back to the coast. Then we began packing kids, dogs, helping my parents to also pack up, we got a very few things from the house and caravanned out in 3 cars between us.
In the first hotel that we evacuated to, every time someone got on the elevator we could smell smoke from all of the clothes and hair that were soaked in smoke from the many of us who had fled down from the mountain.
My good friend from the coast came to pick up our 8 and 12 year old sons to get them away from the chaos as we started figured out what was going on. Just as she arrived at the hotel we received a picture of the house. I could not process what I was seeing because our home and everything we had was reduced to a very small pile of ash, it didn’t make sense to me. I was trying to picture how this picture could be our house. I tried to compose myself so that the kids wouldn’t know yet, we wanted them to go with their friends to have a good time and a little distraction. We kissed them, said good bye and then I went and knocked on my parent’s hotel room door to let them know that everything was gone, everything. My mom’s confusion and shock were also almost too much and I definitely felt that I could not help her at all, I was a little stunned myself. I wanted to tell her that everything would be ok but the place that she and my dad had poured everything into so that they could retire there, after raising 17 kids and giving their lives to others – this place meant to be their peace for the remainder of their lives … it was gone, all of it. We got through that conversation and the moment of shock and then it was straight to the business of sorting things out, first of all, where were we going next when we had to leave this hotel…
And so began the journey to rebuild, restore and redeem. We would move 9 times before we got back to our property. During that time and since we have never felt closer to neighbors, had more faith restored in human kindness or truly grasped the value of relationships and people as opposed to “things”.
I was reflecting recently and this is what came to my mind:
Goat racing, scratching the pigs with sticks through the fence, feeding the chickens, walking down the dirt road with my mom who said “If I could give you a pill that would keep you this age forever, would you take it?” These are some of things that I remember growing up. It was warm, safe, comforting and beautiful.
I made a choice, I married a man who was unwilling or unable to see me, partner with me, or be kind to me. So when I walked out of that I was amazed to find that through the pain, God brought restoration and something better than I could have imagined. And now I am surrounded with boys, young men, a husband who adores, loves and takes care of me.
Alcohol – fun, exciting, empowering, boring, tiring, defeating, destruction … walking through the darkest days, the ugliest of myself and then out of that into light – again imagine my surprise that through pain God birthed growth, insight, responsibility, humility, new life, a better life.
Losing a pregnancy that I had so desperately wanted – devastation and depression. Again, here comes renewal, rebirth, and new life. By surrendering to the pain, being open to the future, trusting … I found more of myself – my true self- the strong, confident, generous person that was hiding behind self-pity, shame and anger.
A few life experiences that prepared me for the Creek Fire and what total devastation that was. Pack the car, the kids, the dogs, the parents while coughing through thick smoke and hope that “it won’t make it this far, right?” Within two days we were not only told that everything was gone, everything – but sent a picture of a small pile of ash which was what was left of not only all of our “stuff” but our comfort, safety, warmth, place of memory making.
I can tell you with honesty that at this point my inclination was that, once again, there must be something better on the other side. But walking through the valley – the fear – the pain – the loss – the explaining to our kids, little hearts and faces with no control of what was going on, that was not easy.
But here I am again on the other side of it. I’m transported back to walking that dirt road with my mom. It’s warm, safe, comforting and beautiful. Our landscape has changed, our dwelling is different but not worse, not lost, just different. The friendships gained and built upon, the understanding of what is truly important, the pulling together of community, the character building in my own kids, the witnessing of new growth and new life coming up from the earth on a canvas of black and mirroring something similar within my heart … I can’t think of a better picture of “beauty from ashes” and when you boil it all down, strip away all of the layers of emotions, planning, logistics that come with walking through a chaotic and devastating thing such as this wildfire – this is what I get… this is what I see “beauty from ashes” and I feel gratitude.
We had long yearned to have our own slice of heaven in the Sierras. A place where we could create a homestead, raise our two kids, and enjoy our lives under the canopies of the large sugar pines, firs, and cedars. We searched for many years until we found our place in 2007. Located on Pine Ridge near Cressman Road, it had the space and rural atmosphere we were seeking as well as comradery of the neighbors of a wonderful community. The property was unestablished, without buildings, water, or electricity. There was a thick forest of trees, not far from highway 168, very private, and perfect.
We spent most weekends visiting the property and working on it to clear brush, establish a well, electricity, septic, and plan every detail of our dream home. We had a five-year plan to begin construction of our “forever” home. After what seemed like hundreds of revisions to draft sketches, we finally settled on our perfect design. Not too big and not too small. A log home with a walkout basement/garage.
