SHAVER LAKE — It was only five years ago that vast parts of the Sierra and foothills were incinerated by the Creek Fire, which scorched nearly 380,000 acres before it was finally extinguished.

Although Shaver Lake was largely spared, residents and business owners there and in surrounding areas are keeping a watchful eye these days as the flames from the Garnet Fire draw closer.

And in nearby Pine Ridge, which the Creek Fire decimated, kids and school employees who lost their homes to the Creek Fire are struggling with fear and uncertainty over whether the Garnet Fire will hop fire lines and threaten their homes.

Steve Rosa, principal and superintendent at the preK-8 Pine Ridge Elementary School, was comforting one such student in his office on Tuesday morning.

The school is providing extra mental health counselors for its youngsters, some of whom lost their houses to the Creek Fire in 2020.

Pine Ridge’s enrollment never completely recovered — before COVID and the Creek Fire the school held 128 students, but these days the enrollment is 72, Rosa said.

Tara Schram, the school’s finance director, lost her family home on Cressman Road to the Creek Fire but has since rebuilt. Her two younger sons attend Pine Ridge in the second and eighth grade, while her eldest is a senior at Sierra High in nearby Tollhouse. Schram said her youngest son, who was only 2 when the Creek Fire hit, has absorbed strategies for remaining calm that include doing the “rainbow breathe.”

Schram describes herself as “cautiously optimistic” that firefighters will be able to contain and corral the Garnet Fire. But she said it’s harder this time to reassure kids that everything will be OK.

“I think what makes it hard for the kids, the ones that remember, we all told them it’ll be fine last time, because we thought it would be,” she said. “So now they don’t believe us.”

Staying the Course

In the Granite Ridge neighborhood southeast of Shaver Lake, Doug Sordi was busy Tuesday morning raking up fallen leaves and twigs around his metal-roofed home where he’s lived for 33 years. The raking is a year-round activity and not just because of the Garnet Fire threat, he said.

Sordi said he was pretty confident that firefighters would be able to contain the flames before they could reach his mountain neighborhood, in part because of how well Southern California Edison has maintained its forests in the vicinity, but also because he knew that there are a lot of efforts to carve fire lines southeast of Granite Ridge.

But he admitted to feeling some concern when five additional voluntary evacuation zones were added Monday, including two zones right next to his K168 zone.

Would he leave if K168 becomes a voluntary evacuation zone? “I might not wait until mandatory but I’ll wait and see — like last time of course that was a different fire. It was 300 acres on Friday night and Saturday morning it was 30,000.”

As of Wednesday morning’s update, the Garnet Fire, which was sparked by lightning on Aug. 24, has burned nearly 57,000 acres in the Sierra National Forest as it marches steadily northward and is 15% contained.

Even if they can’t see the approaching flames, the smoke plume is a constant reminder that the Garnet Fire is moving in their direction. Pine Ridge Elementary has had to cancel swim practice and meets, Rosa said. The school is equipped with a school-wide air scrubber, plus air scrubbers in each classroom.

The smoke tends to be the worst at night, when colder air lowers the smoke plume throughout the mountains and foothills. The National Weather Service has issued repeated dense smoke advisories for Shaver Lake’s mornings.

On most days the smoke plume drifts in a northeasterly direction, bringing hazy conditions to the east side of the Sierra Nevada and even into northern Nevada.

‘A Lot of Iron’

Shaver Lake Fire Capt. Brad Craven has a vested interest in ongoing efforts to keep the Garnet Fire at bay — his home on Garnet Lane is on the easternmost side of the Granite Ridge subdivision. On Tuesday the top of nearby Bretz Mill Road, the main road into the area, was lined with 23 lowboy trailers that had carried heavy equipment like bulldozers to a dirt road that leads over the ridge and eventually connects with Dinkey Creek Road, which has been closed due to the firefighting activity.

Craven noted that the trailers had hauled in “a lot of iron.”

“Up ahead here, I was just going down to see how they’re doing, they’re opening up an old Cal Fire line maybe a half mile down the road here. So the dozers are working this area and that’s probably what you’re seeing at the other end of this road,” Craven said Tuesday morning as he headed east on the dirt road.

