"Fires in the Mountains: A Burning Call for Change"

In 2020 the Sequoia Complex Fire came within 300 feet of our beloved home we had just purchased the previous December. This devastating blaze ravaged over 174,000 acres of California’s cherished Sequoia National Forest and beyond. It managed to destroy the entire community of Cedar Slope. An adorable little cabin community where many families had cabins that had been passed down through generations. The community of Sequoia Crest while not completely destroyed also lost the majority of the homes and cabins within its charming Giant Sequoia dotted landscape. There was only one road into Sequoia Crest which made it very difficult and dangerous for firefighters to go into the community to try and save the cabins that were going up in flames.

Fire climbing up a young Giant Sequoia

The Sequoia Complex Fire burned through portions of the Sequoia National Park, home to some of the world’s oldest and largest trees. The giant sequoias, which have stood for thousands of years, are known for their resilience to fire due to their thick bark and towering height. However, the intensity of the Sequoia Complex Fire surpassed what these ancient trees were evolved to withstand. Tragically, it’s estimated that as many as 10-14% of the world’s mature giant sequoias were destroyed. The towering majesty of giant sequoias have always held a special place in my heart. These magnificent trees, some of which have stood for thousands of years, seem almost otherworldly in their grandeur. Visiting their groves has always been a humbling experience, as if stepping into a sacred cathedral of nature. Their resilience, their sheer size, and their role as silent witnesses to millennia of history make them not just trees but living legends. For those of us who revere these trees, it felt like losing old friends.

Before we went to bed the night before we were evacuated, we checked and the fire was still eleven miles away from our home. We felt like we were still safe, eleven miles is a lot of land to cover. Unfortunately the fires got so hot that night that they created a heat tornado. Large pieces of flaming debris were thrown up into the air and started landing on mountain tops in the area between our home and the fires. The fire spread rapidly as these large embers ignited the dry brush and trees that they landed in. The next morning I woke up and went to take the dogs out for their morning run on the property and I was shocked to find large pieces of hot bark, charcoaled embers, and ash everywhere. I found a piece of bark on our property that was about 2' long by 6" wide and about two inches thick that had flown through the air to land on our property from the fire that was burning so far away.

Within about one hour we heard some noise going on outside. It was the Sheriffs department driving up our street with Megaphones telling everyone they must evacuate immediately that the fire was on it's way! We had so many pets, some that were feral cats who I had no chance of capturing that for a few moments we considered staying to protect our property and animals. Once you evacuated the area they would not allow you to come back so if we left we knew it might be the last time we ever saw our beloved mountain home. The smoke was now on a mountain top visible from our home so we decided that we had to pack quickly, take all the animals we could, and head to my parents property where we luckily had a place to stay with our animals for the almost two weeks we were evacuated.

The only way we had to see what was going on with the fire was to watch satellite images of the fire maps. All you see is little flame logos where the fire was burning. As they flame logos started to make a U around our home I was just positive that we had lost it all. This went on for about one week, then the flame logos started to move toward the mountain that we could see from our home. On the other side of that mountain was the small mountain town of Three Rivers. In order to save that town they decided to do a back burn on that beautiful mountain. We heard from neighbors who had stayed to fight for their home that it was quite a magnificent site to see as fire was started from the top of the mountain and the bottom and the whole thing went up in flames.

My husband had gotten permission to go up to the home to check on our animals and put out some food about one week before we were allowed to come back. When he arrived he heard a bunch of commotion on our back deck and suspected thieves on our property, when he turned the corner there was an entire herd of deer hanging out on our back deck. Deer in California are not as proliferous as they are here in Georgia. To see deer was something special and rare. They had taken refuge on our property as they ran from the fires. Here they were able to find water and they devoured just about every plant that I had planted, even tomato plants which deer are supposed to hate. As sad as I was to come back to see this, I was so thankful that my abundant gardens had given them nourishment during such a horrible time.

After two long torturous weeks we were allowed to come home. We had no idea what condition our home or property would be in when we returned. We were very fortunate, our property and our home stood as we had left it. Granted it was covered in ash and lots of pieces for debris everywhere, but it was standing. Having solid knotty pine unpainted walls inside the home created a bit of a challenge as the wood had absorbed all the smoke smells. The smoke was still strong in the air from the fires still smoldering a short distance away, I almost suggested we head back down the hill and wait out the fires till they were out because it was so hard to breath, But we toughed it out. I filled every air purifier I had with homemade charcoal packets, plugged in air fresheners throughout the house, and in about two weeks the house started to finally not smell so strongly of smoke. Thank goodness! My only other resort would have been to paint all the pretty wood in our Cabin like home.

One of the Beautiful Manazanita trees that got plowed in the fire line.

The fire logos we had seen from the satellite images were pretty much all of the beautiful forest across the street from our home. Right across the street was Sequoia National Forest land where I loved to go walking, or off-road adventuring often. My first walk up that little forest road was so heartbreaking...they had plowed over all of the beautiful trees and chaparral that lined the path. There were a few trees that were especially dear to me and to see them plowed over just broke my heart. One Manzanita tree in particular was a huge beautiful specimen that was very very old. They grow very slowly and this thing was probably 30' wide so it appeared very old. I found it broken to bits in the middle of the plowed area. Sadly the fire break that they made never actually completely burned so all of the plowed trees and chaparral just sat there as piles of what it used to be for the rest of the time we lived there. The mountain that we looked at every day was black and bare. It was pretty scary because we had rocks on our property that were probably 25' across that you know had to have fallen off of that mostly rock mountain and they had just burned all of the chaparral that held things in place. I was so scared for the rains to come and the potential for deadly landslides with rocks the size of houses tumbling down that hill.

Even with all the destruction we were so happy that our property had survived for the most part untouched because the road we lived on had been the fire line where they fought desperately to keep it from heading down the hill into the populated area of Springville.

The Sequoia Complex Fire served as a wake-up call for California and the nation. It underscored the urgent need to address the root causes of increasingly catastrophic wildfires, including climate change, unsustainable land management practices, and urban development encroaching into wildfire-prone areas.

Efforts have since been made to restore the affected areas and protect what remains. Controlled burns, forest thinning, and replanting initiatives are now seen as essential steps to reduce future fire risks. Additionally, there is growing recognition of the importance of traditional Indigenous land stewardship practices, which emphasize living in harmony with natural fire cycles.

As we continued to live there for two more years and were surrounded by at least four fires a year we just started to feel that climate change had made our area too risky to live in. I used to LOVE thunder and lightening but because the summer storms were what started the majority of the blazes, I began to feel fear when a storm came toward the mountains. As a Realtor I started to see the big insurance crises happening. People started getting kicked off of insurance plans they had had for many years and were being forced to sign up for the California Fair Plan which often cost 4-5 times as much as what they were used to paying. This caused many people to struggle as they could not afford to insure their homes at those rates. It was at this point that we decided it was time for a change. We had lived pretty much in solitude up on the mountain and we knew that as long as we had each other and our animals we could be happy just about anywhere. That is when the search began for our next mountain Paradise.