The Autrey Family

September 26, 2024
Story collected by E. Vegvary and Karyl Clark
Written by E. Vegvary

We turn off Cohasset Road onto Mud Creek. Or, as the locals will say, we leave the paved road. Take the winding drive northeast, following the narrow dirt road through heavily forested private properties. In less than a quarter of a mile, we enter the total devastation wrought by the Park Fire. The burn scar here is humbling in its horror. Once lush conifers are now sticks rising out of blackened earth, the verdant undergrowth of dogwoods, manzanita, and live oak are ash; homes are rubble, metal roofs curled into foundations, hulks of cars and trucks sit on rims and coils of steel tread.

We drive on. Mud Creek trickles through its green banks, shocking in the black and grey ash.

A mile later, at Four Corners, where Mud Creek Road and Vilas Road intersect, we meet up with forty-three-year-old Justin Autrey driving a Razor. The right-side of the ATV has been melted by the fire but the vehicle runs! And that counts for everything these days. Later, when listing his staggering loss of vehicles and equipment, he tells us, “I'm grateful my Razor made it! That thing is not just a toy, but a tool. I've been dragging big old logs; skidding logs off it.”

He takes the lead, and we follow him two miles through the burned forest up to the gate that indicates we have arrived at the Autrey’s 250-acre property. Just two months ago this was a deep and shaded forest of tall conifers punctuated by towering oak centenarians. We drive past one of these massive old oaks on the ground, felled by the raging heat of the Park Fire.

The standing chimney signals a homestead, what was once a house. A beloved home occupied by this family since 1979. Justin was born inside this home. Burnt structures are dreadfully unfamiliar to the eye. A treadle sewing machine lying twisted against the stone foundation is a haunting reminder of slow lifestyles and cozy interiors.

Rita, seventy-nine, remembers, “It was a real comfortable home to be in. That's all I can tell you. It wasn't big. It was small, but it was very comfortable. Yeah, I really miss that.” She closes her eyes. “I can close my eyes and dream about walking through my house. Touch everything.” She opens her eyes again. “I had to stop doing that.”

Courtesy Rita Autrey

We sit on camp chairs surrounded by this destruction. Almost as far as the eye can see is the burnt rubble of the Autrey family’s life. Rocks line pathways and what were once small gardens. The rocks, collected over decades and carefully placed, are charred black.

Nearby, a sixty-foot-tall Sequoia stands singed. Rita tells us proudly that it had been planted as a teensy sapling. “Just a stick,” reminisces Jamey. An Earth Day treasure brought home by a child now grown to adulthood, the once dark green, scaly needles burnt to a dull orange and brown, bent grotesquely sideways by the force of the inferno that moved relentlessly through the property.

Jamey Autrey, seventy-six years old, looks around, still as stunned two months later as we are today. It is our first time here; he’s been back on his property for weeks. How does one process the overwhelming shock of it we all wonder aloud. No one answers for a long time. Finally, Jamey, “Will I ever adjust to this? I don’t think so.”

“The forest is gone,” Justin says. His voice is emphatic with the finality of it. “The first time we came back it made me dizzy, looking around. I didn’t expect the forest to be gone.”

The patriarch tells us he does not want heavy equipment in his woodland, he’s worried about the impact it may have on the forest floor. He doesn’t want to cut down the trees. Thinks it’s best to let nature have her way, let the trees decompose and feed the soil. Rita and Justin nod in vehement agreement.

Courtesy Rita Autrey

Justin lists the trees that have been sprouting post-fire, the black oaks, the redwoods. He muses aloud, will the forest of fir, pine, and cedar, where he has lived the first half of his life, become an oak, dogwood, and maple grove for the second half.

Rita briefly mentions the idea of mycelium, the connections we cannot see. This family is mourning the woods. They are deeply concerned about the forest as a living entity.

We tell them we saw a squirrel just past the gate. Jamey says, “We do have a squirrel.There’s one squirrel here.” On two hundred and fifty acres. We tell him where we saw itjumping over a downed, blackened tree. He nods, “Yes, that’s the one.”

