85-year-old fled Creek Fire without husband’s ashes or pets. ‘My life is in that burnt area’
The first thing Gloria Sprague thought to take before fleeing from the Creek Fire were her late husband’s ashes.
“But then I thought: This is where he’d want to be,” the 85-year-old said of the house they built together 28 years ago in the Alder Springs area below Shaver Lake.
His ashes were still sitting in a window sill by his side of the bed when she evacuated Sept. 6, also without her pet cat and bird.
“That’s the bird cage down there,” Sprague said Tuesday, pointing to a pile of rubble that was once their beloved retirement home.
She and the owners of 25 other homes nearby destroyed by the Creek Fire were allowed to see the devastation for the first time Tuesday. The families of another 77 destroyed homes in the area will be allowed in Wednesday – the beginning of residents surveying at least 855 structures destroyed by the Creek Fire.
“I still think I’m going to get to come home,” Sprague said while standing in the ashes of her former life, “and then seeing it today, I know I’m not.”
Evacuating her mountain home as Creek Fire neared
The longtime board president of the Bald Mountain Volunteer Fire Protection District was still listening to her fire radio and monitoring the wildfire from her home when she went to bed the night of Sept. 5, just a day after the Creek Fire ignited.
“You could see the fire from everywhere,” she said. “I had to turn over in the bed and look the other way.”
When she awoke, her view of flame-ridden hillsides were replaced by smoke like a thick fog. She couldn’t even see the apple trees growing in her backyard, let alone her usual beautiful view of the Ritter Range in the distance.
No longer sure where the fire was, she quickly packed her car, grabbing a few boxes and mementos, and left the afternoon of Sept. 6 after receiving about 15 notices to evacuate. She said her bruised arms made it hard to carry much.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” she said of trying to pack up her life.
Volunteer firefighters battled huge flames
Sprague was joined by several firefighters Tuesday, including Russ Davis, chief of the community’s volunteer fire department.
“As fire chief, I feel responsible for this,” Davis said. But flames in that area reached 250 feet in length, he said, even forcing firefighters to eventually evacuate. He believes even if there were many more firefighters available, most of the structures there would have still been lost.
“It was hell,” he said of fighting the inferno – now just 32% contained after burning through more than 286,500 acres. His station is located in Meadow Lakes near Alder Springs, some of the areas heaviest hit by the Creek Fire.
Sprague started helping the fire department decades ago and said she now knows it “inside and out.” Her husband was a volunteer fireman there before he died in 2012. She’s currently living out of a Fresno condo owned by one of her sons and is unsure if she’ll be able to continue her work as board president.
“Everything is very, very emotional right now,” she said.
‘Everything in it was memories’
While walking through ruins, Sprague came upon a blue and white ceramic jar that one of her three sons, who died in March, gave her as a present. The jar was one of few items in the ashes that wasn’t burnt black.
Was that special, seeing it had survived?
“Nothing is special anymore,” Sprague said. “Nothing, no.”
But even in her distress, she quickly added, “I might change my mind next week, I don’t know.”
She didn’t grab anything from the wreckage after walking through the area for the first time.
Her spacious, two-story home was full of windows pointed at gorgeous mountain views, and porches laden with hummingbird feeders. She adored the place.
“My life is in that burnt area,” she said.
All that remained of the home Tuesday was concrete blocks and a pile of debris surrounded by a burned forest, the trees there reduced to blackened sticks rising from ash.
She wishes she’d been able to grab more boxes of old photos and letters, including one written by her great-grandfather on his deathbed. Researching her family’s genealogy is one of her hobbies.
Family members from across the U.S. sent her historical information for safe keeping. “To be the keeper, and I blow it,” she lamented.
Of her lost home, she said, “Everything in it was memories.”
Sprague was joined Tuesday by son Larry Sprague, former owner of Shorthorn Bar & Grill in Shaver Lake who now works as the librarian in Big Creek where many homes were lost, including one belonging to Larry’s granddaughter. He said his Shaver Lake home survived but until they can return, he and his family have been living out of a second home in Coalinga, where he grew up.
His mother formerly worked for Bank of America there and the Coalinga-Huron Recreation & Park District before semi-retiring in 1992. She and his father planted a tree farm on their 40-acre Alder Springs property that never really worked as a commercial business.
Larry said he expected a fire to come for the Shaver Lake area one day, but not like this. The Creek Fire has grown in every direction, he said, like it has an “evil mind” of its own bent on the most destruction.
“Everyone I know doesn’t have a house,” he said.
His mother takes some comfort knowing she previously sent hours of video footage to family of building her now-gone house. Soon to turn 86 in November, Gloria Sprague said she’s not sure she’ll be able to rebuild the home she loved.
“It’s beginning to sink in,” she said, “that I’m not coming back.”
This story was originally published September 23, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "85-year-old fled Creek Fire without husband’s ashes or pets. ‘My life is in that burnt area’."
