What a day.

Scary, frantic and tragic.
How was your day?

The day started about 6:00 with a call from the in-laws saying there were fires burning all around Esparto. I turned on the news and listened as they showed the flames racing through the hills of Zamora, Yolo and up the valley near Capay.

I started calling the people I knew in those areas and asked if they needed help getting animals out or moving equipment. Everyone said that the fire burned around most of their houses but I could not get in touch with our friends in Zamora. I knew the fire department would have the roads closed so I tried to get around through the back roads to no avail. I was held at Interstate 505 and Road 14. I asked the CHP if I could go through to check on my friends, they are in their 70s and their son is on the fire department so I knew he would out fighting the fire in the hills and wanted to check on the home ranch. He said I would have to wait until the fire fighters gave the go ahead and I sat there on the off-ramp for 30 minutes.

When he let me sneak through, what I saw was terrible. Blackened hills in 360 degrees. I drove past the smoldering remains of a barn and saw the cattle huddled in the tiny oasis of an unburned creek bed. When I saw the first of the dead sheep I knew there would be more, and there were. From the road I could see half a dozen dead ewes and many more that would not make through the day. Their wool was gray or black and the sheep stood frozen, in the sea of blackened grass, their rounded forms the only feature on the fire ravaged hillsides.

When I made the turn to Bill's house I was relieved to see it was standing and appeared to have made it through the fire. I knocked on the door and was greeted by Bill and Joan. They told me of the night they had just endured, watching the flames march over the hills down to their house. Bill had been on his caterpillar most of the morning, pulling his disc and trying to make the existing fire break bigger. He looked tired, dirty and a little shaken. Who could blame him.
With the help of the local volunteer fire departments, he had saved the house and the home barn, but knew he had lost dozens and possibly hundreds of sheep, and a most of the rangeland he would use to feed them over the winter was now acres of black.

After seeing that they were safe, I was going head into work. When I walked back out to my truck I saw a small fire along the road side ditch across from the barn. I went back to tell Bill and he said that they had no water hoses on that side of the barn and their phone was still out. Back in the truck I raced back to the freeway to get help. I pulled up as the Zamora tanker truck was pulling out, I told the guy with the radio that the barn was minutes from going up in flames. He asked, 'are you sure the barn is threatened?'
Yes! I said and sped back to the fire.

The water tanker arrived just as I did and while it is not a fire fighting vehicle, it does the two things you need to put out a fire, water and a hose. The hose isn't that long but with Bill's help we were able to knock down the flames before the fire made it to the barn. We were about 75 feet from the barn, so maybe it wasn't that close a call, but it was more excitement that I want to have from long time. The call must have gone out, because as we were mopping up, the cavalry arrived. Two brush rigs and five or six volunteers from Zamora and Yolo went into action and took over. I was glad to get out of the way.

Finally I was off to work, a few hours late and smelling like a campfire I pulled in to find one of the overhead shelters had lost it's roof. I spent the rest of the morning making sure that nothing else would fly off in the 40+ mile an hour wind. After lunch I received a call from my wife, she had taken our truck and horse trailer up to Bill's to move some his sheep that had been let out by someone from their burning pasture into a neighbor's alfalfa field. They were not burned but they had to be moved off the alfalfa before the rich feed made them bloat and possibly die. To make a long day a little longer, the truck had lost oil pressure and my wife had pulled over at same overpass I had waited on earlier that morning. I told my co-worker I would be back Monday and headed out to check on my wife and the truck.

Not good news, the motor is definitely not long for this world. I had to find a place to unhook the trailer, so I limped the truck to Bills ranch. I parked the trailer and waited for the towtruck.

While waiting I ran into the UC Davis Veterinary Emergency Rescue Team. I spoke with the team leader, I can't remember the gentleman's name, but he had taken a group of vet students out to triage and tend to the sheep they could save. The stunned and burned sheep would not move to water and they called for a water truck from Zamora to take water out to where the sheep were. They had water but needed something to put the water in. I told them, if they couldn't find any near by, I had two 6 foot water troughs back at my barn. They said they could use them, so I gave them directions to my place and told them to take anything that they wanted. I pulled in to my house just as they were leaving, and I wished they good luck with the sheep.

In a day of tragedy and suffering, there are bright spots. Bright spots in many forms. Help from strangers and friends, help from a group of vet students and as I was pulling out of Bill's front yard, the Yolo County Red Cross stopped by to offer any assistance they could.

Many long and hard days face those farmers and ranchers in Yolo County who were impacted by this fire. As the news turns to a new story tomorrow, there will be people who will have to make the best of this tragedy. It will not be easy. They need your prayers, and some hay to feed their livestock this winter.

I just walked back into the house from feeding the horses. I think I will reheat last night's left-over mexican food and collapse into bed.