A year later, Sonoma County life disrupted again by fires
Brian Borchers was once again stuffing an overnight bag Wednesday with books, the kids’ first shoes, and a few changes of clothes, throwing skateboards and bicycle equipment into the trunk of his car.
Catastrophe had become a way of life for Borchers and so many neighbors in the Russian River town of Forestville west of Santa Rosa. When the Wallbridge Fire approached Tuesday night, he was accustomed to the drill, having endured the massive Kincade Fire last year. The procession of cars crawling eastward on River Road had a familiar, grim feel. The ashes that coated his deck the next morning were like an offseason snow.
Borchers even coined a name for them: “Satan’s snowflakes.”
“It’s an interesting time to be in business,” Borchers said. He’s run a bike rental and repair shop in Forestville for seven years, knowing every fall the air fills with noxious particles, and customers stay away.
By sunrise Wednesday, the Wallbridge Fire, started in the coastal ridges of northwest Sonoma County, had burned 1,500 acres. It was among a cluster of blazes sparked by lightning and counted together as part of the 124,000acre LNU Lightning Complex, which included fires in Vacaville and near Lake Berryessa — where homes were destroyed. For residents of the lower Russian River, it was the latest in a rinserepeat cycle of disasters.
Wildfires choked the air with acrid smoke in 2017 and 2018. Last year in February, hammering rains filled the roadways of Guerneville, just west of Forestville, with brown floodwater that seeped into homes and businesses.
Then in October, the Kincade Fire tore through nearby Geyserville, prompting wide evacuations. Borchers pulled the plug on his bike rental and repair shop for four months, draining his savings to pay rent until the COVID19 pandemic brought an upside in March, when he was deemed an essential business.
“That’s the only thing that’s saved my sanity,” Borchers said, sitting in his shop Wednesday with a suitcase packed in his car outside. After his phone crackled with alerts all morning, Borchers, his wife and two children planned to stay with relatives near Sacramento.
Many residents now follow evacuation orders each fall, whiteknuckling the steering wheel and hoping for an insurance payout if everything burns up.
“The community anxiety is palpable,” said Sonoma County Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, whose district spreads through the west county and along the coast.
Hopkins, who grew up in San Diego, eventually settled in Forestville for the same reason as so many others. She fell in love with the cathedrallike redwoods, rocky beaches and shingled bungalows. But now she’s seeing an exodus as neighbors grow weary of seasonal floods and wildfires — complicated this year by the coronavirus.
“People are just exhausted,” Hopkins said, reflecting on all the residents who have moved out, and others who vowed to leave this year.
“It just breaks my heart,” Hopkins added. “We’ve been through so much, and the cumulative trauma wears on a community.”
Still, years of cursed autumns and winters can’t destroy the appeal of the lower Russian River, with its offbeat resorts, artist colonies and workingclass families. It’s a paradise that draws people even if they commute to jobs in Santa Rosa or San Francisco, said Pip Marquez de la Plata, who evacuated Tuesday night from Rio Nido, a tiny patchwork of summer cabins, with a fire station.
He and his husband drove to Marquez de la Plata’s parents’ house in Novato, where they were anxiously watching the fire’s trail of destruction on social media.
Neither of them broached the idea of moving somewhere else, Marquez de la Plata said. He described the Russian River as a place for flinty characters with a deep attachment to their woodland communities.
“You gotta rough it in your daily life anyway,” he said, “either to commute to Santa Rosa — or if you’re working within the lower Russian River, a lot of times you’re starting a new business venture.”
Real estate broker Herman Hernandez understands the visceral pull of the Russian River as much as anyone. Raised in San Francisco’s Mission District, he arrived in Guerneville in 1970, back when the area was more rural and economically depressed. Over time, Hernandez watched it transform, beginning in the late 1970s when the late Peter Pender bought a sprawling ranch and turned it into a gay resort.
The gay renaissance lured businesses and tourists, allowing the area to thrive in spite of periodic floods; Hernandez lost all of his office furniture in the deluge of 1995, which submerged his building in 2 feet of water. Even so, he watched former city dwellers flock into the waterside hamlets, a trend that seemed to pick up for a while during the pandemic.
“In the middle of May and June, the real estate market really started coming back,” he said. “Properties were getting multiple offers from people in the Bay Area, who wanted to live in a rural (place) as long as it had internet.”
But living near the Russian River means grappling with Mother Nature again and again. It means buying flood insurance, heeding evacuation warnings and understanding that you will be inconvenienced, Hernandez said.
He left Guerneville with all the other evacuees Tuesday night, driving to a hotel in Santa Rosa. He stopped at a grocery store to buy yogurt, milk, and produce — enough to survive until Sunday, when he plans to return. He’s built deep roots in the area, founding an organization called Los Cien to help struggling Latino families and staying active in the local Rotary Club.
“Are we going to come back?” he asked. “No doubt about it.”