37 Ravens

 10/17/2020

 10/17/2020

Here are things I did not include in the account of the wildfire on August 18.  

Adrenaline and panic overwhelmed me when I saw the blood red sky filtered through the thick canopy of the redwoods.  The hatch wouldn’t close on the Land Rover (something was in the way but I couldn’t see it), The back light kept timing out, the two lights on the deck kept timing out, leaving me in the pitch black of the world around the cabin, but the sky still lit red.  Then I remembered the three headlamps I had and made my way in the darkness back up to the cabin to get them.

Already, the panic was oozing into my reasoning and muddling my thinking. I turned on the headlamp and looked through the woods, not yet on fire.  What I saw was haunting.  In the air,  were tens of millions of white ash flecks, suspended, tiny, floating pieces of white flecks.  I was mesmerized until one red hot ash went up my nose and down my throat.  Well hell, that woke me up from the freeze frame daze. 

Getting the cat in the carrier took a lot of time. Time was a relative term at this point.  He’ll never know how close he came to being left.  He was scared to death of the thumping noises made with my plastic bins bumping down the stairs.  I grabbed him behind the bed as he faced the corner, shaking.  I could only reach him with two fingers, It hurt to pick him up by his scruff. He was frozen in his fear. I hugged him so tight for a minute. Casper, we are going on a really big adventure now, I’m so glad I got you. He was so quiet in the cat carrier,  not a peep.  

Weeks later, I met a woman who lives on Skyline named Georgia.  She paid me a visit and we talked about the dynamics of the fire.  She said there was so much ozone ahead of the fire, that’s probably what Casper smelled/sensed, and he knew it was not good.  I’m thinking he just stayed quiet so as not to give me any reason to sacrifice him to the fire gods as I drove out of the canyon. 

I have questions

Where were the fire scientists? Where are they now? The fires were given names. Butano Fire, Wadell Fire, Ano Nuevo Fire, Pescadero Fire…. Which of the five fires ended up being the closest to me that consumed my cabin?  I totally get it that there were no resources to put this thing out.  But why didn’t they see this coming? Sure, there were only 26 residences in the canyon (22 burned to the ground), and the road in went through two counties.

These were all real people, people who’ve put their whole life savings into everything they have to live happily in the canyon. Not once did they ever say that there would be no one to put fires out if a fire ever came.  Five fires connected and formed a circle, like some obscene voo doo of doom dance.  Whitehouse Canyon was in the middle.

The beast closed in and consumed

I cry easily these days.  I cry from my great fortune to be alive,  I cry for all I lost.  I cry for those beautiful trees, the mountain lions, the banana slugs, the winterberry, lady slippers and ferns, the ravens, the hummingbirds. I left a huge galvanized bucket full of water for any creatures that survived and needed a drink. It was there when I went back and almost empty. 

Through the day, things come to me that I lost and I get teary.  To be honest, I don’t feel I “lost” anything.  Lost implies responsibility on my part.  The fire took everything from me. 

The Sunday of the dry lightning storms: From HWY1, I stopped in different places and studied the big wisps of smoke deep into the forests.  Most of the lightning strikes were in remote areas, except for Waddell. The best hope was that they would burn themselves out. But it was mid August. Solid dry season. The humidity the day of the lightning storm was 4%. 4% is very bad for nature. You could kick forest duff too hard and start a fire.

By Monday, the Pescadero Fire had advanced quite a bit.   I drove down to Waddell Beach and was amazed at how intense the fires were there.  Surfers were in the water watching the cliffs on fire, trees starting to fall over them towards HWY 1. Still not seeing any activity with fire trucks. I did not get out of the canyon on Tuesday until I hustled out at 9:30pm.

It would be wise to get precise answers on exactly HOW the two counties are going to work together to notify people of impending fire doom.  I did not have cell service.  How would I be notified? I had a decent internet connection and Christine messaged me on Facebook to get out, but I was not even sure what she was talking about because no one expressed concern about the fires. They thought it was moving behind the ridge, a huge expanse without residents.  That night, when I reached the end of the canyon road on HWY 1, all who parked there watched our phones light up with a reverse 911 call for impending doom with the fires. (Reverse 911 = instead of the caller dialing 911, 911 calls them with the emergency.)  

