Walbridge fire devastates section of Mill Creek Road southwest of Healdsburg

Around 2:30 Sunday afternoon James Gore hung a right off Westside Road, just south of Healdsburg, onto Mill Creek Road.

The Walbridge fire continued its inexorable feast on the timber just beyond the ridges to the west and north. Helicopters ferrying buckets of water crossed low on the horizon.

“All of this,” said Gore, a Sonoma County supervisor, motioning to vineyards and redwood groves, “turns into a moonscape in about four miles.”

Wending north on Mill Creek, he waved to firefighting crews from Beverly Hills, then Culver City, and Santa Monica. Because their trucks were too big to get into the remote stretches of Mill Creek Road, they were engaged in structure defense: cutting lines, bulldozing fire breaks around vulnerable homes.

By the time Gore pulled his pickup into the 6000 block of Mill Creek, the scene was, indeed, apocalyptic: blackened guardrails, charred trees and many toppled creating a crosshatch of deadfall on the forest floor. Structures burned to their foundations, a world blanketed in grey ash.

Gore and his Ford F-150 have been a familiar site on this road since the Walbridge fire cut its cruel swath. By his estimate he’d seen 15 destroyed homes, “which means there are probably 50,” he said, cautioning that was a rough guess.

He noted that the Walbridge fire was now just over 51,000 acres, that California had been hit with 12,000 lightning strikes. “We talk so much about all these numbers,” he said. “You can lose sight of the fact that every one of the properties that have been lost was a sacred place for someone.”

“This is where we came to watch the sunset,” Gore said. “That was the house someone celebrated Christmas with their parents for the last time.”

He’d parked across from the entrance of 6600 Mill Creek. Standing sentinel at the entrance was a grove of a dozen ancient redwoods whose future is now uncertain. Gore had driven with Mark Menne to this spot earlier in the week, and surveyed the same damage. Menne’s house was gone.

“It was very emotional,” Gore said.

Four miles up Mill Creek Road, just past the community of Venado, Sherri Cooper Johnston’s house at 10150 Mill Creek lay in smoldering ruins. But Cooper was in superb spirits, all things considered.

Ironically, Venado, historically the wettest place in the county, was ravaged by the flames.

Since losing the property Tuesday night, she’d been worried sick about her six horses. Around 1 p.m. Sunday, they were all accounted for, although one of them had suffered burns to its legs, chest, nose and face.

“If I sound happy,” she said, “it’s because I just got them all to safety.”

Frantic with concern, she’d hiked in four miles to her property on Thursday. That’s when she saw her home, now leveled. But she also found two of her horses in a neighbor’s yard. After fashioning a lasso from some singed twine, she rode that horse out, leading the other.

Asked if she expects the full weight of her loss to hit her soon, she replied, “I don’t really think so. I’m going to be solution-oriented about everything. I still have chickens up there, and I’ve got get them food and water. They’ve been very thirsty.”

Like so many in the mandatory evacuation zones, Herman Hernandez Sr. played an excruciating waiting game on Sunday. He sat in a hotel room in Santa Rosa, waiting to hear whether his spread on Sweetwater Springs Road, which has been in his family since 1952, was in the clear.

The most dire peril seemed to have passed. But the possibility of rogue winds and new lightning strikes made it too early to feel any relief.

“It’s like when a parent or family member is in the hospital and you’re sitting in the waiting room while the operation is going on. You want it to be completed,” Hernandez said.

“Things look OK right now,” he said around 2 p.m., “but that’s just right now.”

Back on Mill Creek Road, Gore drove farther west, pulling over beside the driveway of a friend. “He asked me to check on his place,” the supervisor said.

The main house was owned by a man who asked that his name not be used, citing privacy concerns. Getting to that building entailed a steep, uphill mile hike. On the way, Gore spied a fawn amidst the charred trees. “Well that’s a hopeful sign,” he said.

A quarter mile up the road was a dead doe. She appeared to have suffocated. “That’s probably the mom,” Gore said.

“It’s gone,” he said, upon arriving at the main house. All that remained standing was a chimney. Roof tiles had fallen — some of them in neat rows — atop the rest of the rubble.

Before heading back down the hill, Gore scooped some ash in his right hand and rubbed it into his ballcap, which he intended to give to the owner of the house.

“Que Dios te bendiga,” he said, to no one, while rubbing the ash into the hat. “May God bless you.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.