We discuss wildlife; what the Autrey’s have spied alive and what they’ve come across dead. A woodpecker. Dead. Rita has seen a fox. Alive. Justin a bear. Alive. Rita says the rattlesnake in her garden, a longtime copacetic relationship, is alive.

The woods are eerily quiet for lack of birds or the familiar sound a breeze makes when it moves through living trees. Justin says at night they hear bugs inside the trees, chewing. And in the mornings, find small heaps of sawdust at the bases of trees. Rita is pleased that nature is reclaiming the trees.

We begin to talk about the day of the fire.

The Park Fire was moving at unprecedented speeds. Tinder-dry vegetation, whipping winds, and two months of triple digit heat created a situation that drove the fire out of Bidwell Park at a rate of nearly five acres a second. Four hours after Sheriff Honea issued evacuation orders for Cohasset, the fire crossed the town’s only paved escape route. Cohasset Road, the one-way-in-one-way-out route, became impassable at around 7:30 that evening. Officials directed evacuees north, to the radio towers past the end of the paved road.

By dusk, eighty to a hundred people in dozens and dozens of vehicles were congregated at both the radio towers and, farther north, the helicopter pad. The situation was becoming chaotic and perilous. Residents were facing a harrowing reality of escaping through Sierra Pacific Industries land, using labyrinthine dirt logging roads, maneuvering their way northeast to Highway 32 in Forest Ranch.

There were no police or fire personnel present. Residents were on their own.

It was Justin Autrey who stepped into the role of leader, shouldering a responsibility in a situation that it now seems he was born to fulfill. It was Justin who navigated the backroads in the dark and dust and heat, leading his family, friends, and fellow Cohassians to safety.

But first.

“I have a spoon. That’s what I have left,” Rita announces, miming holding up a spoon in front of her eyes, brimming with unshed tears. “Magic spoon.” She recalls the story of how she fed her family for two days from an abundance of vegan food her grandson had prepared on the day of July 24. The day the Park Fire began. Bradley had come to visit that week, specifically to prepare vegan food for his grandparents. When they had to evacuate, the large container of food, and the magical serving spoon, had been hastily packed into Rita’s Subaru. That food fed the family and after they were nourished, Rita washed thecontainer and the spoon. Realization hit her. “It dawned on me. What a trip that was.”

The Autrey’s lost everything. Their two homes, the John Gates house built in the 1960s and the cabin that dated back to the 1930s. Outbuildings, a multitude of vehicles, Justin’s barn, lovingly tended gardens, vital heavy equipment. They had the vehicles they evacuated in, three cats and a bird, and of course, one another.

On Friday, July 26th, two days after the Park Fire began, two days after evacuating, the family drove from Chester down to Chico. Cohasset was still under evacuation orders.

A friend and lifelong Cohasset resident, Arlo Cartledge, texted Justin wanting the gate code. Justin was inside the Chico Walmart. “Trying to pay for my stuff, and everything is real slow and I’m almost going crazy. Once I got done, I call Arlo and said, so you're at my gate? He said, no, Zach Phillips is there. He tried to get ahold of you. A friend of mine. He works with fires. Right then, I knew that he was on his way down our driveway, and I was wondering what he was seeing. The anticipation was just terrible. Waiting in the parking lot.

“Ten minutes later, he calls me. I had tried calling him, but it didn't go through. He didn’t have service. And then ten minutes later, he calls me and we're already driving. I was in the passenger seat. He said, are you sitting down? He could barely get the words out, like he's gonna cry. It’s all gone. I'm like what? I'm at your house. Everything is leveled.” Justin looks down at his hands. “Man, that was hard. We went to Trader Joe's to get a few things, and I just walked around there like a zombie. Like I don't know, maybe I'll get some cheese. I just put it back and went outside and stood next to the car and I felt numb. Not even crying. Oh my God. What the heck? This doesn't even seem real. That was the hard part. Yeah.”