Craven said his biggest concern was whether the fire crews could keep the flames out of Blue Canyon, which points directly at Shaver Lake.

“That’s a big concern for Shaver, but it looks like Blue Canyon is protected for now. So there’s a lot of public concern. I get a lot of calls and we’re sending out as many messages as we can on the progress of the fire. But so far, so far there’s no immediate threat here,” he said.

Fire officials were noting that Tuesday and Wednesday would be critical days for determining whether the Garnet Fire could be kept out of Shaver, and there was some cautious optimism based in part on weather forecasts for cooler weather in the region.

“It’s grown 20,000 acres in the last two days,” Craven said Tuesday. “Today, if it continues to grow, yeah, there’s a threat. But the weather has moderated. The backfiring operations have improved the situation. And talking to the operations section chief, they think if the weather continues to moderate, then they can have this forward progress stop by tomorrow.”

Feeding Firefighters Boosts Businesses

While residents are watching the fire’s advance with alarm, business owners are getting a bit of a boost in a season that typically is slower than the summer months.

Greg Powell, owner of several local businesses, said the marina he owns at Camp Edison had a lot of cancellations, but his sports shop was seeing a lot of traffic from firefighters, “so it’s a plus-minus.”

Powell said he’s “100% confident” that the fire won’t reach Shaver Lake, although he acknowledged that others who live in areas untouched by the Creek Fire are more fearful.

At the nearby Shaver Lake Coffee and Deli shop, owner Norman Kato said he’s been feeding hungry firefighters and other workers in recent days. Normally he closes the shop on Tuesdays and Wednesdays after Labor Day as traffic winds down, but he decided to stay open all week to feed fire crews as they pass through town.

Kato, who used to live in Shaver and now lives in the foothills, said he’s getting a sense of deja vu, especially since the Garnet Fire is almost exactly five years to the day after the Creek Fire, which was sparked on the 2020 Labor Day weekend. He believes the firefighters are doing the best they can, and he’s reassured that local and state firefighters are being augmented by fire crews from around the country.

But, he said, “the past is the proof, you know, really. I mean, the Creek Fire was not supposed to get away from us. Unfortunately, Mother Nature, that’s what it’s all about. You can’t control Mother Nature.”

Fire Takes Emotional Toll

The slow approach of the flames and fire-lit clouds at night are ominous sights for those who lived through the Creek Fire, said Eraka Luke, who works in real estate in the mountain and foothill areas and lives in Auberry.

Residents are telling her they are particularly worried about what might happen to their home insurance rates, which are already sky-high, if the fire leaves the wildland and enters developed areas, Luke said Tuesday outside the Hamburger Hut, where she had stopped for a milk shake.

And plenty of people aren’t waiting for the fire to grow closer, Luke said. They’re driving their larger animals to lower elevations and moving jet-skis, boats, and other vehicles out of harm’s way.

On Tuesday, cattle and horse trailers were hauling animals westbound on Highway 168, even as Pacific Gas & Electric trucks and fire vehicles headed east.

For those who lost their homes to the Creek Fire, seeing the glow from the Garnet Fire at night is a disturbing reminder of the devastation and blazing speed of the Creek Fire, Luke said.

“We know several people that lost their house (in the Creek Fire), and having to see that glow every night and be reminded … I was talking to two people yesterday, they’re both teachers up here. And one is already evacuating. She’s already moving her animals and her livestock and being prepared. Because she just knows, ‘It takes me three or four trips to get out. So I just need to be ready. So that if I have to do it in the middle of the night, I can do it.’ ”

Luke said her family was evacuated in the Creek Fire, but their home was spared. Her kids are still dealing with some PTSD now because of the Garnet Fire and are hyper about alerts on firewatch apps.

“They still freak out about that ding going off, and they still check where it is, they want to know what’s going on,” she said. “But I can only imagine how difficult it is for the kids that did lose their house, it’s not something that most people ever live through. But then to be a kid and then potentially have to live through it a second time — it’s super-traumatic.”