Out of the Fire

Mark Russell (Facebook post on Sept. 12, 2015)

Ok, so on Thursday morning at 7a.m. I go to breakfast with Rick Schaad down at Perkos, and they're closed for ADA remodeling, so we head out to Thomi's in south Jackson, but the power is out there, so we head to Mel's which is full of evacuees, but open. After breakfast I head home, and see that the plume of smoke from the canyon is looking mighty close to my house. I decide that it might be prudent to gather up some stuff and put it in the trailer just in case, but the truck has the topper on it and the fifth wheel hitch isn't installed. No worry.  I go to start the truck and the battery is completely dead, so I have to maneuver the Jetta close enough where I can jump start the truck. I move the truck to the garage, leave it running while I lift the topper off, pull it out of the garage to install the hitch and for some reason turn the truck off --- and it won't start again. At the same time I'm noticing that very thick black and orange smoke is arching right over the top of the house, and I can see the smoke boiling through the trees. I check my phone for evacuation updates, and my phone dies. (To be honest, I had been putting off getting a new phone after the on/off switch quit working a few months ago.) The only way I can restart the phone is to plug it in, but the power is off, so I have to use the car charger, but on the Jetta the ACC port doesn't work unless the engine is running, so I have to start the Jetta and leave it running to reboot the phone, which takes about 5 minutes. Still calm, I start installing the 5th wheel hitch on the truck, which is an easy 10 minute two-person job, but a difficult hour long one-person job involving multiple socket wrenches and a roll of duct tape. All the while I'm watching the smoke get thicker, checking the Cal Fire website for evacuation updates, and having to start the Jetta and reboot the phone every time. I finally get the hitch installed, check the evac update and see that I'm being ordered out immediately on a mandatory evacuation. Now I'm getting a little bit stressed. I go back into the house and am able to stuff two of the cats, Trooper and Little Shit, into cat carriers with only a few wounds, but the third cat, Floozie, is nowhere to be found. I spill some food into her dish and start hauling the heirlooms and photos out to the truck. Now there is a constant din of aircraft overhead, helicopters and bombers, and a huge DC10 VLAT comes skimming over at what seems like treetop level. It's starting to feel like a war zone, and I'm getting frantic when I hear fire trucks coming down Timber Ridge Road to force evacuations. I feel like I probably need to move on along, so I move the Jetta over to the truck and jump start it, and move the truck down to the shed to hitch up the trailer, which requires backing down a short but narrow and steep dirt ramp to the shed, which would make it harder to jump the truck again if I had to. I can hear the firemen at the neighbors banging on the door. Fortunately I'm able to get the trailer hitched in record time and pulled out of the shed without killing the engine. I hear the fire trucks coming back up the road now, and remember the two cats in carriers still sitting in the kitchen, so I run back up to the house, grab my cats, the phone and charger out of the Jetta (which is still running) and dash back down to the truck. The growling cats go into the trailer, and I jump into the truck, put it in gear and pull out onto the one lane road in front of two fire trucks coming up the hill. It's a fairly steep gravel road up to Tabeaud Road from my driveway, and I keep it in 4 low to keep from killing it, and I make it to the road in front of the fire engines. I don't know what would have happened if I had stalled; the fire fighters surely would have helped me, but I have visions of being shoved off the road into the brush as they go by. On the road now there is a steady stream of cars, all loaded to the gunwales with crap and looking like the Joads, heading out toward 88. A dozen police cars (Oakland? Napa? Lodi?) and 5 fire trucks, sirens screaming and lights flashing, blow by me in the other direction. There's a traffic jam at 88: the traffic heading east up the hill is bumper to bumper, and the police are turning back frantic drivers who are unsuccessfully trying to get onto Tabeaud Road to get to their homes in Pine Acres to save what they can. Grace has been racing up from Stockton but arrives too late, I call her and we meet at Rick and Denise Schaad's house.  They have no power or water but at least are not in the evacuation zone. We all decide to tow the trailers down to Jackson and set up a refugee camp behind Safeway, where we can hook into power and have restroom access at Denise's Bodies N Balance studio. We spend the rest of the day at loose ends, watching the boiling smoke and aerial attacks in the distance, and a constant string of screaming fire trucks, bulldozers on flatbeds, and PG&E equipment moving on the highway below. When evening comes, Grace drives back to Stockton, and I bed down with the cats in our little refugee camp with the southern sky glowing bright orange from the flames, hoping that the house is OK but having no way of knowing for sure.

That was Thursday. Friday is a new phone and truck battery, a shower at the Foothill Conservancy office in Jackson and finally a move from the Safeway camp to the most gracious Giles and Shirley Turner’s home in Sutter Creek. We have had at least a dozen offers of refuge from our fabulous friends in Amador County.

Today, Saturday, is a waiting game, and who knows how it will turn out. But with the incredible efforts being made by Cal Fire, plus all of the local, California and national mutual support emergency agencies, and, of course, all of the organizations and individuals locally who are opening their businesses, homes and hearts to their neighbors, I know that everything that can be done is being done, regardless of the outcome. It is what it is, and I'm OK with that.

But I still can't remember for the life of me if I turned the Jetta off.