Old West Ranch woman faced risking death with husband
| Thursday, Jul 29 2010 07:36 PM
Last Updated Thursday, Jul 29 2010 07:38 PM
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Rachel Hendricks and her mother, Donna Moran, stand in front of the Morans' home in Tehachapi on Thursday. Donna Moran and her husband, Bob Moran, rode out the West Fire together at their home.
Donna Moran, whose Old West Ranch home is still standing and who with her husband, Bob, is still alive -- both conditions not highly probable two days ago -- remembered Thursday what could have been the last phone calls she made to her two daughters.
Donna remembered the gist of the message, but one of her daughters, 35-year-old Rachel Hendricks of Los Osos, told her mother the message she received was actually intended for her sister, Erin Demeres, 29, who lives in Vermont.
Donna's message on Hendricks' phone was this: "Erin, I love you. We're surrounded by fire. Pray for us. Call Rachel."
But Donna had a really good reason to be more than a little rattled Tuesday afternoon when the devastating West fire began.
She had been visiting friends down the hill. She saw the smoke, and drove up to the manufactured home she'd shared with her husband for the last three years.
Her plan was to evacuate. His plan was to stay.
"I had five minutes to decide if I was going to die with my husband," she said.
"I knew I didn't want my husband to be dead and me to be alive," she said. "I knew I didn't want to live with that. We did everything together. My kids were raised. They would understand."
"No," Hendricks said.
The daughter, however, conceded that in the end, "I think you made a good choice."
But these were the conditions in which the choice was made, Donna described. The fire was roaring through the trees toward their door step. The smoke was so thick it blotted out the sun.
Flames leaped close to 100 feet high. The rush of the fire was roaring.
"I didn't know if we were going to make it," she said. "That's when I called my daughters to tell them I loved them."
So why did Bob want to stay?
He and his wife lived for decades in the Quailwood neighborhood in Bakersfield. He was born in North Dakota and loved the outdoors, he said.
"I wanted the feeling of freedom," he said Thursday while helping Kern County firefighters work on hot spots by his property.
They were about 30 feet from a neighbor's trailer that was destroyed in the flames. Blackened ground and trees were all around. The east wall of his home was scorched and there was smoke damage inside.
This was Bob's dream home out in the country, away from the emergency sirens that screamed a lot around their Quailwood home. His country home was worth defending, though he asked his wife to leave for her safety.
But she wouldn't go. Asked if she calls that love, she said, "We do."
They did a lot of preparation before the fire. "I took 120 loads of debris off the property," Bob said. A dirt driveway encircled their home. A brick patio protected the west side where blackened ground stopped right next to it. Donna said they learned defensible space from their friends and the Internet. "After all, I was a city girl," she said.
So how was battling for their lives?
"It was terrifying," she said.
"The smoke was so thick, ashes were in your eyes and you were not able to breathe," she said.
If they were going to live, they had to protect their solar power and water source about 20 yards from the home, she said.
"If the solar went down there would be no electricity to pump water to the hoses," she said. "That was more important than the house."
She said she's heard that one of the first retardant drops by the air tankers was on the east side of her home.
At one point they let their five goats -- the ones used for milking -- out of the barn to fend for themselves, but they all came back to the still standing barn, she said.
She and her husband used hand tools to put out hot spots. They used cellphones to call each other so one would bring a golf cart with a bigger water container.
"It was too smokey to see each other even if we weren't very far away," she said.
"At first, I was thinking this was useless," she said. "I couldn't get myself in gear because I though it was hopeless."
But she persevered throughout the night and the next day without sleep. Several times, she thought "the worst of the danger had passed," she said. "But the danger came back and I was terrified all over again."
The couple finally got some sleep Wednesday night. But on Thursday, they were still protecting their property, looking out for hot spots.
Bob said he awoke Thursday and "heard birds singing in the trees and rabbits hopping around as if nothing happened." He said it made him feel great.
As a reporter walked away, Bob delivered just one more message. "Be safe," he said.
