Destruction

Believe it or not, the Rim Fire is still burning but no structures are threatened anymore. It's 84% contained and expected to be fully contained by October 1st. There are still 945 firefighters there working this blaze, but there were were over 5000 when the fire was at its peak.

We were at the hideaway this past weekend and drove out on Highway 120 past Groveland towards Yosemite, near where it started. Here are a few of the sad views we saw. It's unfathomable to understand how big this thing actually got.

Driving along Highway 120 east of Groveland.




The next 6 photos were all taken at the Rim of the World Vista Point.
As far as the eye can see and much much more was burned.





Besides being able to see how much damage this fire has done, the most jolting thing was the smell. It didn't smell like the wonderful scent of a campfire. Maybe my mind was playing tricks on me and maybe I was being sensitive, but it smelled like something old or something dead. It had been a month since the fire was in this area and the smell was still strong.

But all of the structures that we saw along the side of the road were still standing.
This is a terrible photo, but you might be able to see a few burned pine trees behind this motel. It came so close, but the firefighters did what they had to do to save it. So amazing.

And there were signs everywhere thanking the firefighter and the law enforcement.
It truly is an amazing thing about the human spirit how we come together to help each other and to support and show our gratitude for those who give everything to help others. I know our small community and the surrounding towns had pot lucks for the firefighters, brought them goodies and food and beverages and even local businesses gave firefighters a free spot to rest their weary bodies.

Video from the highway:


Video from Rim of the World Vista Point:

75% Contained

Good news regarding the fire...it's 75% contained and as of noon today, the advisory evacuation for our community has been lifted.
But there is a part of this map that kind of concerns us. That line of red closest to Mi-Wuk Village and Long Barn. We're thinking it's a backfire, but that's just a guess. Jimmy's brother, the one who comes up every summer with his 3 boys, has a close friend who has a cabin inside that perimeter. It looks like that part hasn't burned, but when we looked closer on the maps, it seems like it got within just a few hundred feet from their home. This family's cabin is one of the founding families in this area and their family name is well known. It's kind of funny in a coincidental kind of way, that Jimmy's brother is good friends with one of the members of that family.

I spent the weekend taking snapshots of the momentos that I brought back with me. I'm glad I have digital images of these in case anything does go awry in the future. Some of these things I never really looked at since my mom died 15 years ago. I found letters of recommendations from her previous employers when she worked as a cook, housekeeper and nanny for American military families in Manila. I found the letter that the founder of Apple Valley sent to her to request her visa application that started the process of her coming to the United States. I found my mom and dads wedding invitation. Turns out this whole time I had the date of their wedding wrong by 2 days!!
Among the hundreds of things I copied were my parents citizenship and naturalization certificates. My dad was 38 years old and my mom was 66. That newspaper article is from 1969 and my dad is in the background as the bartender at the Apple Valley Inn. And of course I had to share a postcard from Jimmy early on in our relationship when he went to Paris and London after graduating from high school. It's dated July 1986. (If you noticed the address, no we weren't married yet, just silly teenagers in love and already knew that we were going to get married after college.)

Everything Will Be Ok in the End. If It's Not Ok, It's Not the End.

I just read that quote on a facebook friend's photo and I'm trying to take that saying to heart. The firefighters have created a couple of "contingency line construction in advance of the communities in the Highway 108 corridor." Our hideway is in that corridor. Basically that means more lines of defense.

The Rim Fire grew overnight another 20,000 acres, but it's a little more contained. It's an odd notion for me, as a layperson, to have it still growing that much, yet be more contained.. Oh, now I get it. I just didn't think it through before I wrote that. What really matters is that our community continues to be protected as much as it possibly can be.

Here's a cool animated gif I found at Mother Jones.
It shows how quickly the fire grew and how it's still growing, but nothing like it had been.

They've extended the Evacuation Advisory to Pinecrest Lake.
We were there a month ago with The Crew.
I'm in the Zodiac with the rest of the adults towing the canoe with Jimmy and the younger kids, towing the oldest nephew on his surfboard. It's a no-tow lake. We like to see what we can get away with. heehee, just kidding. What they actually mean by 'no-tow' is no recreational tubing. We're just towing from the dock to our little cove on the other side of the lake. We've done this for 6 years and no one has stopped us. We're going very slow.

Jimmy and I did this ride on our ATV last year. 80% of where we were is now ash. Everything from the 1 minute mark, along with the hills in the background, are gone.


These cows were probably displaced. They're less than 1/2 a mile from the fire in this video. Those hills in the background are all gone.