I couldn’t get to the remains of my cabin until three weeks later.  Everyone was already done sifting through their ashes.  I went with my cousin Joan, and took a lot of pictures. We parked at the base of the first cabin. Stumps of trees were still smoldering.  We walked up to my cabin and I had tears streaming down my face.  No uncontrollable sobbing, just sobering to stare at everything flat that was once a nice little cabin with a large deck, back porch and large storage shed.  Ironing board, folded over the wood storage unit, just melted,  the folded over kitchen storage steel shelving unit, the back door folded.  I saw my mixing bowls, all nested, blackened,  sitting on their shelves, but there were no shelves.  The stove was brand new, and though I didn’t use it, I was sad to see it burned out. I stepped into the ashes and it went over my hiking boots.  I jumped back.  I felt I was disturbing a tomb and it freaked me out.  I just couldn’t do it. 

It was the ashes of the roof; everything under those ashes were the ashes of everything that was once mine.  It was an extremely hot fire.  All of the plant life on the ground were totally white skeletons, as if it were a flash fire.  It was all flash incinerated.  One poor redwood fell onto my once kitchen.  It had been overheated by the duff that was raked near its base.  I couldn’t bear to sift through anything,  everything was ashes.  My life was reduced to whatever I could sift through the FEMA screens, and I couldn’t bear to look any further. All I would find were ashes.  This was not a beneficial burn.  The beast took entire trees, including the small 25 foot youngsters growing inside the trees cut years earlier. The crown fires were fierce that night.  

I drive by the area when I go down to Santa Cruz.  There was a lot of death of trees and wildlife and small things that did not deserve it.  Mother nature took a big hit.  The CZU fire was a beast with no regard for anything.  

I know it may be different for a lot of people,  their stories will make me teary when I hear them.  But this story is mine. How I cope and what I do and what attitudes I adopt from this will define me for the next chapters in my life.

Hitler is alive and well.

October 18, 2020

Keith did not want to go, so off I went, by myself, in my sea kayak for a long weekend, with plans to meet Keith’s cousin Mike, and Mike’s then girlfriend Ro at a campsite.  There is a registration book to sign to show you’ve entered an area.  In case there are issues, they will know where you last signed in.  Lots of black bears, and hanging food away from camp is critical.

I paddled by myself.  It’s one of my favorite places to camp and spend time. You put in at the lower dam of the Bog River. There is such a pretty waterfall at that put in. It’s quiet, and full of wildlife surprises. Mark Kurtz took a haunting picture of the river just above the dam. You paddle under a set of railroad tracks.. After awhile you have to get out and carry around the second, upper dam.  You used to be able to edge down a bank and shower under the waterfall there.  It was so refreshing.  There was also the remains of a huge dwelling there.  I remember hustling to have lunch there paddling home in a thunderstorm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lows_Lake_(New_York)

There is something magical about Low’s Lake.  The loons, the cliffs, the loons calling out, and their echoes off the cliff gave the loons the impression there was competition and they started arguing with themselves.  They made a racket, a haunting, grab your soul call at night that reminds you that it’s just not you in the universe.

Bog River above the upper dam had been used to move logs in logging operations. It can be startling to find a log where one end was jammed into the riverbed and the top is just below the surface.  It’s probably one reason they don’t allow motorized vehicles in the whole area, besides the fact that it is a designated primitive area. It takes a good hour to paddle from the upper dam to the beginning of the Lake, then to a chosen campsite at the put in.

Low’s lake is accessible by hand-propelled boats only. The west side is still a boy scout camp.  There started to be issues of float planes landing, and dropping off paddlers (to what?  Save time?  The paddle is the whole experience!) It just seemed like an opportunity to make a buck and the noise they make just wasn’t worth the trouble.

Without a ton of details of a beautiful trip, come Sunday morning, I decided paddle back myself.  I always go slower on the way back because I just don’t want the trip to end.  The portage around the upper damn is a slog.  Seems like I sometimes take everything with me on the trip and bring everything back.  It should be a lighter load on the way home.

So here’s where it gets weird.  As I get to the take out at the Lower Dam, there is a group of four rednecks at the dam.  I ignored them.  They are wearing their wife beater t-shirts, drunk out of their minds and are tossing all their empty bud bottles over the walkway at the lower dam, down the waterfall.  It made me nauseous. The bottles make crashing sounds as they shattered on the rocks below.  So this illusion of a beautiful waterfall below the lower dam is an illusion with shards of brown glass below the surface of the water.  There are times to say something and times to just keep moving.  With ten miles of remote driving before a main road, I chose to keep moving. They got bored with themselves and tired of their own self indulgence and got back into their old jeep Cherokee.  I was glad to have the peace back, and saddened to have witnessed such disregard for such a beautiful remote place in nature.

