Abcarian: A family of four tried to outrun the firestorm. Only three made it
I drove as far as I could on Sweetland Road, a private dirt lane up a mountain in Redwood Valley northeast of Ukiah.
When I came upon two incinerated vehicles - Jon and Sara Shepherd's cars - I got out and walked the rest of the way. Soon I came upon the smoldering remains of the home the Shepherds built two years ago a mile and a half from the main road in this sparsely populated part of Mendocino County.
After all the catastrophic fire scenes this last week in Northern California - the scorched neighborhoods, the blackened fields, the desperate evacuees - I was still stunned by how unspeakably sad it was to come upon a perfectly intact black San Francisco Giants cap, sitting in the middle of the road.
It belonged to 14-year-old Kai Shepherd, who burned to death in this spot, yards from his home, early on Oct. 9.
As the Shepherds - Kai, his parents and older sister - frantically tried to drive to safety, their cars caught fire halfway down the mountain, forcing them to flee on foot.
It is hard to imagine their terror. Hurricane-force winds pushed a wall of fire, smoke and burning embers up their hill in a matter of minutes. On foot and unprotected, the four were soon overcome.
Kai's mother, Sara, and sister, Kressa, were saved by a neighbor, Paul Hanssen, who had survived the firestorm by locking himself in a metal trailer that he'd pushed against rocks on his property.
About 5:30 a.m., after Hanssen emerged, he heard the cries of the two women, both severely burned and clinging to life. They had been on the ground, incapacitated, for hours. He asked where Kai and his father were. “They both said they didn't know,” Hanssen told me.
Hanssen called 911. Another miracle: He got through.
“He got water for them from their water heater and squeezed it into their mouths with a towel,” said Mindi Ramos, Sara's sister. “He held them when they got cold. He assured them that help was coming. Kressa told him, ‘I just want to go to the hospital now.'?”
Just before help arrived, Hanssen thought he heard rescuers' radios, so he ran down the road. It was then that he found Kai's body, against an embankment, about 50 feet from his mother and sister.
Paramedics only had one stretcher, which prolonged the rescue. “As soon as they got there,” Ramos said, “my sister lost her grip on reality.”
After the first stretcher crew took Sara, Hanssen said, “one of the guys had the presence (of mind) to spread the same towel I had been using, to feed them water, on the boy.”
Later, he and another neighbor, Efren Turner, walked back up the hill and put a sheet over Kai's body. “We paused a moment with our hands on him, speaking solemnly, and praying for him,” Hanssen said. “We didn't feel right leaving him alone on the road up there. But the coroner/sheriff was there to get him within an hour.”
No one knew what had happened to Kai's father. Jon had become separated from his family. When Sara and the kids ran uphill toward their home, he'd run down toward the main road, collapsing before he got there.
Because he was closest to the main road, however, paramedics had found him first.
The second guessing and guilt that follow tragedies like this is almost too much to bear.
On Friday, I stopped to talk to Turner, who was cleaning up his property with a couple of friends. They wore respirators and were covered in soot.
When he saw the first flames about midnight Sunday, Turner said, he called several neighbors to alert them. Some didn't answer.
“I woke Jon up and told him there was a fire and he needs to get ready to leave and that I would call him if we needed to evacuate,” Turner told me, standing next to his burned-out truck.
Turner also woke his own farm crew, who lives in small cabins on his land. At one point, he said, he was watching the fire come toward him and said out loud, to no one, “If we leave now, we'll live.”
As he was driving out, he called Jon again. “I didn't explain the gravity of the situation clearly enough to him,” Turner said with regret. “They took too long.”
Kai Logan Shepherd appears to be the youngest person whose life was claimed by the fires that have ravaged Wine Country.
He was a shy eighth-grader at Eagle Peak Middle School. He loved the Giants and pitched in the Babe Ruth League. He was a wrestler, said his aunt, “stocky and strong, with a great big smile and wonderful dimples.” Recently, he had begun playing the sax in his school band.
Kressa is a junior at Ukiah High School. Her friends think she is a nerd because she loves hanging out with her parents.
Sara works at the Safeway in Ukiah, in customer service, which she loves, Ramos said. Jon is a carpenter and contractor who has worked for a powder coating business.
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