Jonathan

JAN 15, 2025
Story collected by E. Vegvary and Karyl Clark
Written by E. Vegvary

Courtesy Jonathan Tehan. Thursday, July 25, 2024. 12:22 p.m. Smoke billowing behind the trees.

Courtesy Jonathan Tehan. Photo texted to him the evening of July 25, 2024.

Jonathan Tehan, 38, meets us at his ruined property on lower Vilas in mid-January.

He was born and raised in Cohasset, and this property is where he grew up. Eight years ago, he bought his childhood home from his father and moved back on the hill, wanting to give his son a similar boyhood. Jonathan says he needed to return to mountain life.

He’s a mechanic for Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. in Chico, but for the past five years on the hill he’s volunteered as a fire fighter, Captain of the Cohasset Volunteer Company. He graduated from the academy with his father, Dave Tehan, who works alongside him on the five-man crew.

Both family households, Jonathan and Dave and his wife Aurora lost their homes in the Park Fire. Jonathan is now living in a travel trailer, no longer surrounded by the mixed conifer and black oak woods of his youth. Everything has been destroyed, his trailer home, the cabin his father built when Jonathan was Daniel’s age, twelve collectible vehicles, and the forest.

Courtesy Jonathan Tehan.

But seven of the fourteen goldfish that live in the old spring box survived.

Nearly six months post-fire and a large percentage of the debris cleanup has yet to be instituted in Cohasset. Residents are being told February.

Jonathan is currently in discussion with the County regarding cleanup. He’s being told, as are all victims, that the ROE gives the County contractors authority to clear cut the private properties. Each tree, regardless of size, is worth $1,100. Nearly every tree on Jonathan’s eight acres is marked for removal. He doesn’t understand why every tree must be felled. He’s not alone. Many residents who signed the ROE to have their property cleared of debris have been questioning the extreme “hazard tree” guidelines.

The trees are just part of the contentious dialogue. In Jonathan’s case, he found himself arguing with the vehicle haulers in the first week of December. By the end of that demoralizing exchange, it became obvious that they were VIN collecting for profit. He found them digging through an old junk pile pulling out a motorcycle he’d long forgotten about, not included on his ROE.

Jonathan explains more, “When they showed up, they basically told me they were here for twelve Vin numbers, vehicles. At that time, I thought they were taking cars based on weight, but it's based off the Vin number. So, when they showed up, they said they had twelve listed. I told them, well, when I talked to a lady on the phone, she mentioned the tractor, the saw, the tractor. They're like, that's ag equipment, we don't want that. So, we're taking all this. And I was like, well, the three Chevelles and the C10 pickup are on my ROE. I'm saving those. And they're like, no you can keep one of the cars. We're taking three of them.”

He was told to call AAA and CoPart. He was conflicted, “I was in limbo. I didn’t want to get kicked out of the program.” While he waited on the phone for an hour, the haulers rolled the truck and one of the cars.

Although no one expects contracted debris crews to be formally trained in the myriad trauma responses that accompany the total loss from something like wildfire, there has been a distinct lack of sensitivity exhibited by officials in response to Park Fire victims. Survivors who have lost everything, and in the case of Cohasset, two-thirds of their community as well, experience an unfathomable grief from the cleanup process. Objects represent memories, of better times, of shared experiences. In Jonathan’s case, his father and he enjoyed collecting and working on vintage vehicles together. There is an added insult to injury whenever the victim’s possessions are treated carelessly, like garbage, or as generated revenue for others. The refrain on the hill has become fire is big business.

Official representatives, cleanup crews, elected officials have all adopted an attitude that they know best and that residents just need to get out of the way. The fine print in the ROE states:

30. Who retains the revenue from material recycled by the State Program, such as concrete, metal and hazard trees? The bids submitted by State Program contractors account for any revenue the contractors expect to receive for recycling metals, concrete, or hazard trees. This practice encourages recycling efforts and lowers the overall cost of the project paid by taxpayers. All recycling revenues are retained by the contractor and tracked by the State Incident Management Team.

For months, residents have been instructed in no-nonsense terms to not touch anything in the debris field, sift their own ashes, or remove anything from the site.