Thankfully, the community has made a big effort to find places for cattle to be kept till the fire is over. There are various ranches that have opened their land for people to take their horses, cows, goats, etc. And the Red Cross shelter allowed you to bring your house pets.

Inciweb and My Motherlode have been good sources for fire updates.

Rim Fire

So. I suspect everyone knows about the Rim Fire near Yosemite that's burning out of control, right? Well, it started near Groveland, a small community on Highway 120 that goes to Yosemite. It's pretty far from our hideaway and we never would have thought we'd be threatened by it. There was just too much land between them and us for it to even get close. Well, as you probably know, the size of the fire grew exponentially and by Friday morning, it was within 8-10 miles from our cabin.

This was our regular weekend to go up. We left San Francisco after dinner Thursday night and expected to get there around 10:30pm. On the drive up, as we split away from Highway 120, we were able to see a shockingly huge orange glow in the distance to our right. But we still didn't realize how close it was to our place.

We started smelling smoke, but just thought that the wind was blowing the smoke in our direction, so of course we would smell it.

We got to the hideaway, the smell was very strong. But it was nighttime, so we couldn't see any evidence aside from some ash on the driveway. We had to open the windows because it was warm, but closed them before going to sleep because we had read that the air quality was unsafe and all windows should be kept closed during the duration of the fire.

When we woke up, we were shocked at how brown and gray the sky was. I called my cousin who was suppose to come up later that day with her family for a fun weekend on the boat and ATV. It was still early, so I was still convinced that the smokey haze was just that and not that it was close enough to actually be a worry. I told her they could still come up, but I was very concerned about them breathing the smoke, and that we wouldn't be able to go out on the boat or ATV. We decided it would be best to postpone our fun weekend for another time.


In the meantime, Jimmy left for a meeting at the water company and I read more about the fire online, realizing it was closer than I had thought...
Less than 10 miles from our cabin. Logically, I knew it was very unlikely to hit us because this community is relatively large, around 4500 homes in our and other nearby communities. I knew that the firefighters would do everything to save the homes and keep the fire away from this area. But I also know that fire has a mind of its own and wind plays a major role in what will happen. So I took video of all of our valuable possessions in case the worst happened and we needed that information for insurance.
And I started taking photos of as many momentos as I could. I have boxes of letters and cards Jimmy and I sent each other over the years. It would be sad if we lost the physical pieces of paper, but at least I've captured digitally what we wrote to each other.

Ashes collecting on our car, less than 15 hours after we got here.

There was a community town hall meeting at 2pm. We went with our neighbor, who is a retired Forest Service Firefighter, so he has a lot of experience and knowledge on what was happening.
I was surprised at how many people where there. All the seats were filled and several people had to stand. We guessed there were over 300 people there. They gave us a briefing of what was happening. Explained what the different evacuation terms meant and what we'd need to do if we received one. They let us know that the local fire department maintains a defensible space of clearing surrounding the town. And that there were over 1500 firefighters there to protect our homes and fight the fire. (As of this post, there are over 3000 firefighters working on this blaze.)

Afterwards, we left with our firefighter neighbor and drove towards Toulumne so he could get an eye on what the smoke was doing.
He was careful to say anything specific but he did express concern.
I took a few snapshots from the backseat.

You can see how dry the brush is, feeding fuel for the fire.

Here's a short video I took during the drive:


I didn't feel like making dinner, so we drove down to Sonora to pick something up. When we got back, we realized that our town had received an Advisory Evacuation Warning. That basically means that you don't have to leave yet, but get your emergency supplies and most treasured valuables near the door or in the car. If you receive an Mandatory Evacuation Order, you need to leave now and won't have time to collect your things. While I evaluated what to take back to San Francisco with us, Jimmy went over to the neighbors to get a little more information. We decided to wait till the morning to leave.

We both woke up early from the thick smell of smoke. We did a little research and it hadn't spread as much overnight as it had the past few days. But we still planned on leaving that day. I packed up 3 small boxes of our most important momentos. Just the rest of our letters and 2 boxes of my parents momentos. But we had to leave so much behind.
These are just some of the precious personal things we had to leave behind, not to mention all of our furniture, the boat, the ATV and the cabin itself that has been the source of so many of our most treasured memories.

While we were packing up the car, the neighbor came over and mentioned that the smoke coming from the area he was most concerned about looked a little bit better. Since we have faith in his expertise, we left feeling a little more hopeful. But we also know that winds can pick up and change things in the blink of an eye.

An assembly of firefighters gathered in our town for what looked like a briefing. We are so grateful for all of them, risking their lives to save ours and our homes.