After packing, I took my time driving the dirt road the miles to the main road.  After a while of driving dirt, it turns into a paved road before it meets the main two lane north and south artery.  I come around a corner and lo and behold, there is the old model jeep, on its side, flipped over, with these same drunks in a daze, beers still in their hands, trying to flag me down to… what the frigg? Catch a ride?  What I didn’t notice until now were the homemade nazi tape symbols (glow in the dark no less) on all their doors, their engine and the back hatch of their vehicles.  WTF?? Who does that? I stepped on the gas and sped past them as they threw their beer bottles at me.  I got to the main road and called the police to report the flipped vehicle.

What an incredibly sad way to end a beautiful weekend.  

There have been trips with better endings than that.  

And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate.― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Until man learns to respect and speak to the animal world, he can never know his true role on Earth.” ~ Vangelis.”

(Dawn talked, I wrote. Put into her Gofundme page)

The night of the dry lightning storm was a hot night after a hot day. I went to bed at 11pm (Saturday, August 15) and had no screens on the windows.  My bed was  10 inches from the window and there was a light breeze.  The winds started and were fierce.  The next thing I knew there were redwood needles pelting me as I woke up with no blanket over me due to the heat.  The dog was going crazy.  The lightning was crackling, followed by rolling thunder that never ended.  It rained big rain drops but did not last long.  I couldn’t tell if it was rain on the roof or redwood needles.  It was so loud.  I had just finished doing heavy maintenance on the yard.  It looked like it had a manicure with everything I had pruned.  In the morning redwood branches were everywhere.  I called everyone to see what had happened to them.  

One of the lightning strikes had started the Big Creek fire.  My tenant drove down to see the fire.  This was three miles down the coast.  I drove down to watch that fire’s progress three times.  This started Sunday night.  The ocean was making a huge noise.  I started to get nervous.  

The Last Chance community always thought that if a fire started at Waddell,  they would lose the whole Last Chance community.  It started on the north side of the north creek  If they could only have kept it there, they would have been fine.  But no one attended to it.

There were at least a dozen trucks at Big Creek from CalFire.  No fire trucks anywhere else.  

I kept trying to keep track of other fires in the area.  It was making me nervous.  I started to think about what I would have to do should I be mandated to evacuate the area in a hurry. 

I had an original 1958 Ford Ranchero in my barn,  original everything.  I had a John Deer LE210  Landscape Loader.  I also had a Wood Mizer portable saw mill.  That sawmill cut wood that built at least twelve homes in Last Chance.  

Last Summer, Richard Simpson from CalFire met with everyone at Last Chance and told them what needed to be done to survive fire season.  The community followed his advice and prepared.    We did everything he asked. 

Jessica was the Fire Marshall that summer. 

Richard Simpson asked us to put in turnouts along the road.  We did that.  Put in a water tank.  We did that.  Locate all the water supply.  Done, we did that.  

He said that Calfire would be driving the road to keep them all informed and would be using the water supply information provided to CalFire.  

I moved the tractor to the top of the hill in a turnout.  That way, they could use the road and the tractor if necessary.  I expected the tractor to be safe because fire trucks would be there.  

The fire of August 18 was not like any fire they could have predicted.  

There was no one to help me. I couldn’t get the sawmill out by myself.  I couldn’t load the generators..   I tried to get the sawmill moved out but by then, everyone was fighting their own fire.  Big Creek was fighting their own fire, putting in a fire break.  Fire trucks had been sitting at Big Creek the whole time,  not one had  pulled a hose out yet. 

On Monday August 17,  I went down to Big Creek Lumberyard. Fire trucks were still there;  no patrol being done at Last Chance.  No one even knew there were residents back there.  There are over 200 people living back at Last Chance.  The Fire Department (visiting) were not given the information that there were any people back there at all.   

On Tuesday, August 18, I went to work,  servicing swimming pools.  I went to see my mom in Felton after work and came home to Davenport around 4pm.   There still were not any notices to standby/prepare to evacuate.  Nothing. I will never forget that I smelled the smell of animal hair burning.  