In 2011, we added two more children to our family and broke ground on the house structure itself. The foundation and walk out basement/garage went up quickly and there was a long delay of little progress until November of 2012 when the logs for the house finally arrived.
That was when the community fun really began for us. Many neighbors and friends arrived to help erect the log home. Big tools, a junky old crane, and hard work by everyone that came by were typical days to come. The process of stacking the logs went on for a few months because the snow came in shortly after the log arrival. It took nearly as much time shoveling snow as it did to fit all the logs in place. For the next couple of years of weekend construction, it was common for friends or neighbors to show up just to lend a hand. We will forever be grateful to them for that. It really showed us how special and wonderful this tight knit community is.
The home was completed in 2014, and we moved in that June. We added another child in 2015 and I joined the Pine Ridge Volunteer Fire Department in 2016. Fire seasons were becoming more and more intense. We could only hope that we would be ready for it when it did. The extended drought that followed had opened a path for the bark beetles to overwhelm the already weakened trees. We lost over 300 trees on our small acreage and it thinned our forest to an extreme. Most of the felled trees were over 100 years old. I found use in the dead trees after purchasing a small sawmill and turning the logs into large timber posts and beams. I had a vision of building a grand timber framed barn. That was going to be the next large project, but the Creek Fire in 2020 reduced the hundreds of milled timbers to ash along with everything else, including our beautiful home and forest.
On the evening of Friday, September 4th, 2020, my wife came home from Fresno and told me there was a fire reported near the community of Big Creek. That night we learned that the fire was out of control and heading toward that community. People were evacuating. On Saturday, I assisted some of our personnel from the PRVFD to ensure our equipment was ready if needed. A pre-evacuation notice was issued for our community and an evacuation notice for the communities between us and Shaver. The PRVFD was on standby awaiting the call to join the efforts. We watched the massive plume of smoke off in the distance, about 11 miles by line of sight, making its own weather. The wind was picking up and it seemed like the monster storm was drawing in all the air from the valley to feed it.
My family packed up their most important things and went down to stay with extended family in Hanford, which allowed me to focus efforts on the community and certain work to come with the fire department. At this point, I was still certain there was no way the fire would get to us, but even if it did our place would be fine. It was built extremely fire conscious and had massive clearings in all directions.
Early Sunday morning the evacuation notice came to the Cressman community. The smoke was extremely thick. Several of us from PRVFD assisted our community members with evacuation. I spent a good part of the day ensuring our gear and trucks were all ready to go. Later that evening when it got dark, I could clearly see the large orange glow from the top of our property and could only imagine what was going on in the communities up hill. The wall of fire was only a couple of miles away at that point. I had a large four-wheel drive federal fire engine, E268, in my driveway ready to go. Eventually, I too needed to evacuate, but before I left, I went to each of my immediate neighbors’ houses, double checked how fire safe they left things, and headed out myself. I ran into law enforcement on the way out. The officer told me there was only one home that was left to evacuate and they weren’t leaving. I guess they eventually did.
Early Tuesday morning, information sources showed the fire had made its way through our neighborhood. I entered the zone to see for myself and to provide any assistance where I could. I saw no other tire tracks through the ash so I suspected I may have been the first to enter our neighborhood. It was extremely smokey, I couldn’t see more than twenty feet, very much a warzone. The road was littered with rocks, burning trees, and downed power lines so I had to park and make my way in on foot. I found nothing but devastation and nearly every structure I came upon had been diminished to ashes, including our own home. I met up with our fire chief, who had been working on the fire for several days by this point. He was exhausted and had also just learned he had lost his home. We drove up to the station in Shaver and it was very hard for us to make those phone calls to let our family, friends, and neighbors know the status of their homes. Over the next several days, I returned to help ensure the active fire that remained in the area did not overtake the few remaining homes on Glenwood. Others with the PRVFD stayed on for several weeks to ensure the fire in the community was controlled.
This unfortunate event brought the community together in such an amazing way. The charity and support from our extended community all the way through the Central Valley is something I couldn’t have ever imagined. Now, over a year later, it is great to see some new homes in construction. We plan to rebuild, but ours will take some time.
Jem Bluestein | Auberry- Sugarloaf Road, Musick Creek
9-4-21
Oral Interview with CSRF Volunteer Lisa Monteiro
My name is Jem Bluestein and I live down in beautiful downtown Academy right off Highway 168. Our music and arts community owns 100 acres out on Sugarloaf and 134 acres on Musick Creek below Dogwood Mountain subdivision. The day the creek fire blew everybody said, “Oh don’t worry about it, it’s not going to get that far and it would take days, even if it did.”
