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Silver fire: ‘God, I’m gonna die,’ survivor kept thinking

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Andrew Schrader and his wife had just raced home to escape the advancing Silver fire when they saw the smoke come up over a nearby ridge.

Before he knew it, his wife was yelling: “The fire’s across the street!”

He looked out the window of his Twin Pines home Wednesday to see a wall of flames racing down his neighbor’s property.

The destructive Silver fire had caught up with them.

“I was already trapped. The fire was all around us...I had to lay down my briefcase, go outside, and start the hose going,” Schrader said.

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He watered down everything he could think of -- the roof, his front yard, even the back end of his cars.

He opened the gate to let his terrified horses out, and continued spraying.

Flames suddenly appeared on a hillside on the other side of his driveway. Then his motor home, equipped with a full tank of propane, went up in flames that billowed 40 feet into the air, Schrader said.

“I could feel the heat and I kept thinking ‘God, I’m gonna die.’”

The explosive heat singed fruit trees just feet from his house, melted the top off his dumpster and burned giant holes into his plastic horse feed bins.

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His home, though, survived.

“The fire just blew past us. I don’t know how,” Schrader said.

He was among the lucky. As of Friday, the Silver fire had seriously burned one civilian, injured at least five firefighters, and scorched 16,000 acres. One business and 26 homes had also burned.

But not Schrader’s.

When he finally went to bed that night at midnight, he couldn’t sleep. Everywhere around, there were embers -- remnants from the battle he’d just somehow won with what at the time was an out of control wildfire.

“When the wind came up, it was all glowing in the dark.”

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christine.maiduc@latimes.com

Twitter: @cmaiduc

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