FIRE...!!!

(written on September 24th, 2011) I really can remember it like it was yesterday. 

I awoke to noise in the front room of our house on 2nd Avenue.  We had been in school for about three weeks at Mt. George Elementary, at the corner of 2nd Avenue and Coombsville Road, in semi-rural Napa. We were about one mile from the city limits of Napa, which was near Silverado Junior High School. 

The hustle and bustle told me immediatley that something was wrong. As I walked into the living room from my bedroom in the back of the house, all I saw was an orange glow. Our large picture window was full of the glow of fire, fire in the hills just to the east of us.

During the night someone had set a fire, or fires that would engulf much of the eastern hills for five days.

A number of Mt. George and Silverado kids lived on upper Coombsville Road and the small lanes that branched off of it. As the day got brighter, we could see the hills burning. Eventually the fires would ring the hills that we called home. 

I had never seen my parents panic, this was as close as they had ever come. Dad had already propped a ladder up against the house and pulled the garden hose up. Though the roof was tar and gravel, they could never be over prepared, especially with their three precious commodities inside. 

We were surrounded on our two-acre ranchette by pasture, the only exceptions were the two footprints where the houses stood. (To this day, the "big house", as we called it, still stands, while the "little house" has been rebuilt into a modern day cottage, but using nearly the same footprint.)

My grandmother, Margaret Bartlow, and Uncle George, my mother's brother, lived in the "little house." Grandmother was taken to her daughter Aunt Babe's house in another part of Napa. Babe was my mother's half sister, from Grandmother's second marriage to Emery Shields in El Dorado County.    

Coombsville Road was the only access to the fire area, so for five days we heard the roar of fire engine sirens up and down the road. We could hear planes overhead that were probably full of either water, fire retardant, or both. They were hard to see cause of the smoke. 

At one point, the fires did approach a few ranches on North 3rd Avenue. When calls went out for volunteers, my Uncle George, who had fought fires in the woods, and an older cousin went over.

The day/night the fire started was a Thursday. I can't remember if we even went to school those days. I do recall that my father took one day off from his job at PG&E in Vallejo, and my mother took off a day from her work at Napa State Hospital. 

A few times over the five days, warm embers did drift over to our place. As a precaution, my father had turned on the sprinkler of the pasture land. The fires began to subside on the fourth day. Hard work by professional firefighters and volunteers saved the day and much of our semi-rural part of Napa.

There is still one large area of the hills that is barren: The fire got so hot it scorched the ground and killed it. Nothing will grow there. It is quite prominent on the drive up Coombsville Road.  

When a fire, or any other emergency breaks out, thank a firefighter for making the situation safe.

Tom Ontis is a Napa ex-patriate now living in Contra Costa County with wife Shelley, niece Kayla and five kittie cats.  He grew up on a two acre ranchette in Coombsville, east of Silverado Junior (now Middle) High School.