Flames Disturb Peace of Gold Country Retirees : Safety: Well-to-do residents had given little thought to the hazards of living among the pines and manzanita. The order to evacuate changed that.

Fred and Lois Mangini left the big city six years ago for this exclusive subdivision built behind gates in the rugged foothills of California’s Gold Country.

Living here, next to an 18-hole golf course, with a cafe on the green, a man-made lake and an equestrian center, they hardly noticed or cared that they were in fire country.

“Never did we think about the danger,” said Fred Mangini, 65, a retired Redwood City high school principal.

Before the Old Gulch fire forced their evacuation Wednesday afternoon, Mangini said, he and the other residents of this planned retirement community were “having too much fun” playing golf seven mornings a week and sharing barbecues to fret about nature.

They are part of a considerable influx of well-to-do retirees who have left the stresses of San Francisco and San Jose behind and turned the Gold Country gray. Calaveras County grew by 50% in the 1980s, much of that growth in the pricey golf course communities of Forest Meadows, Meadowmont and Blue Lake Springs.

Longtime residents derisively refer to them as “flatlanders” and the newcomers joke about rednecks spitting tobacco juice and toting shotguns.

“I blame our political leaders for letting them build in the jungle,” said Mike Tursic, a 35-year resident of Calaveras County. “You can’t change Mother Nature. This is fire country--it’s manzanita, it’s cedar, it’s pine. Now Mother Nature is having the last word.”

Sure, the newcomers worried about the drought and the bark beetles that had infested the cedar and pine trees, but there was still plenty of imported water to keep the fairways green and the artificial lake brimming.

“We came up because of the beauty and the great neighbors and the easy drive back to the Bay Area, where our children and grandchildren live,” Fred Mangini said.

“Never did we think about the dangers,” he repeated.

The Manginis were preparing for a cross-country trip in their big motor home on Wednesday when a Sheriff’s Department bullhorn blared that the then 4-day-old fire, which began outside of San Andreas, had arrived.

“You must leave right now,” officers said.

“It was the first time in my life when I’ve been involved in something where I didn’t have control,” Mangini said. “The first thing my wife said to me was, ‘Grab the photo albums.’ I said, ‘What about your jewelry and dresses too?’ She said it didn’t matter, get the baby pictures first.

“You really find your priorities fast in a situation like that,” he said.

Somehow, the big fire that charred more than 17,000 acres and forced evacuation of about 16,500 residents missed the Manginis’ four-bedroom home on Larkspur Lane, along California 4 above the town of Murphys.

It leaped over the highway late Wednesday and singed the fringe of Forest Meadows before moving north to Hathaway Pines.

Early Thursday, the Manginis and two of their sons, who had driven from the Bay Area to be with their parents, were sitting in the parking lot of Bret Harte High School in Angels Camp, one of two evacuation centers serving a total of 5,000 residents.

“We fell in love with this country when the kids were in high school,” said Lois Mangini, a retired primary school teacher. “We’d come up all the time and Fred and the boys would play golf.”

Even before their retirement in 1986, the Manginis had bought a piece of land in the Gold Country and planned to build. But the property was in heavy snow area, so they decided to buy a home lower on the mountain in Forest Meadows.

Up until now, life here has been pretty much everything they had hoped for. The only indication that nature might bite back was the successive winters of poor snowpack.

By late Thursday, not knowing the exact fate of his home, Mangini and his two sons traveled up California 4 past the Highway Patrol roadblocks. The redwood deck was covered with ash, but nothing else about his home had changed.

Mangini opened the garage door to check on his boat and the electric golf cart, making sure looters hadn’t struck.

He walked over to the main part of the house and kissed the redwood facade.

“To find it here untouched gives me a great sense of relief,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’m grateful to the people who saved my home, people I’ll never know.”