That afternoon my daughter Masha said, “We have got to get up there to the Sugarloaf property.” We got up there to Sweet’s Mill and when we looked out there was a mushroom cloud over Big Creek. It was about dinnertime, we didn’t stop to eat, we just got to work, loading up what we had to and helping the people there that we needed to. It was dark when we drove over to Alder Springs Road to take a quick look. We saw the fire there coming around Musick Mountain, and below Sugarloaf. There were some other people there including some fire personnel, and we were all basically watching it and shitting bricks. Now at that point I’m thinking, “I know where this is gonna go.” You could see it coming across above Big Creek to Shaver, and it was coming around below towards Jose Basin, and we’re right in the path of both of those.
When’s the best time to stop a forest fire? 20 years before it starts. Well the Sugarloaf property got burned over a couple of times in recent years and we’ve done a lot of fuel reduction work there so we did not lose everything in the Creek Fire. And, I mean we’re watching the heat maps, you know, the fire maps for weeks. We’re watching the fire blow over it this way that way and the other way, at least three times—but it didn’t consume it because we had done our homework over 50 years.
The Musick Creek place, we had been on a crash program for 25 years. Since we bought that place we’ve gotten federal and state grant support for fuel reduction and worked our asses off. We realized that those 134 acres are an absolute choke point for the fire that we knew was coming soon, up from Jose Basin, since all the public lands and private land surrounding us for miles in every direction was just an inferno waiting to happen. We turned our land in the bottom of Musick Creek into an effective fuel break to stop the fire when it comes. And it worked. When we saw that fire coming around that night, we were just saying, “Okay, we did what we could.” This is where the pedal hits the metal. There was nothing we could do at that point except go back and rescue some more people and some more equipment and belongings off the mountain for the next week. Then for the next couple of months we had a barn load and a house load of refugees, down in Academy. There was even one night where my daughter had us cutting fireline at a home in Academy because it was that iffy, the direction and speed of that Creek Fire.
Later we went back and we could see right where the fire stopped at the Sweet’s Mill, Sugarloaf place. It was right where my wife had cut a little line by hand. We had a road above it, we had thinned some of the forest above that and the fire came through both of those. They slowed it down, but it hit her hand-cut line and it stopped.
As for Musick Creek, the lower half of our property got vaporized in the space of one breath when that monster came up from Jose Basin. But, as it did that, we starved that sucker and we did something that did not happen anywhere else on this fire– we stopped that fire dead in full flaming rage right where it hit our steeper property, right in the creek bed of Musick Creek. At that point the fire would have gone ballistic up the steep canyon and right through Shaver Lake and clear past Dinkey Creek, like it did from Big Creek and Stevenson clear up to Mammoth and Kaiser, like it did to Cressman around to Blue Canyon etc. The aerial footage that shows where we stopped that fire, and even the spot fires that went ahead of the big fire. It put itself out in our clean forest, and we saved many neighbors. There’s a fan of green that spreads out from our place in that creek bed up into the parts of Dogwood Mountain that didn’t burn, up to the parts of Stevenson Mountain that didn’t burn and right on up into Shaver.
So that’s my little story. The only other thing, the Seedlings of Hope program, has given us a lot of hope, we have planted a lot of trees along our lower creek property. They’re growing like crazy already. Anybody who’s interested in experiencing or volunteering or seeing what we have done, we want to show others. It’s not about accolades, I know a lot of people saved Shaver, John Mount and his wise forestry practices, all of the responders, firefighters and everything. But we saved it from below, from certain destruction. When I drive through this forest, (greater Shaver area) I’m looking at it and I’m saying this forest needs our help—because we saved it from the creek fire, it is still too thick and vulnerable. Saving the forest and people’s connection to it is my life.
Thank you for taking our stories and for all the help!
I wish I had known to say goodbyeTo whisper words just one last timeTo thank the place that was my homeTo say goodbye, I wish I’d known.
The boards that creaked beneath my feetAre gone for good and so are we…The house, our home, has turned to ash,And so I wish I could go back.But time moves on and so do we
The fire came we had to leave.
Goodbye my houseGoodbye my homeGoodbye the place my kids have known.Goodbye too late,Goodbye too soonGoodbye goodbye goodbye to you.
