MIDDLETOWN — Jessica Smith was screaming into the phone so loudly and talking so fast that her husband, Cody, didn’t understand her at first.
“The fire is here. The fire is here!”
The Valley fire that destroyed hundreds of homes on Cobb Mountain and in Middletown and Hidden Valley late Saturday wasn’t supposed to get close to their ranch five miles outside of town. Cody Smith, 29, was at work as a lineman for PG&E and didn’t think he had to worry about his wife, who is due with their first child Sept. 25, or his mother, who was home alone next door.
But the scene he came upon when he arrived — his pregnant wife, his mother, his 16-year-old sister, two other teenage girls and their mother — was terrifying. There they were, hunkering down in three trucks in the middle of their 300-foot-wide sand-filled roping arena, far from anything flammable.
But fire burned at every perimeter.
On Monday, as the Valley Fire continued to burn with only 10 percent containment and ash still blowing through the air, the Smith family recounted the four-hour ordeal that left them exhausted and haunted, yet alive.
“There was no smoke,” Cody Smith said. “It was solid flames, 30 feet high blowing horizontal.”
He was stuck in bumper to bumper traffic of fleeing vehicles on Highway 29 — three miles from home — when he received the frantic call at 6 p.m. Saturday from his wife telling him the fire had reached their land.
Flames were torching the trees and fence posts along Grange Road — the only road in and out of his ranch — when he turned in, then watched in his rearview mirror as a telephone pole with live wires crashed over the roadway behind him, blocking any exit.
“I knew I couldn’t get out,” he said. “There was no getting out.”
Meanwhile, his mother, Kim Smith, tried to keep everyone from panicking, for Jessica’s sake. The last thing they needed was for her to go into labor in a GMC Acadia that was surrounded by fire. When she realized that flames were blocking their way out, Kim Smith grabbed her 16-year-old daughter, Makenzi by her shoulders.
“You need to get in that car, and you need to be calm, and when the house goes up in flames, you need to stay calm, for Jessica,” she said, choking up at the memory as she recounted the scene.
When Cody arrived at the arena, he climbed into the Acadia with his wife, his sister and her 17-year-old friend Hailey Reidel, letting his neighbor sit it out in his PG&E truck. Kim stayed in the Toyota Tundra. Cheryl Reidel and her daughters, family friends who had brought their horses to the ranch after fleeing their burning home at the base of Cobb Mountain, stayed in their Ford truck.
Rock-size embers pelted the vehicles. Sparks rained down. It was 6:30 p.m., and it looked like midnight.
Each person — the three teenage girls and the two moms — were tasked with calling 911. Most of the calls didn’t go through. Only texting worked. Kim Smith finally made a connection.
“I kept saying there’s a 9½-month pregnant woman here, and I need to get my daughter-in-law out of here,” Kim Smith told the dispatchers. “They said, ‘We’re trying, but we can’t get to you.’ That was incredibly disheartening.”
Jessica Smith couldn’t see anything but flames.
“All of a sudden, the wind started picking up. Everything was on fire,” she said.
She turned to her husband of two years, whom she had met at a Christmas party and who had built their 3,700-square-foot house with his father, Kevin, and tried not to cry.
“Our cars are going to light on fire,” she told him. “I kept repeating that, and he said, ‘No, we’re not, we’re going to drive out of here. We’re going to be fine.'”
The gazebo behind the house was the first to go. When sparks reached the house, Cody Smith insisted that they turn the truck away from it. He couldn’t bear to see it go up in flames, and he didn’t want his wife to see it either. They had just hung the last picture in the grey and white nursery, over the dresser, the night before: There’s Jessica, fully pregnant and smiling.
But she watched the horror in the rearview mirror anyway. Fifteen minutes, and it was gone. Her bag packed for the hospital, the new stroller and crib, the baby’s first outfit laid out on the counter — all incinerated before her eyes.
“I just thought we weren’t getting out,” Jessica Smith said. “Nobody’s coming, and there’s no way to get out. That’s it.”
For four hours, with the air-conditioning on to fight the intense heat surrounding the vehicles, they tried to be strong and calm, fighting back tears.
Kim Smith texted her husband, Kevin, who was on a hunting trip in New Mexico, that she loved him. He told her she would be OK. They would be together again.
Finally, Cody Smith was able to reach a PG&E co-worker on the radio and implored him to find someone to help them out. That friend found a sheriff’s deputy, who mounted a rescue with four others.
The pole that had fallen behind Cody Smith on Grange Road had apparently incinerated, opening up the route.
In the dark, Smith signaled the deputies with a flashlight. Then, one by one, the trucks and deputies headed out, with fire burning on both sides of the road. But there was one more obstacle ahead — a fresh pile of telephone poles and wires. Smith grabbed his rubber gloves and “hot cutters” and cleared the way.
At last, with his parents’ home standing but his own home gone, he and his family and friends drove to safety.
Kim Smith recalled that in the midst of the chaos and fear, she prayed.
“I just kept praying that somebody would come and help us get out of there, that God was watching us and we would be OK.”
Everyone is now in temporary housing, with friends in Calistoga and Healdsburg.
And on Monday, Jessica Smith saw her doctor and found out the pregnancy is just fine, and their baby girl is kicking plenty.
Since the fire, neighbors and friends have dropped off strollers, diapers and piles of baby clothes.
On Monday, someone looked up the name Cody and Jessica Smith had chosen months ago for the baby — Hayden.
They were surprised to learn what it means: Fire.
Contact Julia Prodis Sulek at 408-278-3409.
