CLEARLAKE OAKS — Not much survived the fire.
Still, Melody De Leon remembered standing there two days later, looking with a hint of ire at one of the few things remaining after the blaze that destroyed her mother”s majestic home and scorched the property on Aug. 12.
“Where were you on Sunday?” she initially thought while staring at a small angel statue sitting all but untouched atop a rock waterfall surrounded by devastation.
But upon returning to the site with a friend several days later, she said her perspective changed slightly: if the figure indeed played a role during the incident, maybe it did help.
“Well, the house may have burned but perhaps the angel guided my mom out of the fire,” De Leon recalled telling her friend. “She”s pointing at the driveway.”
The Thorburns bought the roughly 70-acre property in the late 1980s. The couple, whose children were already grown up, moved into the home Max Thorburn finished building there in 1990.
“The house was 4,200 square feet, a unique house. I guess you”d call it English inside. Nobody could really figure out exactly what style it was,” Patsy Thorburn said, chuckling a bit while explaining that her late-husband”s eclectic design was influenced by his Scottish heritage.
The house, which sat above the “Y” intersection of highways 20 and 53 in Clearlake Oaks, hosted a number of parties throughout the years for family, friends and “friends of friends,” Thorburn said.
It also became a source of speculation for people who didn”t know the family, in part because of its hilltop location and the spires on its roof.
Thorburn”s daughter, Cathy Wilson, told a story of how a Buddhist once stopped by the home and said, “I heard this was a Buddhist temple.”
In reality, it was simply a family residence and the only home Thorburn knew for nearly 22 years.
But that changed on Aug. 12.
Two separate fires broke out minutes apart just before 4 p.m. that day, both along Highway 20 in northeastern Lake County.
Thorburn remembered hearing fire trucks drive by that afternoon, responding to the blaze that erupted near Walker Ridge Road, and looking out of her house to see a fire starting about a quarter of a mile away at the base of the hill near the “Y” junction.
“I thought, well they”ll get that out right away because they were going by,” she said.
Thorburn — who was alone at the home because her partner, Hank Everett, was in Ukiah — said she immediately opened the property”s security gate from the house and then tried to gather items to load into the car before escaping danger.
But the conditions were against her and the flames spread quickly, reaching the house in less than 15 minutes. The defensible space around the home proved no match for the wildfire.
“You”d think that in 15 minutes you could have time to grab stuff. Well, I grabbed stuff and got as far as the kitchen and then I could hear the fire,” Thorburn said.
She decided to back her crossover SUV out of the garage, thinking she would still have time to pack it up, but by the time she got the vehicle out, she could hear the house catch fire.
Thorburn looked for a way to drive out, but the quarter-mile driveway down the hill to Highway 20 — the safest way out at that point — was ablaze.
“It was just flaming. There was no way that I could (go there). So I drove out into a field there and just drove around dodging the grass fire,” Thorburn said. “I didn”t know what else to do except just stay out in this clear area.”
She spoke with a 9-1-1 operator as she drove around but soon realized emergency personnel couldn”t drive up the hill to help her.
“I know that the fire department couldn”t get up there,” Thorburn said. “They tried to come up but they couldn”t send a crew up because it was just blazing.”
Once she noticed the flames moved mostly off the driveway and onto the trees that lined it, Thorburn drove her GMC Acadia down the smoky driveway and started down the steep grade with its curves and switchbacks.
The thick smoke made it difficult to see and breathe, but she soon completed the slow drive to the exit.
“And then I saw the gate was open and I just floored it through the gate and down the highway to the fire truck. And I stopped there and when I opened the door, they thought the car was on fire because smoke just billowed out along with me,” Thorburn said.
She was uninjured.
Thorburn praised the efforts of emergency responders that day. “I would bake cookies for the fire department but I have no oven,” she joked.
De Leon said she knew the situation had to be difficult for the fire personnel who were unable to get up to the house.
“I just can”t imagine that feeling of being a firefighter and knowing there”s nothing you can do,” she said.
Most of the family members made their way to Clearlake Oaks by the time Thorburn made it out. Some returned to the property two days after the blaze ravaged it.
Thorburn said she was somewhat prepared to see the destruction because she saw the house catch fire, but seeing essentially all of her belongings burned, lost forever, was hard.
“The worst things … were (losing) the cats and the pictures,” she said through tears.
De Leon, who got married at the house in 1995, said seeing it leveled was “shocking.” She added, “The loss of the home is huge to us.”
Thorburn remembered the conditions being hot the first day back on the property. “Cathy walked out onto the ashes and melted her tennis shoes,” she said.
Wilson recalled that some people stepped on nails and then burned their hands when they reached to pull them out of their shoes.
In addition to the angel statue, the family found that a pond of fish survived and an American flag, hanging from a scorched tree in the driveway, was largely unscathed.
A burnt archway was almost all that remained of the house. A recreational vehicle and pontoon houseboat on the property melted.
“It”s always hard when you see everything gone,” Thorburn said.
Thorburn said she and her family were grateful for the outpouring of community support since the incident. A friend helped her find a rental home in the county.
Thorburn indicated she was not sure what the family would do with the hilltop property, which was filled with many cherished memories, in the long term after the fire. “Time will tell,” she said.