Jamey and Rita and their five children moved to Cohasset when Rita’s father bought her the John Gates property. He wanted his daughter settled, and after nearly a decade of nomadic living, the Autrey’s were ready. The house in the woods suited their growing family perfectly. Deep in the forest, far from people and farther from town, they put down their roots. Rita and Jamey had finally found safety and peace. They healed themselves here, they flourished. As the years went by, they acquired more land, a sizable piece of the woods that slope down and eastward, property that they loved desperately.

The Park Fire evacuation was the first time they had been evacuated. Other fires had come close, but Jamey made a job of gathering information daily to make informed decisions for his family’s safety. “Big fire in 1990. We didn't have a phone then. I'd go down to the command center, which was the CCA building, and I'd talk with the head guy. He would spend the whole time with me clarifying and on one of those trips I came back. Rita says, “The Sheriff came here, told us to evacuate. But I just came from the CCA building and the guy had given me the straight scoop. We were right at a line; we weren't really at threatright then. So, I was so glad that I actually had talked to the guy.”

The Park Fire was different.

“I actually am a trained firefighter,” Jamey explains. “The federal government trained me.”

He’s a Vietnam Veteran. “But the training was one tree burning, another tree not burning, and this tree finally smokes and goes in the flame, tree to tree burning. So that's all I knew. Tree to tree burning. I didn't expect this. This was horrific. What happened here was not tree to tree.”

The family knew that wildfire was the biggest threat to their mountain life, and they prepared for the possibility with selective clearing and outfitting trucks with water tanks and pumps.

Seventeen years ago, Jamey and his family fought a 25’ x 30’ sized lightning-strike fire before Cal Fire arrived. And in June of 2022, another fire began in a highly inaccessible part of the Big Chico Creek canyon, on the backside of their property. Lightning again.

This time Jamey and Justin were aided by a handful of neighbors - Jesse & Jessie Montgomery with a group of their friends, Nathaniel and Porter Siller. Cal Fire arrived forty-five minutes later. Jamey knows that the fire would have been catastrophic for Cohasset if he hadn’t been prepared with his portable water truck.

Jamey says his attitude has been, “Hey, I’m out on Musty Buck and I’m looking out for you guys.”

Courtesy Rita Autrey. Jamey in his trusty water truck participating in the Cohasset Bazaar parade.

This close call in 2022 accentuated the serious concerns the Cohasset community had long voiced regarding the locked SPI gates. The gates make the logging roads impassable.

These roads crisscross through the vast SPI forests surrounding Cohasset, several of which can be utilized as critical ingress and egress to Highway 32. The Autrey’s asked for keys to the gates at a CCA Town Hall meeting in 2023 and were refused. Cal Fire reassured the community that in case of a wildland fire, fire personnel would be the ones to open the gates. This proved to be dangerously untrue.

The one-way-in-one-way-out evacuation plan for Cohasset is the official mantra of all government officials, Butte County Sheriff’s Office, Cal Fire, and the local supervisor.

Officials routinely discouraged discussion of using the Cohasset Stage Road as an evacuation route. Locals who frequent the Ishi Wilderness and the Deer Creek campground or utilize the timber roads to get over to the High Lakes knew this would be a life-saving alternative, if ever needed. But the concerns included the locked gates, the rough conditions of the roads and moreover the lack of familiarity with the route during the chaos of a wildland fire.

Justin at the wheel of his trusty red Four Runner was a frequent encounter year-round for offroad aficionados and day campers who used the Ponderosa line to get down to the Deer Creek campground. His voice was at the forefront of imploring residents to familiarize themselves with possible alternate routes to safety in case of disaster.

On July 24, 2024, that disaster struck. The Watch Duty app alerted Butte County residents about the Park Fire.

From his house, Justin squinted through binoculars looking southward, down the Big Chico Creek canyon toward Upper Bidwell Park. He could see a tiny smoke plume.

