Even before the flames came, Jonathan Frei could hear the blistering winds barreling through the hills of Redwood Valley, rousting him from his house on Tomki Road.
At 12:43 Monday morning, Frei looked out and saw an orange light begin to peel across Pine Hill. He jumped in his car and drove up and down the road a couple times just to gauge how bad things were. Things were bad.
“You could hear the roar of the fire,” Frei recalled, standing in the embers of where his home had once stood. This tranquil wooded corner of Mendocino County had seen fires before. But among the verdant vineyards, stoic mountains and tall trees — fire seemed like distant history.
But as he looked at flames heading his direction, Frei knew the delicate truce with nature had ended.