LAKE COUNTY>> Named after the road where it started — although it could have referred to fictional movie boxer Rocky Balboa — the Rocky Fire was indeed a fighter, easily punching through nearly 70,000 acres of brush and timber, including millions of oak and pine trees. It also destroyed 43 houses.
In the process, the 16-day firestorm forced the evacuation of thousands of residences, including the entire community of Spring Valley, and displaced more than 13,000 people and hundreds of pets and livestock.
Maybe instead of “Rocky” Balboa, another movie title might be more descriptive of the inferno: “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
Rocky — the blaze — also changed forever how firefighters, especially in California, look at the science of fire behavior and firefighting.
The fire started a year ago today, Wednesday, July 29, 2015, and quickly gained a reputation among firefighters for being one of the fastest moving wildfires they had ever seen — up to that time.
This article looks back on the fire that caused firefighters to change the way they view wildfires and how to fight them in this new and scary reality of a hotter, drier and drought-driven California climate.
One of the initial first responders on the scene of Rocky was Firefighter Gordy Clem of CalFire.
“I knew it was not going to be a small one,” he recalled in a September 2015 interview with the Record-Bee. His engine company out of Middletown was one of the first to reach the blaze that started along Rocky Creek Road and Morgan Valley Road in Lower Lake.
Also on the fire engine with Clem, a firefighter for seven years, was Engineer Andy Zuckerman, a firefighter for 14 years and two other firefighters.
CalFire Division Chief Greg Bertelli responded in his own official vehicle from the Kelseyville-Cobb Cal Fire Station on Highway 175 at Red Hills Road. Zuckerman and Bertelli also were interviewed in September 2015.
Chief Bertelli said he heard the initial dispatch come in around 3:30 p.m. “When I heard where it was, I knew it had the potential of becoming a major fire,” he said. “As I reached Lower Lake, I realized this was true.”
As he left the firehouse, he called for a full wildland fire response from CalFire of five engine companies, two bulldozers, two hand crews, a helicopter and three air tankers.
The report was of a structure fire but Bertelli was well aware that Rocky Creek Road is in a very rural area with thousands of acres of dry grass and thick brush just waiting to be ignited.
“I knew it could spread to vegetation,” Bertelli said. “It was hot and dry with low humidity and wind. Humidity and wind (are) the key.”
It took Bertelli 20 minutes to reach the fire and in that time, he called for an additional helicopter and a second hand crew.
“I could see the smoke as I was coming down Red Hills Road,” close to the fire station, Bertelli said.
Added Clem, “In a very short period of time, it went from a normal looking smoke column to a huge plume.”
As Bertelli got nearer to Lower Lake, the smoke turned darker. Even with the fire resources already responding from CalFire and the Lake County Fire Protection District stations in Clearlake and Lower Lake, Bertelli called for more.
Bertelli and Chief Willie Sapeta of Lake County Fire set up a command post on a clearing just off Morgan Valley Road a few miles east of downtown Lower Lake. The pair were the first chiefs to reach the fire scene.
“Willie and I drove in together to lead our resources in and to come up with a plan,” Bertelli said. “I knew then that it was going to be a long day.”
“Structure defense takes priority over brush, and life safety trumps all of that,” he said. “An hour into the fire, all of our resources were going into structure defense. Then we started getting reports of people trapped in their homes.”
Engineer Zuckerman added, “When we hear that people are trapped, we have a higher level of concern. We’re going to do everything we can to save them. There’s definitely a sense of urgency but we just fall back on our training.”
In its first incident fact sheet on the blaze — originally named the Rock Fire — issued about 90 minutes after the start of the fire at 3:29 p.m., CalFire reported the blaze at 150 acres with structures threatened and no containment.
At that time, there were only 171 personnel with 12 engine companies battling the blaze from the ground, aided by four water tenders, five bulldozers and six hand crews. Attacking from the air were six air tankers and five helicopters.
Many of the firefighters were not fighting the flames but rather going house-to-house ordering evacuations in the highly rural area while others stood by the ready at their engines near houses for structure defense.
CalFire reported then, “Fire is traveling (at) a rapid rate of spread with forward spotting. Additional resources have been ordered. The terrain is heavy brush and timber. Access is difficult during initial attack. Temperatures are approximately 100 degrees, 10 percent humidity and wind is south at 11 mph.”
By 10 p.m., the blaze had grown to 3,000 acres with 315 firefighters, 35 engine companies, four water tenders and nine bulldozers, along with additional hand crews on scene.
About 500 people had been evacuated from Morgan Valley, Dam and Boham roads and Mustang Court. Other roads included Oak Haven and Rocky Creek, where the fire is believed to have started. Evacuation centers had been opened for people and animals. Several buildings have been destroyed, CalFire reported.
Fire continues to spread
The fire was continuing to drive through heavy brush and timber and the 10 p.m. July 29, 2015 press release from CalFire stated, “…due to fire activity, firefighting crews are focused on attacking the fire. Primary objectives are public and (first) responder safety.”