Something about the fire made him uneasy. He recalls, “It was just so hot. And that wind. The winds were blowing like crazy! Whipping up the canyon. I thought, this isn’t good.”

He watched the fire grow from ten acres to fifty in what seemed like minutes. The smoke began to billow. “It went from seeing a little bit to a lot.” He indicates a half inch with his fingers and then spreads his hands wide. “After two hours it was oh, man, this thing is coming.” He told his parents to start packing up in preparation.

Now Rita can shake her head at the memory. “I'm starting to pack up because Justin encouraged us. I didn't feel afraid.” Ruefully she recalls casually gathering items. “I thought, okay, well, I'll take these earrings and these earrings. Because you think you’re coming back.

“I probably would have taken a lot more things, you know, but…we forget this, and we forget that. I had a copper boiler full of some of the,” she holds her breath remembering, “oldest photographs. When I first came back, I carefully stepped over that wall.” Shepoints to the foundation of her home. “And there's the copper boiler. I pried the lid off, and I reached in. It was all ash, you know.”

When the first evacuation warnings were issued, granddaughter Nicole Autrey called them from her home in lower Cohasset urging her grandparents and uncle to prepare for evacuation. A few hours later she called again, this time from the valley. Nicole and her partner Brent MacDonald had evacuated. Leave now, she told them. Nicole and Brent’s home was destroyed in the fire.

The Autrey’s began the drive out from their property around 7:00 that evening. The caravan traveled down Musty Buck and Mud Creek roads to Cohasset Road.

Justin explains that they knew the one-way-in-one-way-out evacuation route of Cohasset Highway was probably no longer an option. “Nicole and Brent had told us the fire had reached down below the Welcome to Cohasset sign. And I said we'll see if we can go out. And we went. We thought we still had a chance at going down that way. When we went out to the paved road, we headed down. There was a bunch of vehicles coming up. I said, well, that's not very good. They must have closed the road down there. Then down by the school, I seen a friend of mine, Tony, headed up and I stopped and real quick like, hey, man, what's going on? He said, they closed the road and told us to go up to the TV towers and hang out.”

The Autrey’s turned their three cars around and headed to the end of the paved road.

“It was all dust, you know,” Rita explains. “We're going up to the TV towers. And it was a slow go because there were some cars that were already headed up that way.” She adds, “We had to head that way.”

A half mile after the pavement ends, they encountered a group of evacuees waiting at the radio towers. There were no officials in sight. Justin urged those gathered to follow him up to Campbellville, to the helicopter pad.

Justin says, “We got emergency alert texts just past the radio towers. Behind me Rita flashed her lights, and I stopped, and I'm like, what's going on? She said, I just got an emergency alert text saying that Campbellville might not be a viable way. And I said, no, I know it's good to go, like one hundred percent. And then when I got to the helicopter pad, I got the same alert.” He pauses, “That was going to, right there, that was going to end up getting people killed. I said, no, come on, I know we're good to go.”

Seven miles later, the group arrived at the helicopter pad situated at the top of Cohasset Ridge. The winds were blowing hard and fast. There was a substantial number of cars gathered at the cement pad. Disbelief and fear on the faces of all. Darkness was falling quickly.

Justin was surprised by the number of people who had been directed north, into the wilderness, with no police or fire personnel present. “There was vehicles everywhere.” He was concerned about the fact that the vehicles were immobile and becomes visibly upset recalling that moment. “I said, this is not good right now. This is how we die. You know, we're going to die if we stay here.” He needed to figure out why the cars were stopped there. “Someone broke down? What's going on? We're sitting in this line of vehicles. This is really bad right now. Like real bad. I seen our friend, neighbor, “hippie” Josh way up there walking. Looking all intense, looking around. Thing is, he’s looking for me. He knew we'd be evacuating around the same time because I texted him an hour before we left. He sees me and says, you know the way? I’m like, hell, yeah, I know the way. He said, well, let’s get these people out of the way and get you through. You can lead the way out. And I'm like, yeah, let's do this.”

