Bill Leland Loses House to Fire

SUMMIT FIRE: ON DOVE LANE, FIRE WAS HIT AND MISS
By. J.M. Brown
Santa Cruz Sentinel
05/24/2008

CORRALITOS -- Wearing green gardening gloves, Bill Leland sorts through the pile of ashes that used to be his study.

He's looking for 30-year-old wooden toys that once belonged to his four children, who he hoped would someday pass the cherished playthings along to his four grandchildren.

But little in his idyllic camp-style house on Dove Lane survived Thursday's raging Summit Fire, except for a wood-burning stove that once warmed his living room and the metal rings that formed the core of his redwood-encased hot tub. He mourns the loss of priceless family pictures and personal papers.

"I know we'll move on from that," he said Friday, which marked the first time he was able to fully survey the damage since the 3,200-acre fire sent him and hundreds of other mountain residents fleeing. "The challenge is staying with that sadness while knowing that I'm very fortunate."

A tiny cluster of homes about eight miles into Eureka Canyon from Corralitos, Dove Lane is a story of random misfortune reminiscent of tales told after a tornado rips through a Midwestern prairie. Some houses are destroyed, while others are untouched.

Several hundred feet above Leland's home sits the ranch-style house of Janice Chaplain, completely unscathed. Yet, down the lane, a 3,500-square-foot home and outbuildings were razed, leaving owner Hugo Van Zazzara with just rubble to show for the four years he spent building the three-story labor of love by hand.

Some residents had insurance, others didn't. Some had recently trimmed back dry vegetation that acts as fuel for wildfires, but others didn't. Still, the precautionary measures didn't seem to make a huge difference as the blaze tore up the hillside pushed by swirling wind gusting up to 45 mph. It seemed to be pure luck whether a house was saved.

Ormsby Cutoff Road was not as fortunate. Up to 15 high-priced homes with an ocean view along that partially paved road were destroyed. Authorities have yet to report on damage in the other hardest-hit area along Buzzard Lagoon Road.

When Rebecca Henson returned Friday morning to the small cabin on Dove Lane she shares with her 5-year-old Rhodesian ridgeback mix, Sheriff, she was stunned to see their cozy home intact. A line of blackened grass and brush stopped within feet of the house, where firefighters also had cut a fire line around her propane tank.

"They saved it," she said. "God, it's so cool."

All four of the neighbors escaped Thursday after the sunrise fire rolled through the mountains from its origin near Maymen's Flat, off Summit Road. While Leland said he and Chaplain fled about two hours after the 5:20 a.m. blaze started, Van Zazzara and his son tried to fight the encroaching flames with garden hoses for several hours before being forced out by firefighters.

Although 911 dispatchers told her Dove Lane was not under a mandatory evacuation order yet, the 45-year-old Henson decided she should go. But first she had to remove fertilizer from her truck to make room for her belongings.

"I spent an hour shoveling chicken poop out of the back of my truck," Henson said, laughing as she recalled the panicky exit.

But as the fire roared closer to her home, Henson said she threw down the shovel, put down her coffee cup and said, "I'm out of here."

On Friday, the handle of the shovel lay melted on the grass; her coffee cup sat untouched nearby.

Leland, 67, an agroecology and sustainable food expert at UC Santa Cruz, decided to split once he saw an orange glow emanating from the forest as redwoods shook in the wind just outside his deck.

"It was clear I had to go," he said.

The glass that used to make up the floor-to-ceiling windows in his bedroom lay among the charred ruins as a retaining wall separating his property from Chaplain's house was still smoldering.

"This must have been so hot," he said several times, failing to notice a dozen flame-kissed lemons that lay on the ground near what used to be his lemon tree -- another sign of the fire's selectivity.

Leland, who said he may rebuild, visited the site briefly Thursday night after riding into the canyon with a reporter, but didn't get a close look until riding in with another news team Friday. While gathered with other canyon residents at the Corralitos town square Thursday, he had heard his house was destroyed, but "I just knew I had to see it for me to be able to accept it and move on."

Though Van Zazzara's 33-year-old son, Nathon, saw the devastation after sneaking a ride into the canyon, Van Zazzara said he couldn't bear to see what was left of his Victorian home, which featured stained glass windows from 1893 that were handed down by his great-grandfather. The 54-year-old furniture maker, who carried no insurance on the beauty he modeled after the landmark Chart House restaurant in Los Gatos, said he will live in a trailer for the time being but didn't know where he would end up.

"The only thing worse than losing the house would be moving out of this county," he said.


Thanks to Susan Elting Hillyard and Anne Moskovitz Davis for bringing this story to my attention. Bill Leland's email address is bleland@cruzio.com. BS