Suffice it to say, 2020 was hard. I’d spent all spring and summer thinking that the kids and I would go back to school in August, and we would get some normalcy back in our lives. It didn’t happen. By Labor Day weekend of 2020 I was feeling pretty wrung out.
I encouraged my husband to go to Huntington and spend some time mountain biking with friends while I took the kids to visit my parents and sister at the cabin my grandfather had built at Bass Lake in 1952. Connor headed up to Huntington on Friday, the kids, dogs and I drove to Bass Lake.
Saturday morning at Bass Lake we learned that there was a fire near Big Creek. I wasn’t worried about the fire at first—Big Creek wasn’t particularly close to Huntington or anywhere near Bass Lake. My family and I even talked about a fire that broke out between Big Creek and Huntington when I was a little girl, cancelling our annual visit with the Linneman family on Crestline Road, high above Huntington Lake. Shortly thereafter I learned that our friends at the Huntington Lake Volunteer Fire Department were evacuating Huntington. To my distress, my husband felt compelled to try to protect the cabin there and not leave immediately.
Later that same morning our elderly dog had a stroke. When I tried to call Connor to tell him I was planning to take her to Fresno to put her down, I realized he had also lost all cell service due to the fire… She later stabilized so I decided to stay put at Bass Lake. At some point when checking Sierra News Online—our favorite source for Bass Lake area information—I read an article aloud to my mom. I remember saying, “it says that the fire is 45,000 acres, but that isn’t possible. Fires don’t grow that fast, this must be a typo.” It wasn’t.
Saturday night my brother-in-law arrived at the cabin. He saw us at the table and said, “Are you sure we shouldn’t be packing up to go home? I just drove up through North Fork and it is glowing off to the East.” It pains me to say that we’d seen that before. Fires have happened so often over the past ten years, it seems. We hadn’t heard anything about evacuations for Bass Lake—I mean, the fire was in Big Creek!—so after checking the news again, we agreed to go to bed and make a decision about leaving the next morning.
My husband finally called. He’d driven down from Huntington, there was nothing more he could do. The flames were getting close to the dam, and he could see them from the cabin near the Fire Station at the other end of the lake. In his despair he left peace offerings for the fire, or firefighters who should come by (see photos). I have always admired his sense of playful humor…
I woke up early on Sunday morning and was writing in my journal on the front porch, as is often my habit when we’re all at the cabin together. My niece likes to point out that I call it a journal, but it’s really my diary. It’s also my schedule, my to-do list and a glue that often holds all the little pieces of me together. I took these pictures. At 6:30 am it was a grey sky, by 9:30am it was dark and red. Ash was floating down from the sky. We got everyone up and started the process of leaving the cabin even though there was not yet an evacuation order.
What to take? There was nothing in the cabin of value, but so many things were priceless to us. The framed print of “the turkey hunter” has lurked behind a chair in the corner my entire life, and probably since 1952. We’re not much on changing things in the cabin… The bowl we put berries in for breakfast most mornings had come from the Huntington cabin of a dear friend of my grandmother. A book that my aunt wrote, the Bass-Lake shaped cribbage board, and a few watercolors of the Sierras… Six adults, five children, five dogs (one of whom had just survived her first stroke) and a kitten needed to be loaded up. My father insisted on driving my grandfather’s 1952 Willy’s out of the range of the fire, despite its being geared super low and not having been driven on a highway in my entire lifetime either.
We all made it out safely and “easily” compared to so, so many. But I was shaken—it had never occurred to me that both of my favorite places—both Huntington and Bass Lake could be lost to the same fire and at the same time. Why was the fire so big and so fast? I’d been watching the bark beetle devastation for years, as the trees turned red, then grey, then the tops snagged off, then the oaks began to leaf out below what was once the canopy. This still seemed worse than I had ever imagined—both Huntington and Bass Lake to be destroyed by the same fire?
The next few days were a blur of distraction. I couldn’t do anything but stare at my devices. I signed up for Twitter, I was haunting Facebook. How is it that in a disaster like this we are relying on social media for updates? I texted constantly with a neighbor at Huntington. “Lakeshore has burned.” Lakeshore hadn’t burned. “Cedar Crest is gone.” Cedar Crest wasn’t gone. “Huckleberry is gone.” And so much of it was… When the map of the cabins lost at Huntington became available, it was devastating. I remember running the numbers with another friend from that tract. Her family’s cabin was saved, but they lost their water system and the fire burned all the way up to their porch. Thirty-six of her neighbors were not so lucky…
Huntington and Bass Lake might not be close to one another using paved roads, but the Creek Fire didn’t follow roads. As the crow flies, they are approximately 22 miles apart but by my very rough calculations, the Creek Fire burned approximately 594 square miles. At 379,895 acres the Creek Fire was the largest single-ignition wildfire in California history until it lost that title in 2021 to the Dixie fire. What a tragedy. I hope that we learn from these fires to embrace better forest management, to thin the bark beetle-ravaged trees, and to seize opportunities to help one another. We’re all closer together than we might think.