“They took the car, that's when my issues began.” Jonathan is clearly disgusted by what he saw. “So they flipped the one truck over here. This whole time we've been watching the footprint, keeping it clean, not doing anything, not making a mess. Yep. They drug the truck down here, flipped it over, blew this up.” He makes a sweeping indication of the green silk socked area. “Made a huge mess out of it. Drug the cars up the driveway, and I was picking up parts out of the cars on the road.” He shakes his head.

Jonathan thinks Cohasset needs to retain an attorney. He’s filed a complaint with the contracted Tetra Tech. He’s become actively involved with other community members who are trying to get answers to what seem to be simple questions. The answers are scarce and frustratingly complicated.

July 24, 2024, the day of the Park Fire, Jonathan was camping with a large group of immediate family in Klamath, on the far northern California coast. All but one of them from Cohasset. When the Park Fire began in Upper Bidwell Park in Chico around 3:00 p.m., Jonathan got the dispatch call. He began monitoring the scanner. He heard about the drone and the air crew being grounded.

He says, “Yeah, I heard that. Knew that wasn't good. I called Spencer because at that point we had a volunteer all call. Everybody was getting dispatched.” Spencer is Jonathan’s second in command. “I told him, what are you doing? What's going on? He was available. He offered to come here,” he’s referencing his Cohasset property, “because we had two dogs here. Once you're on the engine, you're committed so I told him, take care of anything you got for yourself and when you're done with that, if you can get our dogs, great. And then if you can get on the engine, do that.” Spencer and his girlfriend were able to safely relocate the dogs.

Jonathan assumed his captain responsibilities seven hours away from his command.

Company 21, Station 22 in Cohasset had already been dispatched to Bidwell Park. The station was empty. “I got Spencer a firefighter from company 42. But there was a lot of us on vacation that week, so I was coordinating with them to make sure they had enough for their engines, get someone for our engine. And we were able to get some firefighters to go with Spencer. He wasn't on his own.”

At the campground, people were growing anxious. Hearing the air crew was on the ground was stressful.

Jonathan admits, “From when the fire started, I have lost complete track of time.”

Spencer had been dispatched to Forest Ranch where he opened that station and started staffing when he was told to get back to Cohasset. “I knew that we didn't have enough volunteers because everybody was camping. We were coordinating how we could get back.”

He pauses, “I was worried. I was cautious. In the Bucket Brigade, we basically talked about this scenario for the last six or seven years, and we've invited sheriffs and others up and explained this scenario.

“Everybody else said it was going to not happen this way, but we were prepared for it.

“The biggest training or things that I did was with the Bucket Brigade as a community member.” The Bucket Brigade is a group of community members working independently and with the Cohasset Community Association’s Emergency Preparedness Committee. “Community first,” Jonathan says and wants the community to know that their neighbors played instrumental roles during and immediately after the fire. Seth Mitchell, an arborist, and Maggie Krehbiel, the GMRS radio coordinator and chairperson of the EPC committee became key players.

He continues, “Also the phrase Seth and I kept repeating to each other was we got this. Those words brought power, comfort, faith, courage. Almost every interaction between us began and ended with we got this. On that note having the GMRS radios was an amazing comfort. Hearing everyone on that radio was a constant reminder that we had people out there looking out for us. It was a team effort.

“That's my thing. Community first.”

Jonathan returns to the day of the fire.

“I was going to come back, but we had two trailers. The tent trailer and my dad's trailer, and nobody knew how to tow the trailers. I didn't want everybody coming back in the middle of vacation to watch their house burn. Yeah, I didn't want them to have to watch that. I wanted the kids to stay and have fun. My dad was like, I'm going. I knew if he came, there wouldn't be enough people to tow the trailers.”

He waited until his family was asleep to leave, driving through the night, arriving in Cohasset around 10 a.m. July 25. The village hadn’t burned yet, his house was still standing. He borrowed turnout gear from Company 42 and went to work for the next week. His father, Dave, joined up with him Saturday.

Dave and Jonathan Tehan. Courtesy ABC News.

