LATIMES.COM S THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2019A
CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES
Perched on a hill over-
looking Simi Valley and
Moorpark, the Ronald
Reagan Presidential Library
offers sweeping views. But
that location has long made
it vulnerable to wildfires.
On Wednesday, the fast-
moving Easy fire had sur-
rounded the library, which
was closed to the public.
Those in the library shel-
tered in place as helicopters
dumped thousands of gal-
lons of water on nearby
flames and fire crews cut
containment lines around
the blaze.
The fire was being held
back by an aggressive
ground and aerial attack on
the ridges beyond Simi’s
modern residential estates.
Helicopters repeatedly
dropped loads of water be-
hind the library amid 60-
mph winds, turning the
flames on the ridge 300 feet
below into smoke. Amid
wind gusts strong enough to
knock a person off balance,
two super-scooper planes
dipped down behind the li-
brary before unleashing
enough water to create a
rainbow.
Every two minutes, a new
chopper or plane swooped
overhead, dipping down into
the canyon behind the li-
brary.
“They are getting beat up
good, those pilots,” JD Nees,
a Navy reserve pilot, said of
the helicopter pilots naviga-
ting 60-mph winds whipping
across their paths.
Nees watched as the pi-
lots made run after run at
the flames before a hand
crew appeared on the hill.
“That’s a good sight to see,”
he said, as two inmate crews
began tamping out the smol-
dering soil.
As the fire swept down
the ridge toward Roosevelt
Court, an off-duty LAPD of-
ficer wearing a raid jacket
began yelling, alerting resi-
dents that the fire was com-
ing down the hill. Tensions
heightened as the flames be-
came visible to homeowners.
Rory Kaplan has lived on
Roosevelt since the homes
were built there in 2001.
“I got the reverse 911
about 6:30 a.m.,” he said. “I
pulled the cars out into the
driveway, put the passports
and bank documents in one
and my musical instruments
in the other car. I am ready to
go.”
Simi Valley police began
directing everyone via loud-
speaker to leave the neigh-
borhood behind the library.
Kaplan joined the exodus.
Roads out of Simi Valley
were packed as residents
poured south toward Thou-
sand Oaks, their cars and
SUVs brimming with boxes
packed with treasured ob-
jects.
The library, which is de-
signed to withstand earth-
quakes and wildfires, has
been threatened by fire be-
fore. Officials say they pro-
tect the facility, ensuring
that the open space around
the building is kept clear.
Each year, the library brings
in goats to eat vegetation
around the buildings.
Opened in 1991, the li-
brary is home to a Marine
One presidential helicopter,
an Air Force One presi-
dential aircraft, a piece of
the Berlin Wall, a replica of
Reagan’s White House Oval
Office and a steel beam re-
covered from the World
Trade Center after 9/11.
Two years after the li-
brary opened, the Reagan
family threw a celebration
there for firefighters who
battled Southern Califor-
nia’s 1993 firestorms.
“Many years ago, we lost
our old ranch in Malibu to
fire,” the president’s daugh-
ter Maureen Reagan said at
the time.
“When those winds start
to blow, the same could hap-
pen to any one of us. We live
in a place with unique ter-
rain that’s continually tou-
ched by fire, and thank
God we have unique and
special men and women that
are trained to stop those
fires when they threaten
people.”
The Easy fire, which
broke out shortly after 6
a.m., has burned 1,300 acres
threatened 6,500 homes.
AS FLAMES APPROACHEDthe Reagan Library Wednesday, helicopters, planes and ground crews protected the Simi Valley landmark.Wally SkalijLos Angeles TimesBattle to
protect
Reagan
Library
By Richard Winton
and Hannah Fry
nesses in emergency evacua-
tion systems.
So this year, Sonoma
County officials didn’t take
any chances, issuing an
unprecedented mandatory
evacuation order that
stretched all the way to the
coast, forcing nearly 200,
people out of their homes.
No deaths have been re-
ported from the Kincade
fire, which has burned
mostly in uninhabited areas
and destroyed 94 homes.
