I can sympathize, first-hand, with those who lost their homes

As the ashes cool and the fire subsides from the Angora Fire in South Lake Tahoe, more than 200 families will be returning to sift through the rubble, retrieving the bits and pieces of what remains of their mementos. We can all only imagine the pain they will go through. It takes those of us who have experienced it personally, to truly understand how it feels to loose all the small irreplaceable things that mean so much. Furniture, clothing, appliances and the like, are all eventually replaceable. Not so for the baby pictures, family heirlooms and other things of sentimental value that insurance can't begin to compensate.

For all of us who choose to live in a mountain atmosphere and, often times, in remote areas, like I have done, the thought of disaster scenarios often enter the imagination, such as the catastrophic Lake Tahoe event that began on June 24. But, our human failing tends to dismiss these possibilities with an attitude of, "disasters happen to other people and not to ourselves." I, for one, was very guilty of that thought process.

A disaster, like what is now playing out in the Angora fire, has long been predicted for the Tahoe Basin. The conditions were right and now it's a reality.

I have lived with "Angora fire" possibilities most of my life. Being raised in Pollock Pines, Calif., I remember learning what the word "evacuation" meant at a very young age.

I was 8 years old when the Ice House fire started Oct. 29, 1959, from slash piles being burned at the base of the dam that was being built to create Ice House Reservoir in the El Dorado National Forest. I can remember going out on the school playground for recess in a rain storm of hot embers falling from a fire almost 16 miles away. Then rumors of evacuation echoed through the small community but never came true for us as they managed to stop the advance of the fire some 3 miles from Pollock Pines. For a little 8-year-old, the nightmares from an imagination gone wild took a long time to go away.

In 1984, I moved to a remote place in the El Dorado National Forest, the historic Van Vleck Ranch. The 136-year-old, seven bedroom, two-story ranch house was considered the queen of the high country ranches located in the El Dorado. Once standing in the middle of 2,338 private acres, access to the ranch was 6 miles up a narrow dirt road from Ice House Road and just three miles from the Desolation Wilderness western boundary. No telephone, kerosene lamps for light, propane heat for water and cooking, it was camping in grand style and I loved it there.

This was all to end May 19, 1992, when a chimney fire took the main house and all the surrounding historic outbuildings leaving only the bunkhouse built by the Van Vleck family in the 1940s. The thought of a house fire always gnawed at my subconscience but I had always tried to dismiss the idea. Now it was a reality.

I was there at the ranch with a friend of mine. There we were, two women alone, to put things away and get the ranch ready for our Memorial Day weekend opening of the pack station we ran at the ranch. We had been brought to the ranch by another friend and left there without a vehicle. It was chilly so we started a fire in the wood stove.

My friend was the first to notice the fire when she noticed smoke billowing from the eaves outside the front door. A million things flashed through my mind as I ran from room to room, trying to find the most important things to save; photo albums were the first priority. I tried to open a window and throw them outside but years of paint had glued the window shut. My friend yelled at me to break the window. My first thought was I didn't want to damage the bubbled 100-year-old glass, then logic overcame stupidity, I realized it wasn't going to be there much longer anyway. I managed to save the albums, the plates and negatives to reproduce prints of all my drawings, two paintings I had done and a few more miscellaneous things before sparks, raining down from the ceiling, told me I could no longer stay in the building. I remember standing in the living room one last second to mentally say good-bye to things I knew I would never see again, my grandfather's wood carvings, a doll collection I had since I was little, a multitude of treasured books; some irreplaceable.

We physically dragged the few saved items across the yard, beyond the barn and to the safety of an open area near the meadow by using my grandmother's rocking chair that I had thrown out the front door to get it out of my way.

Just then a small single engine plane flew overhead, circled and made a second pass, tipping its wings to acknowledge that he saw us. So, there we stood, out in the opening, waiting for help to arrive. All we could do was stand there as one by one, the buildings blew up in flames and burned to the ground, the release valve blew on two propane tanks with a horrible sound. Ammunition, that had been stored in the house, was sporadically exploding and the ricochets could be heard in all direction as we waited for the help that never came. The pilot of the plane had the location about two degrees off, sending any help about 10 miles away.

As darkness fell, we decided to walk to Robbs Resort, and the help we needed, 7 miles away. The rest is more or less history now.

After the fire, we stayed in the bunkhouse for the rest of that summer where I had to see a daily reminder of the tremendous loss, both on a personal level and that of historical significance.

Then on Sept. 29, 1992, a huge column of smoke appeared off to our southwest as the Cleveland fire grew from a 5-foot patch to a fire storm in a matter of minutes. By the next morning, we had to evacuate 30 head of horses and mules, a dozen ranch cats and two dogs, as well as what little personal effects we still owned. I couldn't believe it was happening again.

That fire came within a couple of miles of the ranch property, but not before consuming 22,485 acres, 41 homes and other out-buildings (including the historic lookout tower and forest service buildings at Big Hill, near Ice House Reservoir) and worst of all, the loss of one air tanker and its two-man crew.

Do I know what these people in Lake Tahoe are thinking and feeling right now? I absolutely do. It has been almost 15 years since the fires and I can still see it, hear it and smell it when I close my eyes, all rekindling the fearful feeling in the pit of my stomach. I try not to dwell on it very often but events like the Angora fire, bring all the memories back. After all this time, I still go to look for something, then when I can't find it, try to remember; was it before or after the fire that I last saw what I was looking for?

At first, I had to struggle to remember that I really was grateful to just be alive. Years have passed and it is easier to put the nightmare in the past but bad dreams still haunt me occasionally. I still have a tremendous fear of fire that causes me to sniff the air to the point of hyperventilation at the first scent of smoke. That is something that will probably never leave me.

It may be a trite thing to say but, time does heal the pain and through the years I have learned what is truly important, what really matters and the most important thing of all - something all who have lost everything in this fire will learn too; I've learned to keep on keepin' on.

-- Jonni Hill can be reached through The Record-Courier at jhill@recordcourier.com or by calling 782-5121, ext. 213, or after hours at JHILL47@aol.com