For towns devastated by Creek Fire, holidays bring normalcy — and painful reminders
In Shaver Lake, businesses hold an annual contest to determine which displays the best holiday decorations.
Kimberly Hogue is a former winner. But this year, the agent at Keller Williams Realty had second thoughts. While the Creek Fire spared her house in Meadow Lakes, many of her neighbors weren’t as fortunate. She passes the burned-out properties on her daily commute.
“You kind of feel badly,” Hogue said. “Do we still put up Christmas decorations and all those things this year? I think so. You do it because life has to keep going.”
Indeed it does. Three months have passed since the Creek Fire, the largest single-incident wildfire in California history, destroyed hundreds of homes and upended the lives of thousands of Fresno County mountain residents.
For many of them, the holiday spirit is helping bring back some semblance of normalcy. For others, it’s serving as another painful reminder of what they lost.
On the Saturday evening after Thanksgiving, the Shaver Lake Village Hotel hosted its annual Christmas tree lighting and toy drive. Locals say it was the largest turnout in years, regardless of the COVID-19 Scrooge.
“It felt good to be there,” said Hogue, whose office exterior is adorned with 8-foot-tall inflatable soldiers from The Nutcracker. “I think all of these things make everybody feel good.”
Big Creek’s town tradition
Eleven miles away in the remote company town of Big Creek, a tight-knit community ravaged by the Creek Fire, an even longer-running Christmas celebration will endure.
Embedded in the street in front of Big Creek General Store is a small hole wired for electricity. For 11 months out of the year, the hole is covered by a metal plate. Most visitors don’t even notice it. But in early December, the plate is removed to make room for a Christmas tree.
“It’s a 100-year-old tradition, and we’re not ending that,” said Toby Wait, the principal/superintendent at Big Creek School. “I had a parent Zoom last night. We’re not doing a Christmas program in the gym like we normally do, but we are doing the town tree.”
The duties of cutting and placing the tree typically fall to Carson Brockway, a lifelong Big Creek resident who oversees the school’s maintenance and operations. (This year’s tree is a little smaller than usual because Brockway had to cut and load it himself.)
After Brockway strings up the lights, Big Creek students on the last day before holiday break decorate the tree while singing Christmas carols and sipping hot chocolate.
“We’re trying to get to as back to normal as we can,” Wait said. Both he and Brockway lost their homes to the Creek Fire, two of the 42 privately owned residences destroyed in the hub of Southern California Edison’s hydroelectric operation. (Most will never be rebuilt, for reasons I’ll dig into at a later date.)
Record Christmas tree sales
Brockway also serves as the lead tree-cutter for the Shaver Lake Lions Club’s Christmas tree lot, which is enjoying record sales thanks to exclusivity. This year, the Sierra National Forest did not issue any tree-cutting permits due to the ongoing forest closure. In turn, that shut down at least two lots that normally serve the mountain community.
However, the Shaver Lake Lions Club got its permission (and more than 400 trees) from SCE, whose privately owned forest was spared the brunt of the Creek Fire thanks in large part to decades of proper management. The lot is behind the Blue Sky Cafe, and sales benefit residents who lost their homes.
Dave Heirendt is among that group. Heirendt, his wife Denise and their youngest daughter will spend the holidays in a rental house after the fire destroyed theirs in Alder Springs.
Of the 800-plus structures consumed by the Creek Fire, the great majority are primary residences around what’s generally known as Pine Ridge. While visitors driving up Highway 168 from Fresno and elsewhere see the devastation at Cressman’s Store and the blackened hillsides, most of the property damage (along Auberry Road, Cressman Road and Peterson Road) is out of sight.
“People who come up here, they drive past the three roads that were hit the worst,” Heirendt said.
Community’s generosity overwhelms
Months after losing his house, the pain hasn’t gone away. (“You want to go home but you can’t.”) However, his spirits have been lifted by the community’s generosity.
Likewise, Big Creek School has a room whose floor is covered with donated kid-sized winter clothing. All as a result of a Facebook post.
“There’s probably 120 people that have given me things, just out of nowhere. ‘Here’s what I have for you. I’ve got kitchen stuff. I’ve got this. I’ve got that,’ ” Heirendt said. “It’s amazing. I’m not asking. It’s just people saying, ‘Hey, we hear what happened to you and we want to help.’ ”
As appreciative as Heirendt is for the outpouring of support, some items can’t be replaced.
When Dave and Denise evacuated their home, they thought to take family photos, birth certificates, tax records, his guns. They didn’t remember the box containing the family’s Christmas ornaments, including the one Dave made when he was in kindergarten that used to hang on his parent’s tree.
“You didn’t think about it, right?” Heirendt said. “It’s a box stuffed in the attic. It wasn’t Christmas time, so we didn’t think to grab it. But now we’re really missing those ornaments. It makes it tough.”
