Historic Fredalba lost

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Fredalba:

Ricky Davis pulled up in a blue pickup truck with his boss and found his home virtually the last one standing on the historic stretch of Fredalba Road.

More than a year ago Davis and his long-time girlfriend, Beth Walsh, were breathless with excitement when they moved into Fredalba on Davis’ 35th birthday in August. He spent September and October chopping down the tall pine trees and laying white rocks along driveway, ever conscious of the peril a wildfire could pose to the onetime logging community, which sits on a perch in the San Bernadino Mountains at 5,400 feet.

He knew nothing of fire early Monday morning when he left for his job at the Big Bear Marina. When co-workers told him, he tried to return to save the nine cats at home and the four keeshond dogs tied out back.

‘You never think its going to happen,’ Davis said. ‘You’re expecting to be let in to get your livestock and a little box with all your paperwork, and you have officials out there that stop you from coming in and tell you, ‘Oh, it’s already in flames, it’s gonna burn down.’’ With all the homes burning in Running Springs, ‘the reality was that resources ‘I don’t want to say they were unavailable, but it was tough to get resources down into (the Fredalba) area,’ said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Bob Poole.

Davis was turned away Monday morning by CHP officer who warned he would be arrested if he tried to go back.

It was anguish -- save his animals or risk landing in jail, he said. Davis’ boss got through with an emergency volunteer pass and brought the dogs and most of the cats back to Big Bear.

Early Wednesday afternoon, after slipping through the tightly monitored mountain checkpoints , Davis stared in disbelief at the line of houses leveled all along Fredalba Road. Then he remembered Viper, a favored pet that is half-bobcat, half-cat. He sprinted past the ash-covered flowers along his driveway, unlocked the door and ran from room to room.

‘He’s probably hiding somewhere, and I don’t blame him,’ Davis said hopefully, slumping into a wooden chair at the dining room table when Viper failed to appear. His girlfriend was firing questions through his cellphone speaker about the status of the tool shed and their neighbors’ homes. All gone.

His voice broke and tears welled a minute as he tried to describe what existed before Monday -- the tall rustling pines, the tight community where people treated one another like family.

‘My neighbors are going to come back to nothing,’ Davis said, covering his eyes with his ball cap and passing his cellphone to a reporter.

It was Walsh calling again. She asked more questions than she answered.

‘What do you mean, what did it look like?’ she asked a reporter. ‘It’s green, it’s full of trees. I like it there because I want to be in the mountains with trees all around us. There are still trees there, aren’t there?’

She was interrupted by Davis’ shouts that he had found Jeff, their black cat who was hiding in the darkness beneath the back deck. ‘I’ve got to find Viper and then we’re complete,’ Davis said. On the phone, Beth began to cry.

***

A hundred miles away in Valley Center (northern San Diego County), Rick Mercurio was heartsick to find that little more than the metal roof remained of his family house in Fredalba.

His great-aunt and -uncle bought the land in 1922 and built a cabin after the lumber companies pulled out. They left the property to Mercurio’s mother and her siblings. His mother and father began 65 happy years of marriage after a chance meeting at a dance at Smiley Park in Fredalba in 1938. Family members traded off the cabin on weekends and gathered there each year for Thanksgiving.

The woodblocks Mercurio’s great-aunt carved for Christmas cards hung on one wall, her paintings and watercolors on another. Native American baskets and pottery collected by a great-uncle who was an amateur archeologist were all on display. ‘There are so many memories in that cabin, and all the pictures were in there, so we’re just sick,’ Mercurio said. ‘It was like a museum for our family.’

-- Maeve Reston