I saw a lot of smoke,  and went out to Waddell to see where the fire was.  The Waddell Fire had turned and started to head north.  I saw debris rolling down at the big sandstone slides along HWY 1.    How odd there were so many windsurfers. 

The fire was growing.  I drove north and got to Coastways Ranch, where Christine Harper grazes her cows.  I called her to tell her to get her cows out as fires were at the fields where her cows were.  Luckily she moved them in time.

I started to pack, just in case.  I got chainsaws in the car.  I parked that car in the middle of the meadow, thinking that the vehicle would be safe and not burn. 

A friend called to say they’d be up at 6am the next morning to help me get the rest of my stuff. This was around dinnertime. 

The next thing I knew, I heard the fire had jumped the fire line just created at China Grade.  This was about ten miles from the farm as the crow flies inland towards Bonny Doon. 

My tenant had gone outside to see where the fire might be and looked towards Waddell.  The fire was coming and it headed straight for the ranch.  I thought the ocean was still making the crazy loud noise, but it was the fire roaring down the valley.     

Neighbors were calling to get out now.  There was only one exit out and it was now on fire and headed towards the gate.  If there was no way to get through that exit, the only other one was to go to the Mill Site, six miles inland.  That was already on fire. 

Still,  there was not one fire truck to be seen.   

I asked my tenant Elvin to help load generators.  He said the fire was already at the (cattle) gate and it was time to get out now.  He was headed back to Big Creek where he was an electrician.  He didn’t even get his own stuff out. 

I couldn’t load the generators. 

I lived in Haze Maze at Last Chance, three miles from HWY 1, inland on a dirt road. I started loading guitars, my deceased husband’s treasures, a 12-string fender guitar, and an old gibson guitar.  I was only able to grab pictures from my refrigerator.  I was out of time.  I saw  my deceased husband Carl’s bear skin rug.  He shot it years ago in upstate New York. I knew I couldn’t take it. No time to grab any pictures from the walls.  I grabbed the dog food, the dog bed, the dog pills and the dog, Carter, the red nose pittie.  Sweetest dog there ever was. 

I always thought I was coming back, up until the last minute.  By then the adrenaline kicked in.  My thoughts were getting mixed up,  I was thinking I would be able to come back in the morning to get everything else. I secured a few tools.  Also two bottles of wine out of a closet full of wine.  The fire continued to roar, like the sound of the ocean. But it wasn’t the ocean.  The smoke was incredibly thick and dense.  It was a ten minute drive to reach HWY 1. 

There was so much ash suspended in the air in the light of the flashlight. 

Then we got the reverse 911 call, saying the fire was imminent.  I got calls from Christine Harper telling me to get out now, that a fireball was headed right towards the farm where Christine lived.  A bit north on Whitehouse Canyon road, Christine and residents were also self-evacuating.  They, like us, never  received an evacuation standby warning, or evacuation mandate.  They got the reverse 911 a half hour after everyone was out of the canyon, by then, the entire canyon was ablaze. 

This is what I understood had happened:  There were five lightning strike fires from that Sunday morning storm.  By Tuesday, they were beginning to move towards each other beginning to form a ring of fire.  Whitehouse Canyon and Last Chance Ridge were in the center, and the Butano fires were moving south, the other two (Waddell and Ano Nuevo) were moving north.  All the residents knew was what they were told, that everything was ok and the authorities kept sending emails saying there were no evacuation standbys or orders to leave anywhere in the area.  Why didn’t they see this coming?  The Canyon and the Ridge were doomed.

I started packing, taking one suitcase of clean laundry.  I took no jacket, no coat, nothing.  It was still so hot out. I packed the suitcase, and closed the window.  I jumped into the truck and put it in 4-wheel drive.  I headed towards the cattle gate, and met up with residents,  also driving out. We all met in the fields, the cow pasture by Big Creek, across HWY 1, driving ten minutes to get out of the canyon.  The fire was already at Fistalera Road, two miles away.  Fire trucks were at the cattle gate, 2 miles away.  None were headed to Last Chance Ridge.  No one knew there were residents there.  The residents needed to get past the fire trucks stopped on the paved portion of the road into Last Chance. The lights on the trucks were blinding the vehicles as they tried to get by.  The smoke was so bad. Fistalera is the paved part of the Last Chance Ridge Road leading to Last Chance Ridge. It goes one for one mile before turning into dirt for two more miles. One homeowner on that road had called 911 and said the fire was in his front yard and he was not leaving until they showed up. They showed up and his house was saved. They ended up saving all five homes on Fistalera (I think they are obliged to come help once they get a phone call.)  Those five homes were all high end residences.

