SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ When the call to evacuate came at 4 a.m. Saturday, Toby Wait and his family only grabbed a few things figuring they'd be back in their Big Creek home the following day.
"That was the plan," said Wait, the principal and superintendent of Big Creek School. "But if by chance, something were to burn, let's just take the pictures _ most of our family albums. We took them and everything we could fit into the car."
That turned out to be a fortuitous decision.
Twenty hours later, after the Creek Fire swept through the remote company town of 200 residents north of Shaver Lake, those photos and a few other items were all the personal belongings the Wait family had left.
Their home on Huntington Lake Road was among 30-plus residences in and around Big Creek consumed by the Creek Fire, which by Sunday evening had grown to 73,278 acres (by official count). Spared _ as far as Wait knows _ were the elementary school (whose eaves caught on fire before being extinguished), church, library, historic general store and all but a few Southern California Edison buildings.
"About half the private homes in town burned down," Wait said. "Words cannot even begin to describe the devastation of this community. And it is a very close-knit community."
Big Creek is the hub of the century-old Big Creek Hydroelectric Project, once touted as the "hardest working water in the world." Today it generates about 4 million megawatt hours per year for SCE's customers in Southern California _ roughly one-sixth of California's hydroelectricity.
Wait's father grew up in Big Creek, and in 2011 he left his position as principal of Hoover High School in central Fresno to take over the principal and superintendent roles at Big Creek elementary, which currently has 55 students.
"That's why we went," Wait said. "Big Creek is Mayberry. It's paradise. It's a throwback to the '50s. ...
"Kids ride their bikes. They play on the street at night. They go to the potholes at Camp Sierra. They run around. It's how life is meant to be."
Wait was splitting logs in his driveway early Friday evening when one of the school's maintenance workers alerted him to a nearby fire. He then drove down to the helipad at the end of Point Road to take a look.
"Just a little smoldering fire _ only one tree snag was burning," Wait said. "The terrain down there is so rugged and overgrown. It just kept getting bigger and bigger."
Overnight, a thermal updraft of warm air rising from the San Joaquin Valley floor, the same effect that creates Huntington Lake's renowned sailing winds, caused the Creek Fire to rapidly spread.
By Sunday evening, the flames were threatening more structures around Shaver Lake and Huntington Lake as well as those in eastern Madera County. Much of the area was under mandatory evacuation.
"Incredibly dangerous wildfire conditions!!" the National Weather Service's Reno office tweeted.
Residents of Big Creek and other mountain communities in Fresno, Madera and Mariposa counties are long-accustomed to the threat.
After the decade they've experienced (i.e. the Ferguson Fire of 2018; the Rough Fire of 2015; the devastating 2014 fire year around Oakhurst and Bass Lake; and the Aspen Fire of 2013), one may wonder how they cannot be?
But Big Creek residents hadn't faced evacuations or the possibility of losing everything since 1994, when the Big Creek Fire seared 5,626 acres. That fire, caused by an electrical short when a squirrel became trapped between a metal transformer case and a 7,000-volt bushing, ended up costing SCE $14 million in federal court for inadequate fire suppression.
It is too soon to say what caused the Creek Fire, how many acres will be scorched, how many brave firefighters and first responders will be called upon and how many people will lose their homes.
One man who already did is just thankful he grabbed the family albums before evacuating.
"We have some memories, we have some photos, we have the clothes on our back and everyone is safe," said Wait, whose family is staying with his wife's parents in Fresno. "That's really what it comes down to, the safety of human life."
And what will become of Big Creek, that Mayberry in the mountains?
"What a special place it is, and we're going to continue that tradition," Wait said. "We're going to get it back, somehow, some way."
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