Our Almeda Fire
Experience
by Mary and Ted
My awareness of
September 8th, 2020 started about 3:30am when howling winds
disturbed my sleep. Like the mistral –
it wasn’t restful. Around 7:30, walking to Talent Avenue for the newspaper, I passed
our seasonal pond where, weeks earlier, neighbors had surreptitiously placed an
enormous, heavy rubber duck: the wind had blown it onto dry land. After retrieving the paper and walking back,
the duck was now even 15 feet higher, on the level of the road. With the winds still howling, I dragged the
duck back to the front porch where it couldn’t get blown any further. I also thought that our daily walk wasn’t
going to happen.
At 11am, I was in
a Zoom meeting. Around 11:30, our host
suddenly disappeared; since she’d been having technical glitches, I paid little
attention. (Later, I learned she had
been told to leave immediately; her home did not survive the fire). Around 11:45, my phone rang and while I don’t
take calls during a meeting, I saw it was from a neighbor’s ranch hand –a woman
who never calls without a reason.
She said there was
a fire in Ashland – probably on Ashland Mine Road, and it was heading straight
for the ranch. If true, it was on the
west side of US99 and would lead directly to our properties south of Talent,
above the railroad tracks. This would be
the ONLY notice we ever received of the fire.
I alerted my
husband and went outside to look, my heart sinking as I saw enormous white and
black smoke clouds billowing to the south and being buffeted east and west as
it headed our way. Our first thought was
to put sprinklers around the east perimeter and on the roof – this meant taking
yard sprinklers, hooking them to hoses and hoisting them on the roof.
Around 12:30, we
decided to round up the cats, get a go-bag together and put it all in the
car. The power was already off. Thoughts of saving some of our lives’
treasures were simply passing notions – there was no time and we mainly wanted
to save ourselves, the pets, and our computers, where the bulk of our needed
information was stored. And the
passports – don’t ask me why. We
continued to watch.
My thoughts turned
to my deceased parents, who had personally dug our well, personally built the
house (I’m sure with whatever was lying about as mill ends), and very much
wanted us to be here. At the same time,
I know they would be saying, “Leave!”.
Around 1:30, we
saw a police car traveling north on Talent Avenue, telling people on the east
side to evacuate. While we were not
advised to evacuate, we were keenly aware that the distance was not that great,
and that fire typically moves uphill, particularly with the winds that
day. We prepared to leave. In what was surely the most bizarre decision,
my husband insisted that we pack his tuxedo, dress shoes and shirt and my
evening gown, jewelry and high heels: he had earlier arranged for us to have
our wedding anniversary photographs taken on Thursday, September 10th,
in the Ashland church where we were married, and he wasn’t about to postpone
that date.
As we headed north
along Talent Avenue, the evacuation was in full force; the road was a parking
lot. It was absolute gridlock. We texted
with a neighbor, who had also made the crushing decision to evacuate, leaving
her gates open so her stable of rescue horses and other animals could get
out. As we approached Creel Road,
traffic was at a standstill; cars, trucks, and trailers were pouring out of
side roads attempting to get into the parking lot that Talent Avenue had
become. We didn’t move forward for at
least 20 minutes, during which time we saw the black clouds advancing northward;
we became convinced that evacuation would lead us into the fire, or worse, we
would be immolated in place.
We u-turned, along
with our neighbor, and headed south toward home, where the skies were blue
again. For a while, it appeared that we
were out of the woods. Then the
explosions started. And smoke started up
from Highway 99 just below us. The ranch
hand texted us again – she was far up the mountains between Ashland and Talent
and was certain Jackson Wellsprings was burning; if so, that meant the west
side of 99 was on fire and heading directly for us.
We soon realized
that the fire had NOT gone to Jackson Wellsprings but had jumped to the west
side of 99 near New Sammy’s Cowboy Bistro, almost directly below us. A helicopter was repeatedly dipping into the
TID canal below our neighbors, flying out and dropping the water. An aerial bomber flew unbelievably low,
releasing the red flame retardant. Thinking the fire would surely head uphill
toward us, we decided to head for Ashland. This was around 5:30pm.
As we entered 99
South, we saw smoke directly below our house and just kept going. The highway was clear to the south, and it
seemed authorities had closed 99 to northbound traffic. Sure enough, we saw our neighbor, Yassem
Altunel, walking north so we pulled over to ask if we could help – he was
walking to his house to see if he could save anything. We took him home.
Heading again to
Ashland, we started looking for a hotel.
Gas stations had long lines.