After the fire a friend call to ask if I would be an Ambassador for a newly formed Creek Fire recovery effort at the Central Sierra Historical Society. I begged her to let me help. And so, a year and a half later, here I sit—a council member for the Central Sierra Resiliency Fund and the chair of this Storytelling program. I am not an expert storyteller by any stretch of the imagination, but I really, really wanted the stories of this fire to be preserved in our local history. Like so many of you have told me, “My story isn’t that important or that dramatic. I didn’t lose my home,” but it is my experience of the Creek Fire during the fire, so I’m sharing what I have to share. I am so grateful to the many storytellers who have shared their stories with the project. I think that telling our stories can be healing. Reading others’ stories can help us find commonality with one another, as well as learn of the different ways we experienced this event we will all remember. I am also so proud to have worked with the committee that put this project together—Historians, Lions, Firefighters, Foresters, Physicians, we’ve come together to preserve this history. Thank you for being the team.
September 8th at 12:22am. My almost five year old is asleep in my bed because of a bad dream. My phone rings and I quickly grab it before it wakes her up. It’s my dad, responding to the text I had sent him only minutes before. “It’s gone, it’s all gone” is what he tells me when I pick up. He is talking about the Creek Fire in Fresno County, the bad dream that my hometown has been living in since the fire broke out in Big Creek a few days earlier. It has reached the ridge at the top of 168. My dad, who is on the Bald Mountain Volunteer Fire Department, has been helping with the fire since they were evacuated Sunday. My mom has been staying with my family in Friant, near Millerton Lake. I quietly sneak out of my bedroom to the newly decorated nursery where my mom has been sleeping. But she’s awake because she knows to. Quietly we mourn the loss of our beloved ridge.
I try to go back to sleep. But when I close my eyes all I see are flames crawling the walls of my family’s home, my neighbors’ homes, my childhood school, destroying a lifetime of memories. And now all we can do is wait. Wait to hear if anything on the ridge survived. Hold our breath and wait.
Cressman’s, gone. Friends’ homes, gone. It’s 2:10 in the afternoon. My mom and I had just watched Nathan Magsig drive the ridge, past my grandparent’s home that is miraculously still there. But surrounding their home it is almost unrecognizable, all the homes around are gone or badly damaged. My mom’s phone rings. She’s upstairs. It’s my dad. He is in tears and can barely speak. A knot in my stomach forms as I prepare to hear that the home I grew up in, got married at, is gone. “It’s here!” he says.
But for 70+ other house of the less than 2 mile stretch, the families who called them home were not so lucky. Our neighbors, our teachers, our friends, our family. In one night a fire tore through and destroyed years and years of memories. Memories left behind by those evacuated because there was no way a fire that started in Big Creek would reach our ridge. But it did. And it didn’t have too. It could have been prevented. The fire could have been contained. And Climate Change has nothing to do with it.
I am not denying Climate Change. But that is not what caused this fire to burn so hot and so fast that our brave firefighters had no chance against it. It doesn’t matter who manages our forests, Federal or State. It matters that they are mismanaged due to years and years of bad policy. If you need proof, go look at Camp Edison is Shaver, which is privately managed. The fire reached that side of the lake and had no fuel, because it had been managed (https://www.aforestwithouttrees.com/). Listen to the experts, because this time Climate Change is not the culprit. Mismanagement of our forests is.
My name is Vince Wiggins, and my husband is Keith Davis. We bought 10 acres on Sharin Woods Rd in the spring of 2000. Sharin Woods means Sharing Woods. They left off the g from Sharing to make it sound more country or hillbilly like. As one neighbor told me years ago, “It means we’re sharin dah woods!” He said it with a southern, hillbilly accent, too. He also said, “We wanted it to sound like the hillbillies that we are.” Anyway, Sharin Woods Rd is in the Pine Ridge area across Auberry Road from Mile High. After purchasing our little slice of paradise, we spent every weekend and vacation day for the next few years clearing our 10 acres. We had a well drilled, brought in the electrical line and finally in 2004 we started building our home. It was a 3000 square foot log home. We personally dug the footings for the concrete to be poured in and we installed the floor for the main level after a crew had erected the cinder block walls of the basement. Keith and I with the help of my sister Joyce and her late husband Chuck raised the log walls. Later with help of a friend (and his crane) we put in place the main beam and log rafters that would support the roof of our home 25 feet above the main floor. Over an almost two-year period with the help of professional electricians, plumbers, and carpenters we finished our home. It was far from the largest or nicest home in the area, but it was ours and we loved it.
