California wildfires - from beauty to ashes and destruction in a matter of hours

Our campsite on Calistoga Road, just east of Santa Rosa, California, on Oct. 9, 2016

One year ago this week, we were camping at one of the most beautiful campsites I have ever experienced, in 60 years of enjoying sleeping outdoors.

The campsite was on Calistoga Road, northeast of Santa Rosa, the county seat of Sonoma County in northern California. About 175,000 people live in the city, with many others living in the beautiful countryside surrounding it. Sonoma County is well-known across North America for its fabulous vineyards and wineries, and is also home to many other types of farms and a great deal of spectacular scenery.

Santa Rosa has been in the news in the past few days for a much different reason. It has lost over 1,000 buildings to the fast-moving Tubbs wildfire, which entered the northern part of the city from the hills that we were camped on a year ago.

I fear our campsite, located on a steep hill above a vineyard, and everything in that area has been wiped out as well. When we were there a year ago, the owner was very insistent that we not light any fires, given the extremely dry nature of the grass, brush and forest. He had set up a propane barbecue that we could use high on the hillside, and he was extremely careful - in order to prevent exactly what has happened this week.

Andrew and Bonnie enjoyed the magnificent view of the hills and valleys between Santa Rosa and Calistoga, when we camped at a wilderness campground on a vineyard property a year ago.

The Tubbs fire moved in during the late evening and early morning hours, and most people were asleep when it started to rage within the city. Neighbourhoods were wiped out, and people barely had time to flee. Many commercial buildings, including a well-known hotel and numerous retail businesses, also burned.

The fire broke out on Sunday night north of Calistoga, which is actually located in neighbouring Napa County. Fierce winds of more than 50 miles per hour fanned it quickly, and spent sparks flying great distances. The area is tinder dry, even though California had plenty of rain last winter. It has been hot and dry all summer. The hills between Calistoga and Santa Rosa are heavily forested.

We were there last year to visit our son Andrew and his wife Lisa, who live in Petaluma, also in Sonoma County. Thankfully, Petaluma has been spared any fire destruction, but several thousand displaced people are now living in evacuation centres there, and the smoke is thick as well. There are other fires in the region, one just east of Napa and another further north in Sonoma County.

We were there again two weeks ago. This time, we actually spent quite a bit of time in Santa Rosa, including in some of the areas where many buildings have been lost to fire. We took the new SMART (Sonoma-Marin Rapid Transit) commuter train to Santa Rosa on Sept. 28, going to the Santa Rosa North station which is adjacent to many of the hardest-hit neighbourhoods.

One of the new SMART commuter trains pulls into the downtown Santa Rosa platform. Behind it is the historic Northwestern Pacific Railroad's Santa Rosa station.

From there, we walked to the Charles Schulz museum, within the evacuation area (but as far as I know when writing this, still standing). Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strip, was a longtime and much-loved Santa Rosa resident.

(Update: the home where Charles Schulz lived for many years was destroyed by the fire, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported Friday, but the museum is still standing. See link.)
On the two days we were in Santa Rosa, temperatures hovered in the 90 degree (32 Celsius) range in the afternoon.

We also travelled on a wonderful bike trail from Sebastopol to downtown Santa Rosa, about six miles each way, a day earlier. We visited the downtown area, in particular the Russian River micro-brewery and restaurant, one of the best-known such establishments in northern California. We enjoyed a bottle of beer we brought back from there with our Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday.

One pauses to stop and think when hearing about such destruction in an area you have just been in. I’ve again experienced some of the feelings I’ve struggled with over the summer about the horrific Elephant Hill fire in the Cariboo, which over the course of several months wiped out many homes, including one belonging to good friends of ours who lived there for more than 40 years. (See earlier blog post).

Lives have been lost in Santa Rosa (11 confirmed dead as of Tuesday night), and none of the fires in the area are in any way contained. Thankfully, the wind has died down for now, but it is expected to come back tomorrow evening. This time, firefighters are far more prepared, but who is to say where the sparks will end up flying to next.

In looking at the media coverage of the Santa Rosa fires, notably on the Santa Rosa Press Democrat website, but also on U.S. television stations, I’ve been struck by a couple of significant differences from the B.C. wildfires.

First, the authorities are much more forthcoming with the media. Many more details have been disclosed, and media are even allowed in the burned-out neighbourhoods of northern Santa Rosa. ABC News did their national broadcast from one neighbourhood Tuesday night.

Second, residents are getting far more information and are able to gather it themselves. Residents of one neighbourhood were able to go along all the streets in one neighbourhood where fires were raging just over 24 hours earlier, and document how many homes were burnt. They then posted it on social media, giving people some much-needed certainty. Contrast this with the appalling treatment given to residents of Pressy Lake in the South  Cariboo, who didn’t know for weeks if their homes were standing or not.

Then when there was a public information meeting that was very helpfully broadcast on Facebook, no one from the Office of the Fire Commmissioner was even present to answer questions about the effort (or lack thereof) in preventing homes from burning at Pressy Lake. This was after residents were specifically told that they would be able to get some answers at that meeting. When it came to the OFC, those officials who were present did a lot of buck-passing.

In Canada, people are more respectful of authority, and that’s not a bad thing. However, information needs to be shared in a timely way, particularly when it as significant as the loss of a home. Privacy is far too often used as an excuse not to disclose anything. In my opinion, the firefighting effort in the Cariboo this summer was magnificent. The information disclosure was far too often delayed, and people were left to guess the fate of their homes. CBC News reported Sept. 26 that Pressy Lake residents have been told to file freedom of information requests, in order to find out what fire suppression efforts were made to save their homes. This is ridiculous.

Thankfully, no lives were lost in the Elephant Hill fire and that is something to be very grateful for.

Right now, the people of Santa Rosa in particular are going through many of the same challenges that people in the Cariboo faced a few months ago. They need our prayers and support, in whatever way we can offer it.