I See by the Papers...

"You the boys from Rincon?" The man asked the three teenagers. They said yes.

"You better get your butts back home," the Fire Captain told them. "The Calistoga Fire is heading to Santa Rosa fast."

Edd Vinci and his friends were stunned. They were there in the Glen Ellen Forestry Station because they were waiting for a truck to give them a ride to the fire line in the hills, where a blaze had everyone worried because it was headed for the town of Sonoma. What would be more important than fighting that danger? And what could a fire over in Napa have to do with his neighborhood in Rincon Valley?

Edd and the Fisher brothers did as they were told, hopping on the firetruck heading back to Santa Rosa. It was around 4PM on Monday, September 21, 1964.

Before that day was over, the 16 year-old Edd Vinci would face a wall of flames rushing towards him faster than he could possibly run, and in that moment felt certain he was about to die.

This is the story of Santa Rosa's 1964 Hanly fire. There were other major fires burning at the same time; the Rincon Valley boys were originally headed to the one which was called the Nunns Canyon/Kenwood/Sonoma Valley fire, which threatened Sonoma City and would nearly wipe out the Springs villages. There was the Mt. George fire burning through the canyons east of Napa City, headed for Fairfield. All told, there were 94 wildfires in the North Bay during the ten days between September 18-28. There are many interesting and exciting stories to tell of those days, but this is not the place. This is just the story of the 1964 Hanly fire and how it came to Santa Rosa.

Of particular interest is that the 1964 Hanly fire almost exactly matches the path of the 2017 Tubbs fire. As far as can be determined, this was also the path of the Great Fire of 1870. As mentioned in that article, once can be an accident; twice could be a coincidence but three times is a pattern.



The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.

- Jeff Elliott