But many residents
question whether officials
over-corrected, pulling far
too many people into the
evacuation zone.
On Tuesday, Greg Garcia
unloaded a new Craftsman
generator from his pickup.
The power was still out at his
home in Bodega Bay and
overnight temperatures
were dipping into the 40s.
The retired transporta-
tion worker had left town
Thursday and gone to visit
his mother in Milpitas be-
cause he knew it was going to
be windy and he couldn’t go
fishing. He’d planned to
come back Saturday, but the
evacuation kept him away
until Tuesday.
“People were really up-
set,” Garcia said. “I think it
was overkill, but I think they
didn’t want to say they
didn’t tell people. But I think
they overdid it. They really
did.”
But Sonoma County
Sheriff Mark Essick said au-
thorities learned hard
lessons from the 2017 Tubbs
fire that killed 22 people and
destroyed thousands of
homes. Then, authorities
were criticized for inade-
quate warnings that did not
reach many of those in peril.
“I absolutely stand by the
decisions that we made,”
Essick said of the Kincade
fire evacuation.
With the Kincade fire, au-
thorities had more time, Es-
sick said. During the Tubbs
fire, people in Santa Rosa
awoke to flames at their
doorstep. Northeasterly Di-
ablo winds had already been
forecast for days by the time
the Kincade fire started Oct.
23 in a remote mountain
area off John Kincade Road
and Burned Mountain
Road.
The fire initially — and
luckily — crept south for
about a day before threat-
ening more-populated
areas, Essick said. The sher-
iff was working closely with
meteorologists and fire be-
havior experts, using com-
puter models to predict the
fire’s path. It was a process
he compared to hurricane
forecasting, with a wide cone
of potentially affected areas
that narrows with time.
Essick knew that if the
fire jumped Highway 101,
wind-driven embers could
blow all the way to the coast.
On Saturday, three days af-
ter the fire began, he ordered
Bodega Bay residents to
leave. The next day, top wind
gusts hit 96 mph.
“I couldn’t live with my-self if we didn’t warn people,”
Essick said. “I would rather
inconvenience some folks
and have them question that
inconvenience than lose a
life. There’s no excuse for us
to lose a life in this fire.”
As of Wednesday, that
strategy seemed to have
worked.
Previous fires across the
state have been marked by
chaotic evacuation plans,
including the failure to use
the latest technology to
broadcast Amber Alert-
style warnings on cellphones
ahead of deadly disasters.
In the first hectic days of
the Tubbs fire, hundreds of
people initially were re-
ported missing. That didn’t
happen with the Kincade
fire. The fire fight appeared
to turn a corner Tuesday
night, and the blaze’s con-
tainment was doubled to
30% on Wednesday morning.
Forecasters were predicting
favorable conditions for the
rest of the week.
Essick said Sonoma
County has been through a
lot, with the Tubbs fire, cata-
strophic flooding of the Rus-
sian River in February that
forced thousands to evacu-
ate, and now this.
Tuesday morning, Es-
sick, who lives in Cloverdale,
talked to his neighbor, who
had his mother, sister and
niece staying at his housebecause of the evacuation.
The man had a relative who
lost a home during the
Tubbs fire, Essick said.
“He said to me, ‘Mark, I
don’t know. I don’t know if I
want to stay in Sonoma
County,’ ” Essick said.
Asked how he responded,
Essick paused for several
seconds. He commiserated
with his neighbor, he said.
“You want to be there to
support people, but at the
same time, it does wear on
you,” Essick said. “You
think, gosh, is this maybe
not the right place to live?
“Sonoma County’s beau-
tiful, we’ve got great people,
great weather, millions of
people come here each year
to visit. But, I don’t know.
Sorry, I’m kind of talking in
circles, but it’s hard. It’s hard
to love a place so much yet
have all these things that
just keep happening.”
At Bodega Harbor Inn on
Tuesday, the West Virginia
vacationers were baffled by
the evacuation order. On
their drive north, they had
barely smelled smoke.