Justin knows these woods, SPI lands and the Ishi Wilderness better than anyone in the 21st Century. In his quiet and assured way, he accepted responsibility. All his anxiety and fear fell away once he learned that the road wasn’t blocked but that his friend “hippie” Josh had been waiting for him at the front of the line, holding the cars back because he knew they would need Justin to lead them out.

“While we’re waiting for some vehicles to move, some lady ran up. I don't know who it was, but she said, you know the way. I said, yeah, I know all these back roads. Even brought my grinder, ready to cut the gates. And she said, I'm following you. I'm like, well, everyone's following me. So yeah, come on, let's go!”

“Here we go,” he says he told himself. He was fully prepared for this very scenario.

The seriousness of the wildfire threat was undeniable now, in the distance the southern edge of Cohasset was glowing red inside a massive smoke cloud. Could Justin get these many vehicles, many of them not AWD or 4WD, driven by people who had not ever once been on the Cohasset Stage and Ponderosa dirt roads, down treacherous logging roads and back up to the next ridge? Could he lead them through miles of timberland to Highway 32 in Forest Ranch?

He could and he did.

Although surprised by how many evacuees he would be guiding, there was no question in his mind that he would lead them to safety. He had loaded his truck with the tools he might need, the grinder for the locked gates, a chainsaw for downed trees in the roadway.

He was even ready to sacrifice his truck if abandoned vehicles had to be pushed out of the way.

The line of cars fell in behind Justin Autrey, filing past the recognizable boulder pointing the way down to Deer Creek with a spraypainted arrow. It was fully dark as they rounded the first turn.

Justin continues, “Down the backside of the helicopter pad there was, I think it was two SUVs with a couple of elderly people driving back up. I rolled down my window and I’m like, hey, what's going on? They said, there's too many roads. We don't know where to go.

We're going back. And I said, don't go back. I know all the ways. I brought my grinder ready to cut the gate or whatever. We're gonna get through. Get in line here and follow us.

Don't go back. You don't want to do that.”

He discusses the condition of the backroads. The descent from the helicopter pad is notorious for being rutted out, filled with boulders. “Last spring it was really bad. Big old ruts! Luckily, Sierra Pacific fixed it up real good. One of my friends pointed out, they fixed it for hauling logs out. They didn't fix it for making an evacuation route. Normally those roads would be kind of rough.”

“What grace,” Rita finishes, “that the roads were passable.”

Justin was keenly aware that the biggest danger they faced, after the nightmare scenario of being trapped by fire, was that of drivers becoming separated and losing their way.

“We got down below the helicopter pad where you turn off to either go to Deer Creek or Highway 32. And I thought, well, people are going to get confused, and they might go to Deer Creek. That long rough road? People tearing their oil pans out and everything else?”

He shakes his head. “I started throwing some sticks in the road just to block it. My nephew Bradley grabbed a log. I said, no, don't do that. Because if someone's already down there they can throw a couple sticks out of the way, but don't put the big log in the road.

“Then here comes the Sierra Pacific guy from the road to the right, from 32. He’s got Nomex on, firefighting gear. He's like, all right, got all the gates open. You guys are good.

He said oh, you go up here to the logging camp take 130 G. There'll be someone to escort you out. That goes past Mushroom Rock and comes out of the F line. Seven miles up from Forest Ranch. I said, well, I already know all the back ways, so you don't gotta send someone to escort us, but whatever. Cool. Whatever, we'll do it. And so yeah, we headed out through that way. Hours and hours of dusty roads.”

They came upon an SPI logging camp. One of the loggers there told Justin that he would count the cars and pass the information up the line.

Jamey picks up the story. “Someone there told Justin they were going to count cars. Okay?

When we got to Highway 32, we were stopped by a Sierra Pacific representative and she told us,” he pauses, “Now this was dramatic. That person said you have to get moving. You have eighty vehicles behind you.” He lets that number sink in. “Sierra Pacific was counting them.” He repeats for emphasis. “You got to get moving because there’s eighty vehicles! I was shocked. I was in the dark about what was going on and that there were people following us. That number of eighty!”

