At 3:09 p.m., I received a call from my friend and fellow rancher, Joe Fischer. I texted him that I was in a meeting; he texted back that his wife had called and that there was a fire near the intersection of Bell Road and Joeger Road (about halfway between our home place and one of our leased ranches). He told me he could help if we needed to get livestock out of harm’s way.
About 5 minutes later, another rancher friend, Nathan Medlar, texted with the address of the fire. Nathan must have been monitoring the fire scanner - 15 minutes after his first text, he added,
“Per Air Attack,... moderate rate of spread, should have containment soon, can handle with aircraft on scene. Potential for 2 to 3 acres max.”Sami reported that another friend, Eileen Sanchez, had heard the same report. And YubaNet confirmed it at around the same time.
All of this gets to the point I tried to make in yesterday’s blog post. Community is critically important in situations like this. Know who has livestock where - and knowing who to call - is more important (at least in my experience) than signing up for the county alert system (which, by the way, never activated in my case). The Rancher Grapevine, while informal and imperfect, often transmits news faster than the internet. And the folks who are part of the Rancher Grapevine know how to move livestock out of danger - definitely an added benefit. Both Joe and Nathan assured me that they could help Sami evacuate our home place, or our leased property, since I was an hour away. I can’t tell you what that did for my peace of mind!
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