Ashland Springs Hotel was full. As we approached Ashland Avenue, freight
trucks lined the roads. Traffic was nearly at a standstill. All the motels had “no vacancy” signs. My husband got on his phone to search for a
vacancy and miraculously found one at Bard’s Inn. Ironically, it’s the most northerly Ashland
hotel, closest to our home. We learned
later that authorities had closed Interstate 5, forcing traffic onto local
streets and roads and into whatever accommodations they could find. As a
result, local people trying to escape and find shelter were at a great
disadvantage; we were just lucky.
As we got set up,
bought food and other supplies, we continued to get texts well into the night
from friends giving us updates and inviting us to their homes in Medford – but
we had every reason to believe the fire would go there next so opted to stay in
Ashland. They were texting us with
pictures of flareups all along Bear Creek well into Medford. Then the Central Point area flared up. Seeing this happen at night and knowing fire
crews desperately needed assistance made the disaster all the worse.
Our rancher
neighbor texted that our house was fine, as was our entire neighborhood, but
the wind kept howling and changing direction.
We have friends in Phoenix, where the fire was continuing its
destruction. They told us they were at
the high school and watching Cheryl Avenue burn – a block from their home; we
urged them to leave.
Amazingly, we did
get some sleep that night.
At about 7:30am
Wednesday morning, another neighbor, Jeff LaLande, called to tell us our house
was fine and the sprinklers still going; we headed home. We knew Highway 99 was closed and that we’d
have to take I5 and backroads, probably from the north Medford exit, but
another neighbor told us Garfield was open, so it would be a shorter trip. This is how navigation in and out became a
true wiki net between friends and neighbors who were either in need of
directions or quick to relate their latest findings. Official information was hard to come by.
Coming into Talent
from the northwest on Colver Road, we were startled to be going right through
Talent on the fire line. Small flames
were still burning. It seemed like a
complete miracle that nothing on the west side of Talent Avenue had
burned. That miracle was dampened by the
utter destruction from downtown to Arnos Road on the east. At that point, we couldn’t even see Highway
99; that remained the case except for the online video shot by someone early Wednesday
morning.
For
the next week or so, the backroads were the only way to get home. We could easily go south to Ashland on 99,
but couldn’t go back. Sure enough, we
were blessed that our house and outbuildings were fine. And we had a generator, which of course
hadn’t been fired up in years. We got
the last battery in the Valley, and with lots of help from friends, got it
running.
Neighbors and
friends were wonderful. We did gasoline
runs for each other, traded flashlights, lanterns, and batteries and generally
recreated a sense of community. More
distant neighbors were walking bottles of water to those in need and generally
checking on everyone.
The heavy smoke
from the California fires were the most depressing thing about the days after
the fire. Our solar lanterns couldn’t
get much of a charge, so were only good for a few hours each evening. We wound up wearing N95 masks with 3-layer
cloth masks on top of those. We watched
air particulates climb into the high 600s.
The phone calls
and texts were a deluge: people from all
over the country trying to get in touch and see if we were OK. The national media didn’t help – they showed
the same video clip over and over and repeatedly said that both Talent and
Phoenix were utterly destroyed; worse, they made it sound as if the fire was
ongoing. I had explained to one friend
that while it was awful, the bulk of Talent was intact; she said, “no, it’s
not! I saw it on TV!” One day, a Talent police car drove up (and
we’re not even in the city) to check on us – a friend in the Midwest had
emailed them to check on us – and the police took time out of their very busy
work to do just that. It was pretty
embarrassing.
We continued to
overnight in Ashland until Friday, and then, still without power, we came home
for good. The generator kept the
refrigerator running and we had battery power for light. If we saw a Pacific Power truck, we’d try to
approach, but they almost always got away before we could reach them. Finally getting to speaking range, we asked
how long they thought it would be – and they of course, had no clue and were
working 24/7 to restore power; the number of power poles destroyed was massive.
On Sunday, we went
to friends in Medford for showers and an early supper, wanting to get home
before dark. As we came again by Colver
Road into Talent, we saw a few house lights.
Then we saw streetlights! And
stores with lights! It was so
cheering. Like Christmas in
September. We never for a moment thought
the power restoration would persist, but we kept seeing lights as we got
further south. Then, the most miraculous
was that as we got over the railroad tracks to our house, even we and our
neighbors had lights!
After that, it was
cleanup, waiting for the air to clear, back to the pandemic and figuring out
how we could help those who’d lost everything, while having a renewed
appreciation for good neighbors.
note: This article
appeared on pages six, seven and ten in the June 2021 issue of the Talent
Historical Society Newsletter, The Historicale.