After most of the residents reached the fields, six fire trucks ended up racing towards the fire.  I don’t know where they had been staged up until that time. 

What I saw as the beginning of the end was watching the fire creep onto Last Chance Ridge.  This was about 11pm.  The fire was on top of the Last Chance community.  

I left my home at 10:40pm.  People were talking about the “Mill Site” and that one person, Tad Jones was missing.  Noone knew where Tad was.  

I saw the Battalion Commander, Mr. Gonzales.  He said they were not going back there (past the paved portion of the road) to Last Chance Ridge.  Not one fire truck tried to save any structures back there.  Battalion Commander Gonzales said he would not jeopardize his men. My tractor at the top of the Ridge burned, right at the spot where they told me to park it in case of a fire, to keep the road clear so the fire trucks could get through. 

The Mill Site had caught fire.  The Mill Site was the community social/community center, where we held barn dances.  The fire had jumped the lines.  Here is where the back end of the Last Chance community was taken out.  250 homes/residences, 50 outbuildings, all burned to the ground.  We all watched it burn.  I stayed all night and the following morning, watching it.  The cattle fields are owned by the family of Big Creek lumber.  This is where we all parked.  The fire was coming in across the fields where we were parked.  Dan and a neighbor and I ushered about a dozen cows to the next field, a field that was not burning. 

I had five structures on my land. Barns full of antiques acquired from a previously owned house in Georgia, all burned to the ground, to ashes.  Tools of all kinds, compressors, chain saws, sharpening machines, woodworking tools, tractor tools, generators,  wood splitters all gone. I had just cut, split and stacked three full cords of wood.

There were over 200 people living up at Last Chance. The Fire department didn’t even know there was a community back there.  There were trucks assisting Fire trucks from out of the area that had no idea that 200 people were fleeing.  We were on our own. 

Everyone left, leaving me and the owner of Big Creek, Ken McCrary and a neighbor Thomas.  We watched the fire all night and then watched it smolder in the daylight. 

The Water treatment plant, located in the Big Creek cow fields had caught fire. We flagged a fire truck, only to hear them say they had run low on water.  The water tender had been in the fields with us, in case the trucks needed more water.  Water was still available in some homeowner’s tanks, but they would not fill up their trucks because the water tender had left.  

The bulldozers did a great job.  I was not sure where they were from.  They bulldozed fire breaks to save those five houses on the paved part of the Last Chance access.  When they left, everything else was left to burn.

At dawn, Thomas went up Fistalera Drive to count standing houses.  He drove only to Glen’s house, one of five that was saved.  Fire trucks had only gone to the end of the paved portion of the road.  

Davenport only has one FireTruck.  It was already six miles in at the Mill Site.  CalFire never told the visiting/assisting fire departments that there was a viable community back there called Last Chance with over 200 residents. 

I was only able to get to Fistalera Road one mile before encountering a tree across the road.  I had to turn back.  The fire was now smoldering and still burning south on Swanton Road.  This is the same fire that ended up near UCSC, causing a partial evacuation of the campus. 

Because of the built up adrenaline, I did not sleep for 48 hours. I went to Whale City Bakery in Davenport.  I had to give some folks there the heartbreaking news that their place did not make it.  It was so sad.  Many were just stunned.   All these people and I had built our own homes ourselves at Last Chance Ridge.   

What I lost:

~Tractor replacement = $25,000 

~Portable mill = $ 40,000 

~Generators =  $12500 (to replace 4) 

~Water tank $~4000

The well was probably saved. 

Plumbing needs to be redone.  If I only had my tractor, I could clean this up on my own.  But it is gone.  I really know how to operate a tractor well.   

I turned 71 this june. Where retirement should be enjoying what you spent your whole life working towards now put me at ground zero.  It  is overwhelmingly sad. 

I’m not the type of person that thought I would need help, but please know that anything you can contribute to this gofundme will be put towards replacement of the most important things to me. My thanks to all of you for reading this.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/dawn-stevens-lost-everything-in-a-wildfire