Cohasset had made it through the first night of the Park Fire. The fire closed Cohasset highway, the one way in one way out evacuation route, when it jumped at Jack Rabbit Flat the evening before. It had burned homes in the Rock Creek Road and Richardson Springs area but was contained at the Welcome to Cohasset sign. Diligent fire work turned the flames away from the main road down into Rock Creek, pushing it northwest toward the uninhabited Ishi Wilderness. Many residents believed the mountain community had miraculously escaped destruction.

Jonathan explains his thought process when he arrived back at his home on Thursday morning. “I knew it was bad, but I wasn't like,” he takes a breath, changes direction. “I had ten thousand gallons in that tank. I had sprinklers, I had everything. I didn't want to do it prematurely. And so, it was, well, we got a little bit of time. We can get back over here, maybe, and do it. I didn't kick any of that on. I just shut the windows, turned the gas off, and didn't grab anything.” He’s not alone in this experience.

“Shortly after, my buddy was out on a dozer at Vose's. I asked him if he could get up here and start the sprinklers. There was water here if they needed to fill a tender. Just hook up and they could use it. And his message was, what was it?” He pulls up the text exchange on his phone. “Yeah. We just got burned over. We lost the tender. As bad as it burned over. I don't think there's much up the road, but I'll go check as soon as I can.

“And the next message was. I got a picture if you want it, but it's not good.” It’s startling in these modern times how many fire victims were texted photographic proof. Of life or total loss.

Jonathan continues, “I actually wouldn't come here for, I don't know, the first seven days. Eight days. I didn't come here because I didn't want to, like, lose my head.”

“I don't know, you can see it over there, but there's a water trailer that I had. It was parked kind of where the tent trailer was, and I could see it when I was driving by going to all the places. I told Seth because we needed a water trailer real bad, go get my trailer. He went to grab it, and I met him in the road down there. He got out and kind of broke down. Yeah. He's like, it's not good. I didn't even think about it. We were thinking about the trailer. I didn't think about him coming here and having to see another place that he'd been connected to,” he trails off.

“You know, there was people that really cared that weren't necessarily allowed to be here.”

After a moment, Jonathan begins to humbly but as a matter of fact outline and explain the things he and his volunteer crew did during those first chaotic days. “Station 22 was basically shut down. Nothing there. And so, I got it operational.” He proposed and was granted a twelve-hour shift schedule so that his crew could stay on the mountain. Working in these shifts kept the crew on the engine. “I just was on the engine doing my shift and we were just saving what was left is really what it came down to.”

Finding and putting out spot fires, or hotspots, is the only way that structures can continue to be saved after the initial onslaught of fire has moved through. Jonathan, his crew, and several Bucket Brigade members worked tirelessly through the nights mapping the hotspots for Cal Fire to locate and extinguish each day.

“We got the CCA up and running because it was down. We worked, we coordinated. The volunteers run the water tenders, so volunteers help volunteers and are attached to the communities. We had some volunteers from different communities come up, and they kind of know the area.

“The first and foremost thing we did was establish water. They thought there was no water. The out-of-town guys didn't want to use their water because they'd have to go to town and fill up.

“There was a lot of stuff not happening that could have been happening. We were able to get them set up at the CCA building with the generator and getting the water going. We tried the tank at the school, and it was shooting water out of the conduit. It had a bunch of issues. That was almost a complete failure.

“We tried the tank at the CCA. Tried to turn the valves. The valves were all stuck. There's a check valve somewhere in the system, so we couldn't backfill at the hydrant to fill the tank. The tank was empty, so we couldn't get anything to work. We had to fight it for a little while, but I was able to get the guy that got it set up. He was able to work through it while we were running around.

“The thing was that nobody knew things, and nobody wanted to go places. I was like, no, we have water. I had the connectors, and I had everything. They don't have any of the stuff to hook into the ag tanks. I got it all on the engine.

“It was what it was. But we got them to the spring. We got the spring set up.” His voice becomes relaxed. Rerouting the trucks up to the Cold Spring was a success. The Cold Spring is a historic watering hole at the headwaters of Rock Creek. It’s been used continuously as a water source on the ridge for generations. “So, we flagged that all off. Got it set. Once they got that, they started going up and filling up.