In 2009 along with our friend and business partner we purchased Cressman’s General Store. Keith managed the store and using his charming personality and business sense he turned Cressman’s into a thriving community business. I continued to commute to Fresno daily to teach elementary school but now shopping for Cressman’s became an almost daily part of my routine after school. It was a lot of work, but it was definitely a labor of love. For 10 years with the help of many wonderful and dedicated employees we developed and expanded the business. We sold Cressman’s in 2019 to our friends and mountain neighbors Ty and Tara Gillett.
On the afternoon of Friday, September 4, 2020, I had been at the lake with our dog Buster. As I left the lake fire trucks were headed up hill. On the way home I stopped at Cressman’s, and I heard the news. There was a fire in the Big Creek area. From our deck later that evening Keith and I watched as the dark plume of smoke rose in the distance with a reddish, orange glow from the fire reflected in it.
The next morning (Saturday), I went to Cressman’s to fill gas cans for our generator. If PG&E had to shut off the power, we wanted to keep our well pumping water. Our friend Mark Elizondo came over and installed a transfer switch at the well so we could power the well pump with the generator. We never got the opportunity to use it.
We put rainbird sprinklers on posts all around the perimeter of the house to soak the area in case the fire reached us. Although, we could not actually believe the fire would come that far before containment. As Ty at Cressman’s had said earlier that day, “It will have to burn over 100,000 acres in order to reach us!” Little did we know…
Sunday, September 6, 2020, we had not slept much at all. It seemed as though all we could do was stare at the glow on the other side of Stevenson Mountain and wonder, what was burning? Whose home in Big Creek, Huntington or Camp Sierra was burning? We hoped and prayed they all evacuated safely. Thick smoke filled Jose Basin below us. We could no longer see the homes in Dogwood across the basin. Later we couldn’t even see the basin. Our phones were going crazy with messages from friends and family checking on us. We were determined at that point to stay and fight the fire.
As the time passed one by one neighbors called or texted to let us know they were evacuating. We slowly began to pack. I hooked the jeep to the back of our old, but classic RV, Gus the Bus. We loaded things in the back of my truck. We had not actually decided to leave but we thought we should get ready. We could now hear thunder. This was thunder generated by the fire. The Creek Fire was creating its own storm, a fire storm.
About 4:00 P.M. I was looking at a video shared on Facebook of the fire up by the Shaver Lake Dam and The Point. In the video I saw a wall of fire 30 – 100 feet high. It looked unstoppable! At the same time Keith was watching a news update and the weatherman said the winds were going to increase in the Shaver area by the next morning. We knew at that point that we had to leave. We did not want to risk our good health or our lives trying to protect the house. What would I tell Keith’s family if something went terribly wrong? We left notes explaining how to use the generator and our fire protection set up just in case some brave firefighters came to our home. Before leaving we stood in our living room holding hands. We cried and we prayed that our home would be spared God willing. We evacuated. I drove Gus the Bus towing the jeep and Keith followed in our truck. We didn’t think it would all burn. I didn’t want to feel like we were abandoning our beloved home! But we did.
We joined our good friends Drew and Allyson along with their 2 children Araya and Brooks. They had evacuated from Alder Springs to a ranch house off Wellbarn road in the Marshall Station area. Allyson’s mother, Vicky Brooks evacuated there as well. This home and ranch are owned by the Sierra Foothill Conservancy, Allyson’s employer. We are so grateful to SFC for their hospitality and help. We stayed there for two nights in Gus the Bus, parked next to the ranch house. It is a beautiful foothill area ranch surrounded by the table mountains, but it was hard to enjoy or appreciate the beauty. Thick smoke filled the air and worry filled our minds. We wanted to go home and check on things, but we were not allowed to. It was not safe.
