Terror Rules the Night as Fire Targets a Home

The Story So Far The Sierra wildfire has turned on its tail, fanned by a nighttime shift in the wind. Ray McCarty and his son manage a last-second escape with the help of an engine crew, but fire swallows up their house, trucks and prized hunting hounds.

Nearby, Norm Williams rants at firefighters who will not waste precious water on brush aflame at the road’s edge. Then he sees McCarty and remembers yet another neighbor. Both men look across the street: Beverly Brooks’ house is ablaze.

*

The life of the party, her friends call her. A drama queen, her sister says.

At 67, Beverly Brooks is slowing down--blame the emphysema and extra pounds--but she still possesses an intensity that seems outsized for a woman just 4-feet-11.

She gets obsessed with things. While others collect antiques, Brooks piles up boxes of them floor to ceiling, leaving paths for herself and her Chihuahuas: Jesse, Lola, Rita, Lillie and Juanita.

While others in these dry Sierra foothills worry about wildfire, Brooks has apocalyptic visions. One day, watching the John Wayne movie “The Searchers,” she shrieked to see a frontier family’s cabin set afire by Indians.

“Oh, my God! That’s my horrible fear!” Brooks told her friend Pamela Kappesser. “I can’t watch that. I’m going to die in a fire someday.”

A drama queen. If she really believed it, wouldn’t she keep the weeds in her pasture mowed? Wouldn’t she have someone clear the brush behind her house?

Friends nag her about those things.

You’re right, Brooks says. I’ll get to it.

*

It’s 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, and 84 degrees. Beverly Brooks awakens to an orange glow outside, like sunrise.

At the front door looms a man dressed for battle: helmet, goggles, gloves, neck shroud, soot-stained yellow pants and shirt.

Brooks, in a cotton nightgown and slippers, peers around him, her eyes widening. The pasture is a sea of flame. In the distance, Ray McCarty’s house is a bonfire.

She’d gone to bed hours ago, assured by friends that she was safe from the wildfire raging since Tuesday afternoon across the Sierra foothills. They’d told her the fire was blowing to the northeast, away from her.

“Please stay inside, ma’am,” the firefighter says. “We’re going to do our best to save your house.”

This is Capt. Darryl Sanford, a 27-year veteran with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. A tidy mustache and hair parted in the middle give him an old-fashioned, barbershop-quartet look. Friends know him as pleasant, unassuming. But on a fire, colleagues see another Sanford: intense, focused, the guy you want by your side when all hell breaks loose.

He and his firefighter, Will Krings, barely made it up here. Minutes earlier, they’d watched from their engine as flames from the thistle-choked pasture sheeted across Brooks’ 300-foot driveway.

They’ll never get through, Sanford thought. Then he noticed a pattern. When the wind blew hard, 15-foot flames leaned over the driveway. When it eased, the flames would straighten up and shrink down for a few seconds.

The fire was breathing.

On its next inhale, Sanford punched the accelerator and the truck bounced up the hill, flames licking the sides.

Now the men walk around the three-bedroom ranch, sizing it up.

The roof is metal and the lawn is mowed. Good. A half-dozen trees surround the house, including an enormous oak out front. Not good, but at least no branches hang lower than 15 feet.

The fire will race across the unwatered lawn, Sanford knows, but if they can keep it from jumping into the trees, they probably can save this house.

Krings heads left, around the garage. Sanford goes right, past the front door. The wildfire is pressing close, from both the pasture in front and a brushy draw to the left.

Hosing down some burning brush, Sanford gets his first hint that protecting this house won’t be a snap. As flames leap up into oily leaves overhead, he realizes this tree, and some of the others, are live oaks, which burn like kerosene-soaked torches.

He twists the nozzle to a straight stream and knocks the fire out of the tree, then walks around behind the house to see Krings having his own problems at the other end.

The strengthening wind is fanning flames up from the brush and into the trees. Krings opens his nozzle full bore, but the jet of water reaches just 10 feet before being knocked back by the wind.

And now Sanford sees something he’s never seen in 27 years. Flying sparks are normal in a wind-driven fire. But what’s shooting down from these trees is more like rain--liquid fire, pelting the house.

We may lose this one, Sanford thinks, hurrying back around the house to join Krings at the truck.

Stay or go? Sanford sees his answer through the breezeway. The back of the garage has started to burn. His engine’s 500-gallon water tank, full when they arrived a few minutes ago, has less than 100 gallons left, not enough if the garage catches on in earnest.

It’s time to abandon this house.

“Shut down the pump. Disconnect the lines,” he tells Krings. “I’m grabbing the lady. We’re taking her with us.”

Without knocking, Sanford strides into the living room.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry. I can’t save your house. You’ve got to come with me.”

Brooks recoils.

“No! What do you mean?”

“You’ve got to come with me. I can’t save your house.”

“No! My dogs!”

“We’ve got to go now.”