Morgan Valley Road was closed from Hwy. 53 to the Napa County line. Battling the blaze at that time were crews from CalFire, Lake County Fire Protection District (FPD), Kelseyville FPD, South Lake County FPD and Northshore FPD.
By 11 a.m. on Thursday, July 30, 2015, the fire was completely out of control and much of the firefighting efforts were still focused on structure defense and evacuations, with the number of evacuees growing to 650. There were now 60 engine companies, 12 water tenders, 36 bulldozers, 14 hand crews and 630 firefighters on scene.
CalFire’s Incident Fact Sheet reported, “The terrain is rugged, steep, with difficult access, in heavy brush and timberland. The fire has entered into the Cache Creek Wilderness Area and (the) BLM Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument Area. Additional resources are ordered.”
Nearly 24 hours later, Friday, July 31, 2015, the fire was a raging inferno, eating through brush and timber at a rate never before seen by firefighters. It was now 15,000 acres and only 5 percent contained, with several structures destroyed and 450 house threatened.
The evacuation area was expanded and additional roads were closed. There were now nearly 1,000 firefighters, including 32 hand crews, on the ground and in the air.
CalFire reported, “Fire is currently burning in steep rugged terrain making access for fire crews difficult. Resources will continue to work throughout the day to construct fire line, while additional resources continue to respond from around the state.”
Residents got the first hint then at how big the fire had become, now threatening the Double Eagle Ranch and houses along East Hwy. 20 from New Long Valley Road to the Colusa County line — 20 miles from where the blaze started.
By Sunday, Aug. 2, 2015, the inferno had grown to 54,000 acres and was still burning out of control, with more than 2,700 firefighters, 254 engine companies, 58 bulldozers, 38 water tenders and 59 hand crews fighting the flames from the ground while it was attacked from the air by four air tankers and 19 helicopters.
Two dozen houses were now destroyed and another 6,300 were threatened and more that 12,000 residents were under mandatory evacuation orders, an unprecedented number up to that time for Lake County.
The 7 p.m Sunday report from CalFire stated, “The fire activity has grown dramatically and firefighters are aggressively working to stop the progression. The terrain is steep and rugged with limited access, fuels are at critical levels and there is little to no fire history in the area.”
Spring Valley evacuated
About 6 p.m. Sunday, mandatory evacuation orders, from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, expanded greatly to include the nearly 900 residents of Spring Valley and dozens more along Ogulin Canyon Road in Clearlake.
It was déjà vu for Spring Valley residents, who still had strong memories of the Wye-Walker Fire in 2012 and the emergency evacuation that was ordered then only after the fire was already spreading up New Long Valley Road, the only paved road in and out of the community.
In that evacuation, many residents were escorted out by CHP units as flames were in brush and trees on both sides of New Long Valley Road and burning logs rolled down the hillside across the road, in front of and behind escaping vehicles.
At a public meeting on Aug. 2, 2015, in Lower Lake, Scott Lindgren, CalFire’s incident commander for the Rocky Fire, talked about how unique the blaze was compared to other wildland fires, calling it, “Unprecedented fire behavior” that made it difficult to predict how it would act in the future.
Explained Cal Fire Public Information Officer Captain Joe Fletcher from Napa, “The fuel is so much drier now and the wind is always the biggest factor. It’s much more erratic and it moves much quicker.”
Fletcher also said it was “very unusual” for a fire to have three branches as did the Rocky Fire.
Additional firefighting resources continued to stream in, including a contingent of the California Air National Guard and several of its C-130 and DC-10 air tankers that dropped fire retardant just ahead of the blaze.
In his assessment last September of Rocky, CalFire’s Bertelli said the blaze did not behave like a typical wildland fire.
“When the sun goes down in Lake County, fires generally settle down,” Bertelli said. “This one did not.”
He added, “…when the sun went down, the fire got really aggressive. The brush was so dry and so thick, it generated so much energy that it burned like a tree fire. The situation escalated quicker than we normally see.”
On Monday, Aug. 3, 2015, the fire jumped Hwy. 20 near Walker Ridge Road and was headed towards Spring Valley. It was finally stopped several miles from the community, mainly with air drops of fire retardant and a fire break built on a nearby ridge by two bulldozers.
Many of the circumstances about the fire and the time leading up to it remain unclear.
However, on Aug. 19, 2015, CalFire officials said the fire was caused by a faulty gas water heater in an outbuilding where flammable liquids were stored.
The fire then spread from the structure off Morgan Valley Road to surrounding vegetation. CalFire officials said it was not clear how the water heater actually caused the blaze.
In the week of Aug. 2, 2015, fire crews finally began to get the fire under control as containment lines grew each day. The Rocky Fire was officially contained on Aug. 14, 2015, after threatening 7,500 houses and forcing 13,000 people to evacuate, according to CalFire.
Many lessons were learned during the Rocky Fire, Chief Bertelli said, but the most important didn’t involve equipment, techniques or strategies but rather the interaction of firefighters.
“The support we give each other is what’s most important.”