Monday, Keith texted Ty at Cressman’s telling him that we could go shopping for supplies for the store. We knew he was trying to keep the store open for the first responders. Ty didn’t reply until late that night. We were shocked as we read his words, “It’s gone guys! I am so sorry! We tried to save it, but we couldn’t!” He said that everything at Cressman’s had burned in a matter of 15 – 20 minutes while he watched from the viewpoint at the top of the 4-lane. Ty sent us video clips and, we were in shock!
The next day Drew and Allyson received a message from a fire fighter friend. Their home, Vicky’s home and almost everyone’s home in the Alder Springs community had burned to the ground. I’ll never forget that moment. We were all crying as we tried to hold back the verbal sobs so we wouldn’t scare the kids. How do you keep telling them it will all be okay when they know it is not? At moments like this you began to realize that nothing will ever be the same. We knew we would be okay, and we were thankful that we were all safe, but now what?
The area we were staying in at the ranch was placed under evacuation warning, also. It was not mandatory for us to leave yet but we felt it was best. If the ranch had to evacuate there would be trucks and trailers evacuating livestock and we did not want to be in the way with our 36’ RV. The ranch has only one way in and one way out, so we left and relocated to the Madera Fairgrounds.
As we arrived at the fairgrounds, we received confirmation that our home had also burned. The pictures looked so horrifying that at first I kept saying, “That’s not our place. That doesn’t look right!” Keith kept telling me that it was our home. He said, “Look at the rocks around the flower bed and the rocks that lined the walkway to our front porch.” He was correct. As foreign as it looked, it was our home. We cried and sobbed again!
Bad times seem to bring out the best in people. Madera Fairgrounds was closed because of COVID-19, and they were not approved by the state to be an evacuation center. (We found out later that Cal Fire keeps the Madera Fairgrounds on reserve hold as a staging center because it is centrally located and has easy highway access.) But, as soon we told the Madera Fairground’s employees that we had lost our home in the fire and we came there because my sister Joyce had worked for years in the Madera Fair office, they welcomed us in and hosted us there for two weeks. We literally had this beautiful facility to ourselves. At times, it was just us and the security officers there.
Bad times seem to bring out the best in people. I can’t emphasize this enough. We were literally being bombarded with offers of help, places to stay, food, clothing, money. Family, friends, work colleagues, acquaintances, everyone wanted to help. We even had friends from high school days contacting us. My friends I had worked with at King Elementary showed up with food, gift cards and much needed hugs. Keith’s Gottschalks friends came through with two carloads of supplies and an overwhelming amount of money. We told them we would share with our neighbors who had lost their homes also. Their response was, “No! This is for you. Give us a list of names and we will help your neighbors, too.” And they did. I could go on and on with tales of generosity and empathy. The state of our community is STRONG!
After two weeks, we were allowed to visit our burned home for a few hours. We hoped to find mementos and things we could salvage. The pickings were slim. Everything was incinerated. Glass and light metal objects had melted. I couldn’t even find the license plate from a dirt bike that was in the garage. The license plate had melted along with countless other things. We sifted through ashes looking for mementos. I had three boxes of family photo albums that my mom had assembled from my childhood and an old, iced tea pitcher that my grandma had always used. They were nowhere to be found. So, we resolved to look to the future and look forward to the potential of a new beginning. The past is the past and we have beautiful memories to carry with us. It was now time to move on.
We have spent the last year traveling in our RV. We’ve been up and down the Oregon and California coast. We have RV’d to Lake Tahoe, the Eastern Sierras, the Grand Canyon, the Texas hill country and more. We have visited places in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, and Wyoming. Along the way we have visited many friends and family members. We enjoy life on the road. I must admit, I am a Nomad at heart but, we still have our roots firmly planted in the mountain side overlooking the Jose Basin.
A new barn is under construction. Plans for our new house are being drafted. It will be in a new location, with a better view but still on our Sharin Woods Road property. We look forward to the future in a new house on our old home property. We will live in the middle of the Creek Fire burn scar, and we plan on working with local foresters to help reforest and properly manage our area.
My name is John Mount and I live in Meadow Lakes. On the day of the start of the fire my wife Dona said to me, “There’s a fire in Big Creek,” and I said, “Oh, okay. How big?” And she says, “Oh, it’s about a half an acre.” And I said, “Just absolutely no problem, don’t worry about it, they’ll get that real quick. It’s right there by the Forest Service, it’s right there. Don’t worry about it.” The next morning, we got up and Dona said, “Well, the fire is 1000 acres” and I said, “Okay, that’s no big deal. It can’t possibly get to us. It’s just going to go up the hill. There’s a lot of fuel there but still, no big deal.” A little bit later, she says, “John, the fire is 5,000 acres” and I said, “yeah, but that’s still no big deal because it’s not going to come down to us at all.” Then a little bit later she told me to look at the fire. To go see the cloud. I did. It was sticking up above the trees, I said, “Oh, that’s really taken off, they’re going to have their hands full. That’s going to probably affect Shaver but definitely Big Creek, but there’s no problem for us. Don’t worry about it.”