“That's the Bucket Brigade.” He gives credit. “We've been working on this for years. It's not a question. We know it's there. We all know that it's there. Even the local volunteers in Butte County, they all know it. But we didn't have people from Butte County here. We had people from Fresno, everywhere else.

“We all were working hard.”

He’s mentally tallying. It’s a list of major accomplishments but Jonathan is sincerely humble. He’s a hard-working volunteer who stepped in and made a difference. “One of the first things I did when everybody got here, our GPS, Google based maps are crap. They don't show all the roads. It doesn't show Mud Creek. It doesn't show Gates Hill and the Musty Buck way out. None of the roads up here really exist on the Google map system that we have. I knew that was going to be critical.

“So, we got the road signs. I gave those out told the locals, go put these up at every address that you know up here. We had a bunch pre-made that we had to sell. We just never sold them.” He’s talking about reflective street address signs. The volunteers had pre-ordered them to sell at the annual Bazaar which would have been a week and a half after the Park Fire began. “I said go put up these everywhere. Because that way if there's a call, at least they’ll know.

“There was definitely a community local effort. Got the signs out. We have a local map book that Company 21 has. That's hand-drawn from years ago. With addresses and everything. I put that on the bench outside, and then we have other maps. I made copies in the office of all the local road maps that we had. Then I had, we'll call it boots on the ground.” He pauses again and it’s obvious that he feels protective about his crew and the role everyone played in helping. “All night going around, we'd mark where all the hotspots were and then when the crew would come up in the morning, they let me kind of brief the crew.

“At the morning briefing, I'd hand those maps out to everybody and say, here, here's all the hot spots. This is what we're looking for. Basically, we were up all night finding them. So, this is what you got to do today. This way they weren't having to go out and patrol or do any of that. When they showed up, I gave them maps. They had the hotspots, and they could go right to work.”

“There was hotspots. There was flare ups. There was. You can see fire at night a lot better than you can in the daylight.”

Jonathan worked tirelessly and non-stop until the evacuation orders began to be lifted a week after the fire began.

He knew he had lost everything. “I came over here after I got off the engine. I remember just like having the overwhelming feeling of -- I'm going to stay here. I was comfortable, I was happy, it was what it was. I stayed here and I felt good. I slept here in the yard, on the cot for a night. And that was the first night that I slept since the fire.”

“I mean, I lost everything. But I don't know, I gained so much. I lost everything, but that’s nothing, that's just like, man. I was super attached to all my possessions, and I thought that that would break me. And it hasn't yet.

“I’ve got everything that I want. You just kind of realize it’s the community. That’s what's important.”

He shifts seamlessly into the future, his and that of Cohasset. “I'm definitely staying here. I'm not going anywhere. I talked to some loan people and I'm looking at some options. They've done some houses that are in my price range.

“I think Cohasset is going to be Cohasset. I don't really see people leaving. I mean, it's definitely going to be different. Everything that I grew up with is gone.”

The immediate future? “Cleanup is going to be what we have to concentrate on now. The brush is going to grow up and the trees are going to be dead, and it's going to be snags and brush. And we gotta keep working, a lot of work. Hardening. You have to do your part.”

The sun is beginning to set. A winter chill setting in.

Jonathan wants to finish his story, reach out to his friends and neighbors. “I think the biggest thing is a lot of people think that if they would have stayed, they could have saved it or done more. And I don't want people thinking they can do that.

“I know if I would have stayed here at my house and tried to fight it the way I thought I was able to, I probably would have died. There's a really good chance, okay? You have to survive that initial fire front. That's a few minutes. And if you survive that, then you can put the stuff out. But that few minutes is what's going to get you. And if it gets you, you're no good.

“I mean, you're dead.

“So, I don't want people thinking because some people stayed up here, that that's what you have to do. I mean, if you got a fire engine, you got everything going -- but that smoke and everything comes in and your pump dies. Your generator dies. Now you got no water. You could have 100,000 gallons. But if it dies, then you're dead.”

Standing steady and resolute in the devastation of his property, Jonathan Tehan sends an impassioned message to the community. It is one of reassurance. And love.

We got this.