Brown and Lawrentz
booked their room through
Expedia. Because of the on-
going Pacific Gas & Electric
power outage, staff at the
Bodega Harbor Inn couldn’t
access computerized guest
information. On Tuesday,
two staff members were us-
ing LED lights, landlines
and paper printouts with
some guests’ contact infor-
mation to try to connect
with people to cancel their
stays.
Nickey Meindersee, who
works the front desk, called
hotels all the way up the
coast, trying to get Brown
and Lawrentz a room. But
the blackouts were so wide-
spread, they practically
would have had to drive to
Oregon to remain on the
coast. They decided to drive
to Lake Tahoe.Lawrentz was especially
disappointed. “I’m a retired
shop teacher,” he said. “I
specialized in wood. All I
want to do is stand there be-
side a redwood tree and take
my picture.”
Meindersee, apologetic,
hugged Brown before they
drove off. She said she wor-
ries it’s going to be economi-
cally tough for the 16-room
hotel if the power gets shut
off every time the wind blows
and the evacuation zones
are this big going forward.
Wine country evacuees
usually go west or south,
Meindersee said, adding
that lots of people who fled
the Tubbs fire had camped
on the beach in Bodega Bay,
parked their RVs through
town and filled hotel rooms.
She has lived here 25
years, and during that time
the town has never been
evacuated because of a fire.
“This is the place you go for
safety, because the water’s
there,” Meindersee said.
“Whenever there’s a fire, we
get inundated with people.”
Around 1 a.m. Sunday,
sheriff ’s deputies drove
through Bodega Bay, sirens
blaring, shouting on bull-
horns that people had to
leave, she said. Meindersee
— along with her 2-week-old
grandson, 5-year-old grand-
daughter and her daughter
and daughter’s fiance —
raced out of a blackened
town to her uncle’s house in
Novato, 40 miles east. No-
vato also had no power.
They had to drive an ad-
ditional 23 miles southeast
of Novato to find a working
gas station.
Meindersee was back in
Bodega Bay on Tuesday be-
cause she had to work. The
mandatory evacuation was
downgraded to an evacua-
tion warning Monday, and
the warning was lifted
Wednesday afternoon.
“There’s a new normalevery year around October
here,” said George Scott,
the hotel’s property man-
ager.
Scott, who lives on site,
did not evacuate, and said he
never felt endangered.
“There’s no doubt that a
lot of it is not overkill, but
there is a good portion of it
that is. ... Anywhere along
the coast is not all that nec-
essary,” he said. “But I
understand too. It’s all
about prevention and mak-
ing sure that no lives are
lost.”
Across the street, people
flocked to Diekmann’s Bay
Store, which was powered by
generators and never closed
during the evacuation. Store
clerk David Petersen said
frustrated customers had
been venting about the evac-
uation all weekend.
Petersen spent two days
in a Petaluma evacuation
center and got back Monday.
He never thought there was
real danger.
“If it crossed the freeway,
then you might have doubts.
Maybe,” he said, shrugging.
“We’ve been busy. We’re the
only place open.”
On Tuesday afternoon,
generators hummed all
through town, even as it re-
mained under evacuation
warning.
Garcia, the retired trans-
portation worker, said peo-
ple are accustomed to
heavy wind here and that
people won’t stand for black-
outs and evacuations every
time winds are in the fore-
cast.
“You know what they call
Bodega Bay? Blowdega Bay.
The wind blows so bad here,”
Garcia said.
In fact, Garcia’s house
sits at the intersection
where scenes of children
running from the school-
house in “The Birds” were
filmed. At Taylor Street and
Windy Lane.[Evacuation,from A1]Fleeing a fire 40 miles away
WATERFRONThomes in Bodega Bay. Sonoma County’s evacuation order stretched all the way to the coast.Carolyn ColeLos Angeles Times‘I would rather
inconvenience
some folks and
have them
question that
inconvenience
than lose a life.’
— Mark Essick,
Sonoma County sheriff