Fire victim: 'I knew it was gone'

As he worked at Sierra Pacific Industries in Lincoln last Friday, a co-worker drew Miguel Vargas' attention to a plume of smoke in the sky to the north.

A fire in Smartsville, Vargas thought.

Instead, the fire was in the Yuba River canyon below his modest 960-square-foot home, and moving uphill fast. Soon, Vargas got word his house was in danger, and he raced to get home.

He made it to a point about 100 feet above his home on Lake Francis Road, where a CHP officer stopped him from going further. The officer pointed down the hill and said, "There's your house."

"I didn't see the house. I just saw flames," Vargas said. "I knew it was gone."

Vargas' Dobbins home was one of two structures, and the only inhabited one, destroyed by the Yuba Fire that sprang to life that day and was still burning Wednesday, now 80 percent contained. The fire broke out at midday, partially caused by a red-tailed hawk that was electrocuted by a powerline.

On Wednesday, Vargas and his wife of almost three years, Deborah Vargas, sifted through the blackened remains of the house and pondered their recent luck, good and bad.

The good was that all three of the couple's dogs survived, two removed by a Yuba County sheriff's deputy and a third found on Saturday with burnt paws.

The bad for the couple was that their home was ravaged by the fire while others a stone's throw away were untouched.

Vargas recalled how wildfires had touched him before, when the Williams Fire in 1997 destroyed a nearby mobile home he owned and once lived in.

But the couple hoped fires were in the past, and said the future involved a couple of garbage bins, fund raisers and determination.

"I've got my mind set on this piece of land," said Vargas, 61. "I'm too old to set up anywhere else."

Miguel Vargas, a Dobbins resident since 1981, was at work as a handyman and truck driver at Sierra Pacific, and Deborah Vargas, who's lived with her husband since 1999, had just ended a shift as a cake decorator at Walmart in Yuba City.

Deborah Vargas, 49, said she was most concerned for the dogs: dachshund mix Daisy, poodle mix Lily and mixed breed Bullet.

"I didn't know the dogs had gotten out," she said. "I didn't know where my husband was."

The couple found each other, and Daisy and Lily, at the homes of friends and family in the area later Friday. But the home's fate came to them through the television.

Deborah Vargas said news crews showed the burned-out house, with pieces of ash swirling around it. She said she thought of different items in the house and how they'd been turned into that floating ash.

"I had to keep telling myself, 'It's gone,'" she said.

Miguel Vargas said he bought the house in 1996 for about $100,000. He had insurance on the mortgage, but not on the house itself.Inside the house, the couple lost all their furniture, clothes, kitchen appliances, jewelry and two computers, though Deborah Vargas said she holds out hope photos on the computer can be retrieved.

The fire also destroyed a 2005 Toyota Corolla that Miguel Vargas was still paying for, an old pickup truck he'd recently bought, and two chainsaws and a log splitter he used for a side business of chopping and selling firewood.

And Miguel Vargas lost all the photos and other mementos he had of his first wife, Marian, who died of a heart condition in 1999.

"I kind of lost a lot," he said, pausing to sigh, take a deep breath, and looking at the ground for several moments before he dabbed at his eyes with a tissue stained a dingy gray with charcoal and soot. "I'll be all right. I'll try to, anyway."

The couple is living in a cabin at Thousand Trails campground in Oregon House for now, and has an offer to move into a small cabin on the property of Bonnie Noel, a longtime friend who lives about three miles from the home's remains.

Vargas said he'd like to eventually put a trailer, or even a modular home, on the 1.37-acre lot where the house stood. Sierra Pacific has offered him lumber, he said, and another man offered use of a excavator to clear the property.

Debbie Banks, Deborah Vargas' sister-in-law, is having a yard sale Saturday with all proceeds benefiting the couple, and the Yuba Feather Lions are organizing a spaghetti dinner for next week to raise money to help them.

As the couple's neighbors settled back into their homes Wednesday after an evacuation order for Lake Francis Road was lifted a day earlier, many said wildfires are an unpredictable fact of life in the foothills.

"I'm scared to death of it all the time," said Don Ferris, 65, caretaker of a model home that overlooks the river canyon where the fire started. "The fire burned all around us, but the house wasn't in danger, and there was plenty of room for the fire trucks."

Ferris said the key to avoiding wildfire damage is having defensible space, by clearing flammable brush and debris in a wide patch around a home.

But defensible space doesn't fully explain why the Vargas' home was burned. Both Deborah Vargas and Noel recalled "brush-clearing barbecues" at the home earlier this summer.

"Once it got into the tree tops, there's nothing he could do," Noel said. She added, "He has tons of friends in the area. Anyone will help him anyway they can."

Another neighbor, June Skarr, said she felt bad for Vargas' plight.

"It depends on the wind, and it depends on the growth around the house," said Skarr, 79, explaining the randomness of why one home might be burned and a neighboring one spared. "I'm really glad I got my goats. They cleaned all this up."

The Yuba Fire, which fire officials expect to have fully contained Saturday, has burned 3,891 acres so far in both Yuba and Nevada counties on both sides of the Yuba River.

Crews continued to make progress Wednesday on containment, with the fire burning mostly toward the east and southeast in relatively uninhabited areas and no longer considered a threat to any structures.

The fire has caused no deaths and 26 injuries, which fire officials have said were minor sprains, cuts and poison oak infections suffered by firefighters.

The fire has cost about $8.3 million. Fire officials said they're still investigating what caused a second blaze that combined with the hawk-ignited blaze to become the Yuba Fire.

Yard sale benefit for family

Deborah Vargas' sister-in-law, Debbie Banks, is having a yard sale with all proceeds to benefit Deborah and her husband Miguel Vargas, whose home wasdestroyed last week by the Yuba Fire.

• WHEN: Saturday, beginning at 8 a.m.

• WHERE: Banks' home, 879 Kimball Ave., Yuba City.

• WHAT ELSE: Banks said she's also taking donations of items to sell at the yard sale. They can be taken to the yard sale.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Ben van der Meer at 749-4709 or bvandermeer@appealdemocrat.com.