Brooks kneels by a coffee table and picks up one of the three Chihuahuas skittering underfoot. Sanford grabs the dog from her hand. She picks up another, and he takes that one too.

“WE GOTTA GO. NOW!”

“I can’t leave without Juanita!” she cries. The third dog bolts under another table, and Sanford brusquely flips the table over.

Then he glances toward the back. There’s fire in the kitchen.

Brooks must see it too.

“OK. Let’s go,” she says, standing up.

Outside, Krings is glad to see them come out the front door. In the two minutes since Sanford went inside, Krings has shut down the pump and uncoupled the hoses --and now the garage is fully ablaze.

Krings heads up the walkway. He’s within 15 feet of Brooks when a 30-mph blast of wind and flame shoots through the breezeway.

Thirty seconds earlier, they would have made it out easily. Now they’re caught in a blowtorch. The air fills with flame. Grass ignites. Krings dives over a fence and crawls toward the engine.

Brooks, terrified, darts around Sanford and back into the house.

Sanford turns and follows her, two dogs tucked under his arm.

There’s no time for him to explain that getting burned while dashing to safety is better than being incinerated inside. No time to argue against her panicked instinct: The world outside is burning, so I’ll stay here.

There’s time only for urgent instructions.

“We’ve got to get out of here now,” he says. “Get right behind me. I’ll block the flame.”

They try again, with Brooks at Sanford’s heels.

They make it onto the porch, and the wind gusts again, stronger than before. Flame swirls around them. Radiant heat pulses down from the tree above. One terrified dog twists from Sanford’s grasp, and as he bends to pick it up, he sees Brooks hurrying back inside.

Once more he follows, this time closing the door to keep the flames at bay.

They’re in the living room now. The power has gone out, but there’s plenty of light. The kitchen is filled with fire. Glass is popping, timbers are cracking. Overhead, Sanford hears the roar of fire in the attic. Above boxes stacked in the living room, he sees flames rolling across the ceiling.

Normally, a firefighter in a burning house would have a water hose, air pack and insulated clothing. Sanford wears only his wildland gear: thin Nomex shirt and pants, helmet, gloves. Brooks, in her nightgown, is even worse off.

“We gotta go out a window!” Sanford yells. A dark hallway lies to the right. Maybe it leads to a way out.

But Brooks is paralyzed by fear. Sanford drops the dogs and starts pushing her down the hall. She moves slowly, gasping for breath.

Sanford can hear Krings shouting outside, but he may as well be miles away. The truck’s hoses are disconnected, and no other engine can make it up the flaming driveway.

The hallway is heating up. Smoke is pooling overhead. As Sanford pulls a dust mask over his mouth, a stray thought stops him in his tracks: A few hours ago, during a lull in the fire, he did something he never does. He called home, just to chat with his wife.

Now he understands why. It was his chance to say goodbye.

Beneath swirling smoke, Sanford sees light at the end of the hallway --faint and orange, from the fire outside.

It means a window. It means escape.

He pushes the woman toward it. Beverly Brooks is fading fast, her emphysema aggravated by the smoke and the sheer terror of being trapped in a burning house. Sanford is getting lightheaded himself.

He herds her into a bedroom and slams the door behind them to buy time. Yes, there’s a window. The sill is high, about four feet up. It has a 4-foot-wide picture window in the center, bracketed by two sliding sections, each about 2 feet across.

It will be a heave to get Brooks out. Sixty-seven years old and just 4-feet-11, she’s a heavyset 145 pounds. But Sanford figures he can help her squeeze through one of the sliding windows, if first he can get her across the huge bed in the way.

He’ll have to try. Every other exit has been sealed by the wildfire rioting outside. Ten minutes ago, Sanford told Brooks he’d try to save her house. Now, with fire in the kitchen, attic and living room, they’re desperate to save themselves.

Brooks is no longer talking. She leans against the bed, gasping.

“We’ve got to go out that window,” Sanford yells.

No sooner does he say it than flames fill the window.

Their escape route is gone.

“Jesus help me!” Sanford cries.

He steps across the mattress to the window, slides open the left side and peers out. Wind-driven flames are eddying off the roof, circling down toward the ground and shooting back up along the outside wall.

Maybe they can make it after all, Sanford thinks. They’ll surely get burned, especially Brooks in her nightgown. But it beats staying put.

He clambers back over the bed and seizes Brooks’ shoulders. But she has gone limp, collapsing against the edge of the bed. He can’t get her out without her help. Even if he can drag her across the bed and push her out the window, she’ll land in burning grass, unable to save herself.

There are no more options.

Sanford stands paralyzed. A firefighter does not leave someone behind. Yet if he doesn’t leave her, two people will die here, not one.

“C’mon. We gotta go. We gotta go.” He grabs her shoulders again. She doesn’t move.

He cannot abandon her. He must not.

