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FIRST -HAND ACCOUNTS OF THE MOUNT VISION FIRE BY A RANCHER A FIREFIGHTER A PARK RANGER A FIRE STRATEGIST A FIRE WARDEN A WATER DISTRICT MANAGER INMATE FIREFIGHTERS AN OBSERVER HOME OWNERS BURNED OUT A HOMEOWNER SPARED A NATURALIST Interviews by Leonard Tennyson, Inverness Transcriptions by Lynne D.Yonng, Marshall and by Connie Holton, Berkeley. Copyright Leonard Tennyson Inverness, California 1996 Second Edition 1996 October 13,1996 ABOUT THE INTERVIEWS: These" oral history" interviews were made over a period of several months after the October '95 Mt. Vision fire. They were done at the suggestion of Louise Landreth, a member of the Committee of the Jack Mason Museum of Inverness, for the Museum's historical archives. These unabridged interviews barely scratch the surface. They reflect only the personal views and experiences of two dozen or so people whose lives were touched by the fire. Limits of time and resources eliminated scores of others -- people who played vital roles in fighting the fire and those whose lives were profoundly affected by it. Of the former group, many are well known through official reports. They include Park Superintendent Don Neubacher, Stan Rowan, Chief of the Marin County Fire Department, and Tom Tarp, the State's Fire Chief. Together they formed the triumvirate of the Incident Command. In the latter group must be included all of the people who lost their homes in the fire. We can never measure in full the contributions of the "unknowns" -- hand crew firefighters, engine crews, dozer operators, pilots and crews of helicopters and air tankers and providers of food and shelter. The interviewer wishes to thank all the men and women who patiently answered his questions. Naturally he accepts responsibility for errors and omissions. LB. Tennyson 1 THE RANCHER Interview with Anne Murphy at the Home Ranch, Point Reyes Peninsula, 3/1/96. Anne Murphy helps run the 3,000 acre ranch which is located between Drake's Estero and Limantour Estero with her two partners, Scott and Lee Murphy. She moved there in 1977 with her husband Scot. They have two children, son Barcley, 17, and daughter Jessica, 14. A horsewoman and nature-lover, she hails from Baltimore, Maryland. LT: Tell us something about the ranch, its history, when you moved here, what you raise, and how you fared in the fire. AM: This is a 3000 acre ranch. It lies between the Limantour Estero and Drake's Estero. It is essentially a peninsula. We have Drake's Bay in front and the two esteros on either side. The ranch buildings set back into the valley behind the marsh lands. It's that part of the Point Reyes National Seashore that begins the agricultural zone. Everything south of us is wilderness, all the way between here and Bolinas. The ranch was established during the twenties. It was part of the Shafter-Hamilton estate. LT: There had been no ranch here before then? AM: There was ranching here before Murphy's. There were families living here and they had dairy cows. Murphy expanded on the existing ranch. He came in and bought eleven thousand acres, it went from here all the way to Bear Valley. As a matter of fact, the fire which burned twelve thousand acres of the Seashore National Park was almost the entirety of the original Murphy ranch. The Laguna Ranch, Glenbrook, Muddy Hollow, and Nova Albion were all a part of the Murphy ranch originally. LT: Did I hear correctly, that it extended all the way over to Bear Valley? AM: Yes. Eleven thousand acres. Almost to the boundaries of the fire. Actually the fire went a little further south. That is the first thing Lee Murphy, my father-in-law, commented upon after the fire. He is still full involved in this ranch. He said: "I can't believe it, my father's land totally burned, every bit of it. " LT: Was there ever much timber here, or was it mostly scrub? AM: Brush, very little timber on this particular ranch that is. There never has been much timber here, this is pasture land. LT: How many head of cattle did you say you had? AM: There are t1ITee hundred plus mother cows and their calves. Then we have the younger stock that is out by the Estero Trail Head parking lot. And there are also replacement heifers. LT: What do you mean, "replacement heifers?" 2 AM: You realize this is a cow-calf operation. It's all beef. There is no dairy herd here. What we do is to raise marketable beef animals. So we have a herd of cows and a herd of bulls and we breed them. We raise the babies. When the babies are old enough to be weaned - at about six hundred pounds - we market them. We sell them like a crop. Replacement heifers we save. They are culled as the best heifers of that year's calfing season. LT: By the way, I'm sure not many people know that the U.S. Park Service takes care of some of your fencing. Did you expect that when you moved here? AM: Yes, we did. Our agreement with the Park when the Park bought the ranch was that they would responsible for our boundary fences. They are our landlords, so to speak. If you were renting a house, then you would be responsible for the maintenance of the house, or whatever the agreement is. They are, as a matter of preference, responsible for the boundary fences, helping ensure that the cattle don't get out into the park. LT: We're talking now about boundary fences that were burned in the fire and which the Park Service is replacing. AM: Yes. Our cross-fencing we are responsible for ourselves. That is within our own ranch business. The boundary fence is extensive There is quite a lot of it. We lost six hundred acres to the burn. which isn't bad at all. It is going to come back, it is actually coming back beautifully. We are just looking at the work entailed to fix the fences and it is going to take quite a long time. LT: Tuesday the third of October, you saw the smoke coming from the top of Mt. Vision. AM: Yes. I saw it practically at the moment it started. I looked up and saw a gray smoke coming off the ridge. I knew immediately there was a blaze but didn't heed it as anything serious. I drove to school to pick up my kids and from Point Reyes you could get a good view of how fast the fire was growing. We stayed in town for a while to watch. It was accumulating volume fast. We didn't feel threatened yet. Nobody did. Everybody in the street was talking, pointing, and looking but nobody thought that it was going to go anywhere. There were fire engines running through town and we thought they had it under control. Since it had just started we thought everything was going to be fine. By that night, though, it appeared it was out of control.. We drove over to Martinelli's ranch on the other side of Tomales Bay and watched from there. You could see and hear the fire and the explosions of propane gas tanks at the burning homes. We watched plumes of smoke erupt as something would ignite. It was unbelievable to see. LT: The pines especially provided pyrotechnics. AM: They did indeed. It was a most extraordinary experience to witness. It was one thing to watch it remotely from across the Bay. It was quite another thing to realize that it was happening in your our own back yard. LT: Will you talk about how the ranchers came here to the ranch from all over the area 3 including from ranches across the Bay to help save the ranch? AM: Yes, They even came from Marshall. Merv McDonald used to have the Pierce Point Ranch that was his home ranch. Now his home ranch is on the Marshall-Petaluma Road. Pat Arnt lives in the Marshall area, he came with his wife and son, Rob. They brought equipment. All the ranchers brought equipment, whatever tractors they had, whatever animals. They brought their horses and their horse trailers. We thought we were going to have to evacuate the cattle. That would have been very difficult. Fortunately we didn't arrive at that point. We moved out the animals that were here in this valley. They included a herd of twenty bulls, all of our horses, and all the local animals that are around here in the compound area which consists of some twenty- five acres. But the animals that were out at the point, down by the esteros, we couldn't get to. LT: How did you move the animals, by horseback? AM: Yes. We pushed them on horseback, the bulls and the cows that we wanted to get out of that area. LT: I suppose the children didn't go to school for a couple of days. AM: They didn't go to school for a few days. The West Marin School had been transformed into the fire crisis center. The Red Cross was there and we set up a switchboard there for information and communications. LT: So many places were brought into use specifically for this fire. AM: Absolutely, all kinds of places. And so many homes too were opened up. Their doors opened up for the fire fighters, to everybody, and to anybody. Everybody wanted to help. I couldn't wait to help.