Justin Autrey had led eighty cars, one hundred or so souls on board, to safety.

Rita remembers the hours’ long drive with her grandson Bradley. “I wasn't freaking out. Real stressed. But it was hot in the car, and it was really so dusty. So dusty. And I didn’t want to open the windows because the dust would come in. Occasionally I could crack them because the way the wind blew, I could take a breath, and I didn't want to put the air conditioning on because I didn't want to run out of gas. I wasn't really in danger of it, but I wanted to be real conservative with it.” She pauses, “I had the Rescue Remedy, Bach Flower. I said open this and give me a drop of it, you know, isn’t this a rescue?” She smiles at that now but admits that for many days following she felt a frisson of trauma each time she had to climb behind the wheel of her trusty Subaru wagon.

Visibility was near zero as the cars drove in the dust cloud that they themselves were creating. In the blinding conditions, people were driving off the road. Jamey himself drove into a ditch. “Yeah, I couldn't see. And the truck went completely off the road. With the help of this “hippie” Josh, he got me focused because I have a good four-wheel drive.

Better than normal and put it in four-wheel drive, and it pulled itself back out. I'll say this, windshield wipers work on dust.”

“I made sure we stuck together,” Justin says. “Back on Musty Buck, I said, number one, the most important thing. We all have to stick together. We don't know how bad it's going to get. Then out there on SPI lands, Rita flashed her lights. I was like, what's going on? She said, I don't see Jamey. Waited five minutes or whatever, and he came. We didn't know he'd gone off the road, and after that made sure to go extra slow to make sure we were all sticking together.”

Logging roads change in familiarity and driving them requires concentration even in daylight. Justin was focused. If he hadn’t been there to lead everyone out, no one else could have done it.

“I followed my son. I followed Justin out,” Jamey tells anyone who asks.

Between bouts of disbelief and despair, each of the Autrey’s is filled with gratitude. They survived. They have one another, they have love. Donations have been so generous that itbefuddles Jamey and moves Rita to tears.

Will they rebuild? Jamey answers quickly, “I won't. I've used up all my energy, in myyouth. You know, I'm serious. That's when I could keep climbing the hill. But I just don'thave that anymore. It's like gone. So, I gotta ride on Justin's coattails.”

It’s pointed out that Justin seems more than capable.

“Thank you,” Justin says thoughtfully. “I just got to keep moving forward. Keep pushingforward. And I just feel kind of numb to everything. Like. All right. Cool. Whatever. I’m happy to work through stuff.

“Every now and then, in the last couple days I’ve been getting caught off guard. In the evening watching TV or something, watching a movie, all of a sudden, I'll forget for a second that all this happened.” He looks around, quiet for a long time. “But then, yeah.

Oh, wow. Oh, man, this is terrible. What the heck? It kind of catches you off guard every now and then. You feel numb to it. But that numbness starts to go away a little bit here and there and the reality sinks in. Man, this is awful.” Another pause. “I just got to keep going. That's it. Take a breath.”

The family wants to take us to another part of their property. We drive through such devastation that the mind goes numb to it. It must. There is a terrible poignancy in the towering oaks older than all of us, scalded white. We stop at a clearing jutting out over Big Chico Creek. Here is where the Autrey’s now live, in trailers. Justin, a resourceful mechanic, has been able to rebuild his sawmill and has been busy crafting a shower, an outhouse, and shelter.

Our attention is directed to the far north. “Thirty-eight miles away!” Jamey tells us. We look across the Park Fire burn scar, tens of thousands of acres blackened but brightened here and there by small, green groves of living conifers. And there in the distance.

Rita explains, “We could always see Mt. Lassen, through the trees, but not like this!” “Look at that!” Justin smiles. “Mt Lassen! Isn’t that beautiful?”