Fire crews quell blaze that threatened San Anselmo homes
SAN ANSELMO -- On Saturday, fire crews responded to an early morning blaze in San Anselmo. A business was damaged and a nearby hillside blackened but the homes above were not touched and many are giving credit to the wildfire preparedness of both first responders and the homeowners themselves.
At 5:15 a.m., first responders were called to the blaze.
"Crews arrived to find a working commercial fire at the back of the building, as well as about a quarter-acre of vegetation on fire, threatening multiple homes above it," said Ross Valley Fire Department Battalion Chief Gavin Illingworth.
By morning light, the fire was out, confined to the original business -- a machine shop on Fourth Street -- and a quarter acre of blackened eucalyptus trees. In many ways, this represented victory in the fight against wildfire disasters. It started with telephone Nixle alerts sent out to some neighbors to evacuate and for others to prepare for it.
"I don't think I was scared because I opened the door and I couldn't see anything," said Nancy Koster, who got a call on her home phone. "But I was more like, 'OK, maybe I actually better get going.' It was in my head, going through what I wanted to grab and take, you know?"
The police began cruising the street directly above the fire, blasting the "high-low" siren that has come to mean immediate evacuation. Brianna Scola lives in one of the houses but said her dog alerted her even before the authorities.
"She's my hero. She was barking like crazy," Scola said.
Despite having talked about evacuation with her husband who is a firefighter, when the time came to leave, Brianna was not prepared and said her mind just went blank.
"Sometimes you think about people and you go, 'why did it take so long to get out?' It's a panic mode," she said. "You don't really know until you're in that situation that -- how scary it can be and how much you don't think. Your mind just goes fffttt!"
Brianna said she's learned her lesson about preparing a go-bag for quick exits and storing important documents in a safe deposit box. She and her neighbors may actually be the reason there was no catastrophe. They had all cleared their properties of excess vegetation, giving firefighters a chance to knock down the fire before it could roar up the hillside into their homes.
"This was a huge success because we had notifications that went out immediately to the community. We had the community members who had provided defensible space around their homes which allowed us to protect their homes and effectively put the fire out," said Chief Illingworth. "So, it really seems to me that this was an example of all those different things coming together for a successful story where we didn't lose any more homes."
For all the work and the millions of dollars that Marin County has put into wildfire prevention, success is measured by what didn't happen. A fire that could have been a disaster but wasn't. And, while that may not seem very exciting, the residents still have their homes and maybe their lives to show for it.