Then, four or five hours later, we’re packing up the car and heading out because we had been evacuated. We evacuated a lot sooner than other people. As soon as we heard about it because we knew it was going to get crowded and all that kind of stuff. We called friends and said “We’re being evacuated,” and they told us to come on down. So we loaded up, put in everything we could. But again, I said, “Don’t worry about it, we’ll only be gone a couple of days. It’s just no big deal. They should catch that very easily.” We watched the plume get bigger and bigger and bigger.
We headed down and as we’re driving I am wondering how they are going to evacuate people. On the way down we passed approximately 20 police type vehicles from all over the Valley. I mean they were from Hanford and all the different police departments from all over the Valley. They had mobilized them. I said, “Holy cow, they must be getting worried about this fire!” We headed on down after we passed them and arrived at our friend’s house.
We stayed there 18 days. Yeah, it was a very long time. I thought we would be gone two days or so and all of a sudden it’s 18 days and I’m running out of underwear and clothes. But a lot of things were happening. First of all, friends of ours bought us a bunch of clothes. It was just wonderful, and there were way too many clothes for use. We knew where all our other friends from Shaver were staying at a hotel in Clovis, so we loaded the stuff we didn’t need and we took it over to them and they all got some clothes. It was really neat the way people were jumping in.
Three or four days, maybe five days into the fire, I got a phone call from Dave Pomaville with Fresno County. They asked me what I thought about getting a task force to handle water runoff issues that will be coming, because there’s going to be a lot of erosion. I began to sit in on those meetings. There was a guy that had headed up the Watershed Task Force, after the Thomas fire in Santa Barbara, when they had all of those big floods that wiped out Montecito, tremendous floods. People were killed and lots of homes wiped out that hadn’t been wiped out by that fire. The guy that headed up that task force was brought in by Fresno County and Fresno County asked me what I think, and I said to definitely hire him. The County says “Yeah, we’ll think about it.” And I say, “No, right now.” So they did, they hired him immediately. I was busy on the phone with the Watershed Task Force people almost every day. Even though I was evacuated I had my computer and everything else, so I was able to attend these watershed meetings and work on the fire.
The most significant thing to me was that at some point in time, we got pictures of our house from friends that went by and saw it was okay. When we knew our house was okay it was a huge relief. I had no idea how bad the smoke was. I have breathed smoke, because I’ve lit fires for years and years and years. I’m used to breathing and smelling smoke. But the smoke that was settling in from this fire was absolutely horrific. It’s amazing, I’ve heard lots of stories about people having to go to the hospital, and of course we still had COVID going on. But people were going into the hospital, because that smoke exacerbated COVID, asthma, or just allergies. It was horrendous smoke down there, it just was terrible. The smoke was so bad because the fire was so complete. When I say complete, I mean it burned up so much stuff. It burned way more than a normal fire because of the intensity of that fire. There were a lot more particulates in the air because of this. Also, so many buildings and structures were hit and destroyed with that fire, so many other particulates from furniture, from paint, from all that other stuff was in the air so it was very, very, very bad. Even with the smoke I walked every morning we were evacuated, even though they were telling people not to be outdoors. I walked for several days before I even saw the glow of the sun, that’s how thick the smoke was in Fresno.
As a forester that has been talking about and writing about what is coming for years, this fire has elevated my story dramatically. For years and years and years I’ve been talking about forest management. Now all of a sudden everybody’s listening, and it’s very bittersweet. It’s sad, but I have not said, and I will not say, “I told you so.” Everybody has said that already. Everybody says to me, “Aren’t you proud of your work?” and I say “No. I look at it as if I was a failure. Because if I had really been successful, the fire would not have done that.”
The most dramatic experience, of course, was when we got home. The way we drove home there was absolutely no fire since there’s a little lane there that wasn’t affected by the fire going up on Auberry Road, so it was several days before we saw what happened, before we saw the full extent of the damage from the fire. That was very traumatic for us. A lot of my experience is now after the fire. That’s why I’ve been so busy, so I will be living with this fire for, well maybe the next 100 years. I hope to see what happens.
