On Monday evening we were coming home from a long weekend hiking in the Sierra.
As we got closer to home, we could see mushroom-clouds of smoke over the mountains south of San Jose. As we drove to the grocery store, we could see flames between the smoke.
Wildfire, and a huge one!
This was the Loma Fire. As of this writing, CalFire says it has burned almost 4,000 acres and is only 22% contained. Photos of the fire are here.
The CalFire site linked above notes that one house was destroyed, along with several outbuildings. There have been no fatalities.
The house that was destroyed belonged to Isaiah Branzuela, but there was one fatality: Isaiah’s dog, Thailin.
On Monday, with temperatures near, or above, 100 degrees, Isaiah had gone to a doctor’s appointment and other errands. He left Thailin at home instead of taking him along as he usually did.
On his way back home, he saw the smoke.
“I could see the huge smoke already,” he said. “It wasn’t a mushroom cloud, but in an hour it was. By the time I reached Los Gatos, it was already huge. I could see it was out of control.”
He rushed to try to save Thailin and their home. On the 20-mile race through traffic on Highway 17, then along Summit Road, the smoke kept billowing. “I kept going and going up until I got to the top of the mountain,” he said.
But the roads were then blocked off and he was not allowed to his house.
The next day, Tuesday, Isaiah was determined to make it back to his house, not knowing what he would find.
“I was doing it for my dog,” he said. Through a tortured landscape of charred chaparral and manzanita, “I drove up back roads — I passed everybody, I wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”
When roads became impassable, he parked and started walking. For a half mile, he climbed. “It was like a war zone, still smoking and still on fire,” he said. “Power lines were down.”
“I made it to my house. It’s gone,” he said, weakly, in an interview after a Tuesday chemotherapy session at Kaiser. “Everything is gone. It burned to the ground. My house is gone.”
“And my dog is gone.”
My wife pointed out this story in Tuesday’s San Jose Mercury News. It’s one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever read.
She pointed out that a GoFundMe page has been set up. Even with her limited Social Security income, Ms. Unoball found some spare money to donate. I matched her and made my donation.
If you, too, have a few spare dollars, would you please also donate?
I don’t know Isaiah Branzuela. I wouldn’t recognize him if he walked in the door right now.
I don’t know if he has ever heard of Daily Kos. I don’t know if he is a Democrat, an Independent, or a Republican.
What I do know is that he lost everything he had.
Including his dog.