Close to 100 people in a North Bay mobile home park had their lives turned upside down as the park was flattened by flames on Tuesday night. Terry McSweeney reports.
Close to 100 people in a North Bay mobile home park had their lives turned upside down as the park was flattened by flames on Tuesday night.
More than 50 trailers were incinerated near Lake Berryessa in the Spanish Flat mobile villa when flames tore down the mountain. The residents, many of them elderly, had to evacuate immediately. But one 90-year-old resident, who is hard of hearing, didn’t get the message.
The woman was in her home when her next-door neighbor, West Plunkett, broke a window to get in and rescue her, said neighbor Marcia Ritz.
Ritz and the elderly woman both lost their homes, but everybody in the mobile home park escaped with their lives.
Ritz raced to a resort on Lake Berryessa. But the flames continued to draw closer.
“One of our friends had a pontoon and there were 10 of us that got on it, and we were out on the water for about five hours,” said Ritz.
Another resident of Spanish Flat, Mike Haines, had just brought his relatives to safety when he went back to get his 10 dogs that he uses for sheep herding.
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“I’m grabbing the dogs and two got away, and this guy is going, ‘you gotta go, you gotta go!’” Haines said. “And I said, ‘I got two more dogs,’ he said, ‘you got to go!’ What do you do? I went.”
All the dogs are safe. But next time Haines is going to plan well ahead of time.
“And you’re looking out there saying it will never ever get here, oh yes it will,” he said.
