The Million Year Romance
Dragon in the Land:
People and Mega-fire in California
- Episode One:
Lightning and Smoke - Episode Two:
Remembrance of Fires Past - Episode Three:
Red Ball Sun - Episode Four:
The Running Battle - Episode Five:
Evacuations and Destinations - Episode Six:
Maze of Chaos - Episode Seven:
The Dragon in the West Village - Episode Eight:
Fire Camp - Episode Nine:
Man-dragon - Episode Ten:
Percent Contained - Episode Eleven:
Smart Work, Dumb Luck - Episode Twelve:
What To Do Before The Nightmare Comes True — Again
What's New
Writing
Dragon in the Land:
People and Mega-fire in California
by Howard V. Hendrix
Episode Five:
Evacuations and Destinations
“I wish I could be more optimistic, Mr. Shaw,” the deputy calls to Pete and Mary from his patrol SUV, “but I don’t want to lie to you. The Meadows fire is moving up the drainage between the Tabletops and the North Fork of Little Dry Creek. It’s already jumped Auberry Road at the Clovis nineteen mile marker. The road is closed to traffic just north of there. It’s no longer safe to shelter in place. You and your family need to evacuate. Now.”
“Where to?” Pete asks.
“Auberry Union School. Not Old Auberry School in Auberry Valley — the one in the town of Auberry proper.”
“Why not Foothill Middle School?”
“Afraid not, Mrs. Shaw. Cal Fire says if the fire gets into the notch behind Marshall Hill, or between Marshall Hill and Corlew Mountain, there’s a danger it’ll split, with one arm of it heading along Wellbarn through Auberry Valley. It might fan out all the way from Temperance Flat to the Spearhead country, behind the Middle School.”
“And the other arm?”
“Right through Twin Ponds here, sir. Might even get to Morgan Canyon and Gooseberry. That’s what the fire folks at Hurley are saying, anyway. That’s why you and everyone else here have to leave.”
“You said Auberry Road is closed south and west of here,” Pete says. “Is Highway 168 still open through Morgan Canyon to the Valley floor?”
“I think so, but I wouldn’t count on it for long. A shelter’s being set up at Sierra High, too, I think. You better move fast if you want to try that way. I’ve got to be going too — got to move your last few neighbors along.”
They say their goodbyes. Pete finishes loading the blue pickup, hefting in extra clothes, then their Emergency Kit in its big plastic bin filled with medicines, food, and water. Mary calls for him to bring out their cat Roz in her cat carrier, then their little mutt Blue in his dog crate. He is glad she remembered them, and he’s careful to leave enough space under the camper shell for any other last-minute items Mary might want to bring out.
As the dusk reddens toward black and night, Mary comes back from locking up the house with nothing more in her arms beyond two sleepy grandkids. They put the kids into their safety seats in the crew cab. The kids don’t even wake up.
“Ready to go?”
Mary nods. They take a last long look at their home, then open the front doors of the pickup truck and climb in. Pete drives them slowly away. He glances at Mary, but she is focused on the rearview mirror, watching the image of their house vanishing into darkness behind them.
The smoke, thicker now, makes them cough. Looking left, he thinks he sees his first hint of not-so-distant fire, a glow around the west shoulder of Corlew Mountain. A sizable line of cars — something unheard of in Twin Ponds — is waiting to turn right at the intersection with Auberry Road.
Thinking of that glow past Corlew’s shoulder and the fire that’s making it, Pete finds himself growing impatient very quickly. It’s all he can do to keep from laying on the horn.
“I’ll try to call Tom and Jen’s place again and see if I can’t get through,” Mary says as they turn onto Auberry Road and head northeast, toward Prather. A moment later Mary makes a sound of disgust.
“Didn’t get through?”
“All lines are busy!”
“Too many people trying to get through on their cell phones, I guess.”
An emergency vehicle, headed south and west, speeds loudly and furiously toward them. Pete pulls over onto the shoulder until it has passed. Before he can pull back onto the road, a second vehicle decked with lights and siren hurtles into view and away.
“Pete, the deputy said 168 down Morgan Canyon is still open, right?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Could we try to get to Tom and Jen’s place, maybe?”
Pete thinks about it a minute as they drive. At last he shrugs.
“Okay. We’ll give it a shot.”
Easier said than done. The Canyon Forks area at Prather, where Auberry Road and Morgan Canyon come together, is a nightmare of fleeing cars and trailers headed away from various fires, and fire and emergency vehicles headed toward those blazes. The traffic on Auberry Road is backed up almost to Foothill Middle School.
Pete breaks out of the traffic snarl by taking the gravel back entrance into the Canyon Forks Shopping Center. Cutting across the Center’s parking lot, he drives past the Pizza Factory and Mar-Val Market and the bank. The power to all the lights and signs goes out. Through the sudden dark he makes his way below Velasco’s Mexican Restaurant, the Tiny Mart, and the post office, out onto Morgan Canyon.
They drive beneath clear dark skies in which the stars look suddenly large and bright. Pete and Mary and the grandkids are almost alone on the road for a moment, down the first straight stretch on Morgan Canyon, into the first turns. Then they see red brake lights and lights whirling in lightbars atop emergency vehicles ahead, blocking the road.
“Fire’s crossed the highway between Eagle Crest and Millerton Road,” a California Highway Patrol officer tells them. “We’re turning everyone around.”
“But my son and his family live just ahead here,” Pete says. “On Gooseberry, right before it turns into Pennyroyal. We’ve got two of their children in the back with us — ”
“I’m sorry, sir. No exceptions. Emergency vehicles only.”
As if to make the point, a Bald Mountain Fire Protection District fire engine appears, weaving its way down both sides of the highway, among the stopped cars. The officer waves the engine through into the Gooseberry area. He then very forcefully signals for Pete to get his vehicle turned around and headed back up the Morgan Canyon corridor toward Prather.
As he drives back toward Prather, Pete silently wishes those Bald Mountain firefighters luck. Why they were down below Prather is a mystery to him, but he knows they’ll have their hands full back there in the Gooseberry country.
Almost impossible to find some of the homes back there in broad day if you don’t already know the way, Pete thinks. In a blackout night it’ll be a maze of chaos. But hadn’t his brother Joe gone behind the fire lines, during that Santa Barbara fire? He’d come out okay, hadn’t he? An idea begins to form in Pete’s mind.
“Are we going to head up to Auberry School, then?” Mary asks.
“Not quite. More toward Sierra High. Maybe I can leave you and the kids there, if the emergency folks already have a shelter set up.”
“And where will you be going?”
“I know some backdoor ways in, off of Lodge Road, that cut down between Little Dry Creek and Black Mountain. They’re a bit on the rough side, but they eventually make their way down into the Gooseberry country.”
Mary gives him a long look.
“I hope you know what you might be getting yourself into.”
“So do I,” Pete says. He thinks of the chaotic, unlit maze of the rough night roads he’ll be travelling, after he drops Mary and the grandkids off at Sierra High School. Even without the thought of wildfires and lost emergency vehicles storming into that picture, the prospect does not inspire confidence.
All episodes were originally published in 2007 as a fire education series in the Mountain Press, the Sanger Herald, the Snowline Tiimes, and their sister publications covering the central California portion of the foothills and Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Spears of God
Howard's latest book—Spears of God—is in stores and online. Check it out today.
