The summer of 2007 may very well be remembered as the year the West caught fire.
As with so many of the Sweetwater columns, this one is once again dedicated to our firefighters and, accompanied with a gigantic thank you, from all of us here in Topaz Ranch Estates. Because of your coordinated and dedicated efforts, the residents of TRE were able to go to sleep in their own beds last Friday night instead of huddled in a shelter wondering if their homes made it through a fire storm or if they were one of the casualties like the recent Angora fire. Thank you all so very much.
I was sitting at my desk in The Record-Courier, the scanner just out of arms' reach, at 1:45 p.m. last Friday. Engrossed in the calendar, letters to the editor, birth announcements and proof-reading the Sunday edition, I heard the first words, "smoke rise, possible lightning strike, Sleeping Elephant Ranch, the call for equipment from stations 4 and 5," and through the daily commotion of telephones, separate conversations passing back and forth through the editorial department, my attention became focused on the scanner.
From often garbled words I could hear on the scanner and competing office clatter, words like "Quail (Run) Way," "inaccessible," "call for helicopter support," "incident command at the end of Quail Way." I knew exactly where the fire was and just how close it was.
At first, reported as a slow-moving grass fire of approximately 4 acres, I envisioned the problem of getting crews and equipment to the fire and knew, for the most part, that the fire would probably have to burn toward them before they could really work on it without the much needed air support.
Competition for air support was high - lightning strikes had started a lot of fires, six alone in Washoe County - resources were stretched transparently thin. TRE was lucky, if you want to call it luck, as the amount of homes possibly threatened put our area near the top of the priority list for the much needed resources.
Units from all the East Fork Fire & Paramedic Districts were dispatched to our area as well as Nevada Department of Forestry, U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management with mutual aid from Mason Valley and other agencies. Air attack, a surveillance plane, circled overhead and predicted that the fire would not hold to the side of Wild Oat Mountain. Winds were going to drive it to the valley floor.
I reached TRE when the fire was still burning across the face of the mountain. I took a few pictures from my far away vantage point and went to the house to download them to the paper. I then returned to the fire. In the short time it had taken me to download the first pictures, the fire had taken its hold on the valley floor and was raging in a wall of angry red toward Highway 208. I remember looking around me at all the cars along the roadside and all the people watching the fire, thinking, "What are you doing here just watching this? You should be home getting your affairs in order and preparing to get out of here. This is a bad one."
I ran home to download pictures again and was heading back to the fire when I was told that Albite and Granite were being evacuated. In "crow fly distance" that wasn't far away from our house. The fire had spotted across Highway 208. Faced with that dreaded "evacuation" word once more in my life, I started getting the important papers and things that needed to be taken if I had to go. I prayed that our photographer, Sarah Hall, had made it past the fire lines for pictures as I was now in personal survival mode.
Then the miracle happened. One minute I was looking to the south and I could see the flames from our house and then, in what seemed like just a few minutes more, the flames were gone and the smoke, that had once obscured the Sweetwater Range from view, had thinned enough to reveal a faint outline of the mountain range. What I didn't know at the moment was, an air drop of slurry, accompanied by a massive water drop from a Black Hawk helicopter and a monumental ground attack, stopped the flames as they came within approximately 30 feet of the Arden Square complex, Topaz Joe's, Nevada Trading Co. and the newly renovated East Fork Station 4 on Albite Road. The erratic, fickle winds were also pushing the fire back onto itself and to the south toward Topaz Lake on the southern perimeter.
For one couple, now newlyweds Lee and Cyndie Gahimer, personal interests centered around the survival of Topaz Joe's. They were to be married at Deb Quatrochi's TRE home with the reception to follow in the covered patio at Joe's on Saturday. Lee had been working for several weeks doing repairs and general cleanup on the patio and now it was a very distinctive and might I add, festive "slurry red-orange." Thanks to the protective measures, the slurry was a beautiful sight compared to the alternative of charcoal and the reception went on as planned after a hurried mop-up. Now there is a wedding memory for you.
Just goes to prove that like our wonderful firefighters, we in TRE just keep on keepin' on.
-- Jonni Hill can be reached through The Record-Courier at jhill@recordcourier.com or by calling 782-5121, ext. 213, or after hours at JHILL47@aol.com
