Couple: ‘We don’t have a startover plan’
Napa Valley pair used water hoses all night to save their home
Bruce Lund is 72. His back aches. His plantar fasciitis is so painful he could only wear slippers to fight the latest fire to terrorize Northern California.
But there he was, for two nights with his 69-year- old wife, Robyn Virts, defending the home they built themselves, shingle by shingle, on a 1-acre wooded lot along Silverado Trail. The couple bought the property in 1986 for $55,000. It’s everything they own.
“We don’t have a start-over plan,” Lund said.
So they staged their last stand, this not- so- typical Napa County couple, living among world-famous wineries and three- star Michelin restaurants. They had first met on motorcycles in San Jose 51 years ago, long before scraping together enough money to buy the once-scraggly acre they were now trying to save.
“We’re just regular people,” Virts said.
As the Glass Fire tore through St. Helena and on to Santa Rosa on Monday morning and into Tuesday, burning 11,000 acres and destroying homes, wineries and resorts along the way, the couple chased embers with five garden hoses fed by two wells powered by two generators. Their 48-year- old son, John Virts, and neighbor, Kevin Horowitz, did what they could to help.
By Monday night, one generator was broken and the other was running out of gas. With embers smoking around them and a tree torching nearby, the couple feared their beloved home wouldn’t make it until Tuesday.
Lund and Virts live along the storied Silverado Trail, one of two main north-south routes through the Napa wine region. On a Google map, Silverado Trail is dotted with wine glass emojis, highlighting Duckhorn Vineyards a half mile north and Meadowood resort with its critically acclaimed restaurant to the south. The couple’s property, separated by the dry Napa River, backs up to Charles Krug and Beringer vineyards, household names in the wine world.
“This is our house. This is our garden. This is our lives,” said Virts, a retired speech pathologist who volunteers at the historic Bale Crist Mill’s Pioneer Christmas. Lund is a retired state parks engineering technician who volunteers at the Bothe-Napa Valley State Park.
They met in 1969, at a stoplight at the intersection of Bascom and Hamilton avenues in San Jose. It was pouring rain and they both were on the back of Honda 90 motorcycles. Hers was yellow with a basket of flowers on the back. His was red. “We weren’t hippies and we weren’t outlaws,” Lund said.
He rolled up next to her. “Do you want to get a cup of coffee until the rain stops?” he asked. Five decades later, he said, “and here we are.”
The St. Helena property was an overgrown tangle of trees and brush. They cleared it themselves. She built the framing for the foundation. He dug the wells. She laid the tile. He laid the floors.
She planted her rose garden and vegetables that became so popular among neighbors that chefs at the local restaurants would stop for her heirloom tomatoes and fresh strawberries.
When the evacuation order came Sunday night, they couldn’t bear to leave.
“The sheriff was not terribly happy about that,” said Lund, who admits he under
stands why.
There are too many stories of stubborn people who believe they can put out an inferno with a garden hose and end up dead. Firefighters can’t keep track of every holdout while they’re racing to save people and homes.
But Lund was confident that with his years working for the California Department of Forestry in the 1960s and ’70s, he knew how to fight a fire. And with their home’s location perched within feet of the Silverado Trail thoroughfare, they could escape quickly if necessary.
The fire came up behind the ridge late Sunday. Cal Fire was trying to hold the line at Deer Valley. But by 2:30 a.m., wind gusts picked up and drove the fire through Chateau Boswell
winery to the north, destroying it, before jumping Silverado Trail and heading toward Rombauer Vineyards. Firefighters there made a stand, hosed down the solar panels on top and saved the winery.
But the fire moved west to the Napa River that is so dry there’s barely a mud puddle in a mile. The brushy banks ignited and took off down the winding river that runs along the couple’s backyard.
With the power shut off by PG&E, the scrappy foursome fired up two generators and ran the hoses down to the riverbed. They stayed up all night, dousing flames that got nearly as big as a house, protecting their property and trying to keep the fire from Charles Krug across the riverbed.
“We ran the water all night,” Virts said. “We tried to take care of Charles Krug. No one was over there. No one was fighting the fire. I couldn’t believe it.”
They took turns taking two-hour naps after daybreak Monday, but were quickly back out putting out hot spots by midmorning. Embers had lodged in a neighbor’s ancient hollowedout oak that was bound to “fall down or explode,” Lund said.
His hose didn’t reach, so he carried four buckets of water down the road in the back of his truck. It wasn’t nearly enough.
Finally, a fire crew of juvenile offenders from Amador County stopped. With chain saws, they felled the tree, then built a fire line to stop the smoldering hot spots from creeping onto the couple’s property.
It was after 7 p.m. Monday.
Lund, still in his slippers, stretched his aching back. One threat was gone, but another ignited — a tree of sparkling embers across the riverbed. In two-hour shifts, Lund and Virts kept an eye on it. The wind had calmed, the temperature dropped. He still had gas for his generator.
But anything can happen in these California wildfires, at any moment. Tuesday morning, this determined couple weren’t going anywhere. “I’m sorry,” Lund said, “but we’re not stopping.”