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Friday's Internet Edition, November 21, 2008.
Trapped by smoke and flames
Grass fire causes terror for mobile home park resident
By Rachael Ackerman
Herald Editor
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While it lasted for less than 30 minutes, they were the most terrifying 30 minutes of Beverly Dunahoo’s life.
It was a normal Thursday afternoon in the Dunahoo household. Beverly was getting ready for lunch at around 12:30 p.m., thinking about putting out the family American flags, and what to do for the long weekend.
That all changed in a matter of moments when Beverly smelled smoke. It wasn’t a split second later when she saw the flames, and they were racing right toward her home.
“Someone tried to mow the field adjacent to our property and started a fire,” said Beverly who lives at the Pringle Avenue mobile home park in Galt. “The strong winds took just the little flame and blew it into a huge blaze almost instantly.”
Beverly found herself trapped in her home, which was quickly filling with thick, dark smoke, all the while the heat intensifying and the flames coming closer, jumping the fence and heading for the back of the trailer.
“I was trapped inside and was pretty hysterical as I heard the roar and saw the flames in the top of our trees and on the side of the house,” said Beverly. “The smoke inside was awful. I tried to escape to my car but I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t breath, so I ran back inside the house and called 911 for someone to come and rescue me.”
Watching as the flames burned first in the treetops, and then the entire tree, bushes, roses and even the fence surrounding the property, Beverly thought she was going to die.
“Please pray for the woman on the emergency line, who tried to keep me calm even though I was screaming and wanted to run out of the house,” said Beverly. “She just kept telling me, if I went outside the firefighters wouldn’t be able to find me because there was too much smoke, and that I wouldn’t be able to breathe, and that I would die if I tried to go it alone.”
Beverly credits the 911 operator who stayed on the line with her, and the well-trained firefighters who came to her aid, for saving her life, her home, and the homes of her many mobile home park friends.
It took the Cosumnes Community Services District only moments to arrive at the scene of the fire, which had started in the vacant filed on the 600 block of Industrial Drive, and although it took only 15 minutes to knock the fire down, with high winds and what firefighters call “red flag” conditions for fire in the area, even a small spark can turn into a raging inferno when the fuel, like dried grass, weeds and bushes, is available.
Beverly said she watched as the old Galt drainage ditch, and the orchard west of the mobile home park exploded into flames, torching many of the old trees in the orchard.
Alive and well in the end, Beverly said she will always believe, given the intensity of the flames and how close they came to her home, that God saved her life and her home that day.
“One of the firefighters said to me, this is a miracle, and I agree,” said Beverly. “God wrapped his arms around this house and me and said to the monster fire, “You will not have this home.”
The flags are waving at the Dunahoo home, in spite of the carnage the fire caused to the backyard, and the smoke caused in the house.
“We have our flags waving on our sites at our home, although it is not the prettiest of sites as they now wave over our blackened backyard,” said Beverly in an e-mail note to her family. “Each day we work to clean one area, and now we are doing a good cleaning job one room at a time in the house.”
In the end, the Dunahoos feel strangely blessed. They are whole. Their home is in one piece, and the burned beauty in the backyard can, after all, become a renovation project for the future.
“Please pray for Art and I for the strength to continue cleaning the inside of our home from the damage that the smoke has caused,” said Beverly. “And praise our boys this Memorial Day who are fighting to keep us free.”
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