SMOKING - HARVEY WEST STADIUM DURING RECENT BONNY DOON FIRE
(Photo by Shmuel Thale: Santa Cruz Sentinel: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ )
IVANO SAYS: The recent Bonny Doon Fire conjures up memories of other Davenport/Coast Road Fires. Nancy Jacobs writes of one such fire that occurred in 1949.
(BTW: Nancy wrote this for the Davenport/Coast Road Event. She has graciously agreed to give our "Blaggatori" an advanced look-see. Thanks, Nancy.)
(BTW: Nancy wrote this for the Davenport/Coast Road Event. She has graciously agreed to give our "Blaggatori" an advanced look-see. Thanks, Nancy.)
It was 1949 and our family was living on the Foothill Ranch at the mouth of Scotts Creek.
One day we saw a thick smoke coming from the Swanton valley. We saw the smoke through the window facing the ranch on the other side of Scotts Creek.
I was really afraid that the fire would reach us.
So there we were discussing how to evacuate. No easy task because we had horses, a dog, ducks, chickens, a cow, a farmall, tractor flat bed truck, a car and a pick-up. All our possessions were in the farmhouse plus our food.
We decided to listen to the radio and watch the fire. My brother and I went to the top level of the ranch. There we could see the thick smoke slowly moving towards us. My brother said that it looked like a war zone.
Something went past us quickly in a blink of an eye. It was, in fact, a deer running from the fire. All kinds of wildlife kept running past us. The various animals were jumping the fences going under in some cases but all running for their lives from the threatening fire that was slowly advancing. I wondered how many birds, rabbits and other wild animals including snakes had actually died.
You could hear the siren of the fire trucks as they went back and forth on Swanton road to Highway One.
I was so stressed that I ate even more food, which, of course, did not solve any problem.
No one knew whether it was night or day. I remember hearing a Doris Day song, a song from the 1930's and other entertaining music of the day including the drummer Gene Kruppa. It was kind of surreal, although, I was not familiar with that word at the time. The radio played the news hourly.
And as suddenly as the fire came, the fire after raging for days was contained by the firefighters of 1949.
For decades one could see the fire damaged stumps that were left over from the fire of 1949 in Swanton. A deadly reminder of the power of nature and fire.