Suddenly the room brightens. The heat soars, and pain sears Sanford’s face. This is flashover, when a room’s materials, heated to the ignition point, spontaneously burst into flame. They are about to be cooked.

Sanford is no longer thinking. He is reacting. With a bounding step across the bed, he launches himself headfirst toward the window, diving through the screen like a swimmer into surf.

He lands on hands and knees in the flaming grass. Immediately, his fingers start burning through his leather gloves. His back and arm are blistering beneath his fire-retardant shirt. He bounces to his feet and runs. Under torching trees, across the burning lawn, he runs.

Branded by the Heat

Back at the engine in the driveway, firefighter Krings is frantically trying to reconnect a hose. Just a few more seconds, he thinks, and he’ll be able to break a front window and lay down some water to help Sanford and the woman escape--if he can find them.

Now a silhouette wavers against the orange at the corner of the house. Sanford is streaking toward him, like an ember spit from the fire. His eyes are wild, his cheeks crimson. He fumbles off his gloves, and Krings can see the fingers are already blistering.

“Where’s the lady?”

“I had to leave her.”

Sanford stares blankly. Krings stares back, unable to think of what to say.

Sanford breaks the silence.

“I’m burned. I need water.”

Krings pours bottled water into Sanford’s cupped hands, then drives them both partway down the hill, where they wait out the fire in a black spot already burned over.

Rushed by firetruck, ambulance and helicopter to a hospital 20 miles away in Chico, Sanford is treated for second-degree burns on his back, face, fingers and elbow. Burned red into his back are the letters “C” and “F,” branded there by the “CDF Fire” logo on his T-shirt as he sprinted through the flames.

By 7 a.m., less than four hours after his narrow escape, he’s back at the fire station, lying on his bunk. All he wants to do is sleep, but he can’t. The fire scorched his corneas, and it hurts too much to close his eyes.

The Disaster Wanes

The wildfire, done with Beverly Brooks’ house, races southwest along Nelson Bar Road and toward Oroville Lake.

Norm and Lesta Williams flee in their pickup truck and motor home, driving past flaming houses and trees. Their own home survives, surrounded by fire engines. Just 200 feet away, the house that Norm’s parents built in 1910 burns to the ground.

By midmorning the wind has faded and the fire is losing power, burning through grass and brush more sparse than the timber and thicket that stoked its early-morning rage. By Wednesday afternoon, just 24 hours after it started, the fire slows enough to let firefighters rein it in again--this time for good.

The triple-digit heat sinks into the 90s on Thursday, then into the 70s on Friday, Sept. 22. Autumn has arrived, and firefighters turn to mop-up, dousing spot fires and mending bulldozer-flattened fences.

Officials tally the numbers of the Concow Incident: 1,845 acres burned, 1,558 personnel assigned, 16 homes destroyed, 48 homes saved.

And one life lost. Beverly Brooks is buried in Yankee Hill Cemetery, a mile from home. Her son, Barry, hoping to erase the awful memories, pays a wrecking crew to cart away every last bit of rubble.

The county files charges against Jim Stewart, the backyard bulldozer operator, claiming that the dozer’s blade or tread struck a rock to spark the fire. Stewart, facing possible liability for $4 million in property losses and firefighting costs, insists he didn’t do it.

By and large, Stewart’s burned-out neighbors don’t blame him. Many direct their anger at the firefighters instead.

Rumors fly that firefighters’ own backfires caused much of the damage, an assertion vehemently denied by fire officials. Some residents complain that more wasn’t done to protect houses. The firefighters shrug and point to homes they did save, including pine-draped bungalows that by all rights should have burned.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection investigates Brooks’ death and the fire-shelter deployment.

In a preliminary report released Feb. 8, investigators suggest that Engineer Tony Brownell should have notified supervisors before setting the backfire that blew up and pinned him and his crew beneath fire shelters.

Brownell draws a different lesson. Chastened by his close call, the man known for his aggressive firefighting says he’ll be less likely to defend a marginal home next time.

“I think I’d just leave,” Brownell tells investigators. “I don’t know, maybe we were too much at risk.”

As for Capt. Darryl Sanford, the agency’s top fire official says it appears Sanford went beyond the call of duty to stay as long as he did while fire engulfed Brooks’ house.

“We don’t expect our firefighters to give their lives for this kind of thing, and I don’t think anybody else does,” says Glen Newman, CDF’s deputy director for fire protection. “We have to teach people to give us a defensible space. They can’t expect us to do the impossible.”

Honored by the American Red Cross as a “Real Hero,” Sanford says he doesn’t feel like one.

His burns are healed now, but that fiery night on Stagecoach Lane haunts him. Trusting that God makes things happen for a reason, he tries not to beat himself up over it. He knows there will be a next time. There always is.

On Nelson Bar Road, new homes are going up where the old ones burned down. Along Stagecoach Lane, the pasture is green again. Flowers soon will fill the field, and by July the weeds will be three feet tall.

They will be brittle, brown and ready to burn.