‘We could hear that ash falling’: Vacaville teachers, students move past wildfires
The view was enough to render the driver to silence and empty stares. That’s saying something because Stu Clary can be defined by his jovial, animated chatter.
On a recent Saturday, the longtime Vacaville High School special education teacher and baseball coach gave The Bee a shotgun ride in his black Ford pickup. The mission was to drive through some of the devastation from the LNU Lightning Complex Fire that struck in August and left an angry path of destruction that remains seared in Solano County.
Those flames roared through rural parts of Clary’s hometown. The fires wiped out more than 300 homes and nearly 1,500 structures, scorching and leveling more than 360,000 acres, killing five people, according to Cal Fire.
On Saturday, smoke clogged the air, but the origin was not from any of the put-out blazes. This was from neighboring Napa County, where the Glass Fire was starting its wrath. Clary tooled along the twisty, turning roads of Steiger Hill, just outside Vacaville. This is the same route he roared his Jeep through some 40 years ago as a Vacaville High student to test out his speakers and brakes.
This time, the view was grim. It was of charred hillsides, burned-out cars, trucks and motor homes. Flattened homes were outlined by melted, curled white vinyl fencing. Some of the damage included homes of 19 Vacaville High students who lost everything but their spirit and lives.
”I feel for these people — how one house stands, survivor’s guilt, and one close by does not,” Clary said as he drove. “We can see through these canyons now because so much has been burned out. Sad.”
Clary was fortunate — “super lucky,” he says. He and wife Kim evacuated the Vacaville home near downtown they have owned since 1990. No houses in city limits were burned. Their 26-year-old-son Gordie raced in as the glow of flames outlined town to grab personal items to help his parents in a mad-dash effort of adrenaline.
An elementary school physical education teacher and coach in town, Gordie snagged his Vacaville High letterman’s jacket, his Little League glove and stuffed animals from his youth.
“You grab what you can, while you can,” Clary said.
Fires hit on opening week of school
The LNU Lightning Complex Fire happened the first week of school in the Vacaville Unified School District. It was the second day of school.
It occurred when the temperatures soared past 108 degrees during a heat wave. It left ash thick as freshly fallen snow.
”When tragedy happens, touching things happen, too,” Clary said.
Vacaville High was closed due to the distance learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was suddenly bustling in the parking lot. Vacaville High students Lauren Gammon and Zanna Rosenquist organized an on-campus effort to allow those in need to collect food, water, clothes or hugs while sharing stories. U-Haul trucks of donations stopped by, filling vacant classrooms with items.
In addition to the 19 Vacaville students who lost their homes, math teacher Brenda Hensley of nearby Will C. Wood High School lost her residence to the flames. Sara Bryan, a fifth-grade teacher at Orchard Elementary School in town, lost her home in Winters.
It was her first year teaching in the district. She and her boyfriend barely had time to fetch their three dogs before the flames engulfed the place.
”Talk about a crazy start to the school year, and just tragic,” Vacaville High principal Adam Wight said. “You can’t bring kids to school, it’s a whole new way of teaching, school is completely closed for three days as fires rip through the outlining areas, and it’s just a shock to the system.”
Wight added, “We have 2,000 students here at this school. It’s a miracle we didn’t have more students lose homes.”
Wight said he feels as much of a disconnect as his students and faculty do, especially those who lost homes, ”I feel helpless. I don’t have my kids, my students, on campus. I can’t see them, can’t give them a high-five, a wave, can’t talk to them. But we’ve had this huge outpouring of people from all over wanting to help.”
This included the sports programs from Paradise High School in Butte County. Paradise was leveled by the Camp Fire in 2018. Schools from around Northern California reached out to support, and Paradise returned the favor, including sending gift cards and care baskets by the van load to Vacaville.
“They knew the impact of fire, and what they did to help us is just really cool,” Wight said. “We learned some good lessons talking to their athletic director, the long term effect this sort of thing has on kids. They go through stages of grief, try to hold it together, but depression becomes a concern. That’s what we’re mindful of.”
Ash hitting as hard as hail
Maverick Summerfield keeps too busy to let depression take over. That’s his plan.
He is a senior at Vacaville High, one of six kids to Sabrina and Samurai. The family’s 80-acre spread located about 10 minutes outside town in the hills suffered major losses. It will never look the same.
The Summerfield family of nine was living in motor homes and campers while their new home was being built. Surrounded by darkness and the outline of an orange glow, the family bolted at about the time chunks of ash landed on their rooftops like so much angry hail.
”We could hear that ash falling, like a storm, and my husband said, ‘It’s time to go!’” Sabrina Summerfield said. “I could see the panic in his eyes. It was coming. We loaded all we could, even the dirty laundry. The heat, the smell, the big ashes, it was scary.”
Maverick is the oldest of the kids. He hustled up the youngest siblings like herding frightened goats. The family has relocated to a relative’s house in town, and they have been moved by the meal trains, clothing donations and calls of support.
“That’s pretty cool,” Maverick said. “People care.”
The family plan is to build that house and to start fresh. They lost a car and outbuildings to the fires but the metal shop survived. Maverick is among a handful of displaced students who are using the Vacaville High theater on campus to do distance-learning sessions.
“We can’t wait until school gets back on campus, but that may take months,” Maverick said. “Fires happen. It’s awful. We’re glad we were able to get out. Going back (to where we lived), all the brush is burned out. We lost our targets for our arrows to the fire, but now when we go paintballing, we’ll have so much extra space. You have to find the good in this.”