For Sonoma County fire evacuees, peril approached ’like a science-fiction picture’

The llama was out of luck when the Vesuvian smoke and the squawking of patrol-car sirens and a pervasive sense of peril Tuesday evening persuaded Brians Griffiths and Pete Pistochini to evacuate their country home in the hills between Guerneville and Healdsburg.

“My husband and I got out with the three dogs,” said Griffiths, whose philanthropic alter ego is Sister Frances A. Sissy of the Russian River Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. “There was no way to take our llama.”

Stuck in Griffiths’ mind on Wednesday was the unavoidably left-behind pet animal and the vision of the “enormous plume of smoke rising over up our house as we were leaving.”

The couple were among more than 15,000 residents of northwestern Sonoma County under evacuation orders or warnings Wednesday due to the lightning-sparked wildfires that broke out Tuesday in the coastal mountains west of Healdsburg and north of Guerneville.

Griffiths was grateful Wednesday for cellphone updates from Toney Prussiamerritt, a Palmer Creek Road neighbor who stayed on his property and was standing watch. A filmmaker, Prussiamerritt said from his home in the afternoon he was seeing plenty of smoke but no flame.

That was a marked improvement over earlier that morning, when the sight of fire prompted Prussiemerritt’s wife, Nancy, to take up the cat and leave.

“During the night, we were taking turns being on watch,” Toney Prussiamerritt said. “Even with binoculars, we couldn’t see the flames.

“But early in the morning, that changed,” said the filmmaker and retired City College of San Francisco film instructor. “It was like a science-fiction picture. Just a line of fire.”

With flames approaching from the northwest, he gave his wife, who works in sleep medicine at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa, and their cat a ride to their rural neighborhood’s bridge over Palmer Creek that can be walked across but not driven over pending the completion of a new bridge. It was that bridge situation that prevented neighbors Griffiths and Pistochini from trailering out their llama.

Toney Prussiamerritt says he wasn’t staying at his home to be heroic. Rather, he believed he has a good chance of defending it with all of the measures he has in place: a wide clearance of vegetation, 15,000 gallons of stored water, a gas-powered water pump and solar power with battery backup.

Prussiamerritt held his ground until Wednesday evening, when things on Palmer Creek turned abruptly from bad to worse.

“I had to evacuate in a mad, controlled dash to safety,” he wrote in a text. “I stepped onto my deck to get an update for my neighbor and was met by the sound of a freight train, the approaching fire, unseen, but heard.”

“It was time to go and none too soon.”

Closer to Guerneville on the night before, Tuesday, a telephoned evacuation order lit a fire under Herman J. Hernandez and his wife, Guillermina. Quickly, their daughter Daniela and son Herman G. were there to help them grab what they reasonable could, and get out.

“It was a hell of an experience,” said Herman J. Hernandez, a longtime community leader and real estate broker whose Sweetwater Springs ranch just south of Armstrong Woods State Park and Austin Creek State Recreation Area has been in his family since 1952.

No flames were visible but the sense of urgency was undeniable as the four members of the Hernandez family identified and packed out papers and items that the Guillermina and Herman senior were most eager to save.

Authorities “did the smart thing to start evacuating the very rural areas,” said the couple’s son. “It felt like the right thing do to.”

Herman Hernandez the younger said the evacuation of his folks went pretty well. “My only panic was my dad kept telling me to take tomatoes home and my mom kept asking me if I was hungry.”

Herman Hernandez senior said Wednesday from downtown Santa Rosa’s Hyatt Regency hotel that he and Guillermina headed out sometime after 8:30 p.m. and joined bumper-to-bumper traffic on River Road. They and many other evacuees got themselves instead onto Highway 116/Pocket Canyon Road.

Standing in a substantial line past bedtime at the Hyatt’s registration desk, Hernandez said, “Everyone I was talking to was from Guerneville. We knew each other.”

Fretful but philosophical, Hernandez said that on the bright side, “I just paid my fire insurance — it doubled.”

“What worries me most,” said Hernandez, who has witnessed a number of west Sonoma County fires large and small over 60-plus years but never before was forced to evacuate, “is that we’re just in the beginning stages of this fire period.”

“Now it’s in God’s hands.”

About midday Wednesday, renowned, Australia-born winemaker Daryl Groom and his wife, Lisa, were cleared by authorities to return briefly to their home in the Mill Creek area west of Healdsburg and of Westside Road. They’d complied with an order to leave Tuesday evening.

“They allowed us to come back and get a few things,” Daryl Groom said. He recalled the previous night’s evacuation being rather feathery.

“My lovely wife said, ’Wherever we’re going we’re going to load the 11 chickens into the car.’”

By Groom’s count, more than 20 friends offered to take him and Lisa. But the chickens limited the number of suitable hosts.

The Grooms ultimately were taken in by fellow Australian-American Mick Schroeter, the winemaker at Sonoma-Cutrer, and his wife, Linda, in Geyserville. On Wednesday, all hoped the winds would not grow strong.

“If they do,” said Groom, “as we know from previous experience, all hell breaks loose.”

Along Westside Road on Wednesday, dairy rancher and grape grower John Bucher and his neighbors at Bacigalupi Vineyards went about their while minding the hot, sometimes shifting breeze and scanning the skies to the west.

“It’s really going to depend on what the winds do,” Bucher said by phone. High among his concerns were his 1,400 cows.

“There’s no way you can evacuate those,” the dairyman/winegrower said.

Neighbor Pam Bacigalupi said around midday on Wednesday, “It’s a little more hopeful today than yesterday.”

Workers picked pinot noir grapes and watched for signs that it was time to defend the ranch.

“We’ve got some water trucks filled up,” Bacigalupi said. “We’ve got a Caterpillar with a blade on it.

“I’m watching the smoke all the time.”

You can contact Chris Smith at 707 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.