The fight to save the gold-mining town of Mariposa from a monster fire

Reporting from Mariposa, Calif. —  As firetrucks rolled through the hazy, deserted streets of this historic gold-mining town, Brian Redding stood behind the cash register at the Grizzly Gas mini-market Thursday, waiting in his green uniform.

A few firefighters who had been hard at work protecting tiny Mariposa from the explosive Detwiler fire had stopped in for snacks. But while the blaze still raged in the Sierra Nevada foothills, destroying dozens of homes in its path, an uneasy quiet had settled over the evacuated town of 2,100 people.

“It’s pretty slow,” Redding said. “Kind of a ghost town.”

Slow is perhaps a best-case scenario for Mariposa — and a stark contrast from the chaos Tuesday, when authorities ordered the entire town evacuated. Flames had gotten within a mile of central Mariposa, the county seat whose history dates to the mid-19th century California Gold Rush.

Firefighters have tried to reassure residents they were doing all they could to keep the flames away from Mariposa County’s historic small towns.

“We have guys working 10 hours straight in a row; we have guys working 20 hours, and we have some guys working 30 hours, so keep that in mind,” Steve Kaufmann, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told weary residents at a town hall meeting in neighboring Madera County.

The Detwiler fire, which has forced more than 4,000 residents to flee, swelled to more than 70,000 acres Thursday and was 10% contained, according to Cal Fire. Officials said the fire was burning in an area littered with dead trees, killed by bark beetles and years of drought.

The blaze has destroyed 99 structures, 50 of which were homes, according to Cal Fire spokesman Scott McLean. Flames damaged an additional 11 homes, and about 1,500 structures were threatened. Evacuation orders were still in effect for Mariposa and the town of Coulterville.

More than 3,700 firefighters tackled 2- to 4-foot flames, and observed some flares up to 25 feet high, authorities said.

To prevent the blaze’s southern and eastern faces from pushing toward Mariposa and the surrounding communities, crews have been using fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and “every type of ground resource we can get on this fire” to protect buildings and set up a barrier between residents and the flames, Cal Fire Deputy Chief Mark Brown said Thursday.

When the inferno erupted Sunday afternoon in the rural Hunters Valley area, it immediately threatened residents there, said Mariposa County Sheriff Doug Binnewies, who is also the county’s interim fire chief. Several homes were destroyed in the area, he said at a town meeting Wednesday night.

Fueled by overgrown vegetation and dry, breezy, hot conditions, the blaze quickly progressed into neighboring communities, Binnewies said.

“The fire was very deliberate continuing toward Mariposa town proper,” he said. In his 30 years of experience, he had never seen the entire town evacuated.

Not everyone left, however.

Mariposa County sheriff’s spokeswoman Kristie Mitchell said officials decided that inmates at the county jail were in an area considered safe enough to remain and shelter in place. The small jail sits across from the Cal Fire headquarters near Frank Wilson Road and Highway 140.

Lt. Codie Hart, who oversees the jail, said a bulldozer cut a line in the ground to prevent the fire — which was about 50 yards away — from approaching the facility. A nearby hillside was charred black.

Officials also decided not to evacuate John C. Fremont Hospital, a long white-and-green building with a helipad just off Smith Road. The one-story hospital is the only one in Mariposa County and the only facility with an emergency department.

“They said we have a defensible space that they felt we could shelter in place,” said Theresa Loya, the hospital’s chief nursing officer.

Loya said fire helicopters were frequently making water drops, protecting not only the hospital but the rest of Mariposa County as well. Some three dozen nurses remained at the hospital, sticking to their daily routines: feeding patients, giving them their medications and even playing games. The facility lost power at one point, but generators kept electricity flowing.

On Thursday, business owners were briefly allowed past roadblocks to check on their stores in downtown Mariposa, said California Highway Patrol Officer Michael Flores. They were supposed to check on their facilities and then leave, authorities said.

But some were open for business. At Coast Hardware Do It Best on the downtown Mariposa stretch of Highway 140, an OPEN sign hung in the window — an outlier among the numerous “Sorry, We’re Closed” signs.

Steve Valdez, a store clerk who had been sleeping in his car for several days because of the blaze, sold a bungee cord to a fire equipment operator Thursday morning. The man promised to check on Valdez’s house in Yaqui Gulch.

“Hardware stores are important to any town,” Valdez said after the man left, noting he had been selling materials to firefighters throughout the morning. “If it breaks, you’re going to have to fix it.”

Down the street, Damien Pennington, 44, and his son, Ethan, 19, stood on the porch of the Gold Coin Sports Tavern, watching firetrucks drive by. The streets were otherwise quiet, unlike the frantic evacuations on Tuesday, when people were rushing to fleewith their cars and animals, Pennington said.

“You couldn’t cross the street,” he said.

Pennington’s mother-in-law owns the restaurant, and he and his son had returned to check on food in the refrigerator. Electricity returned to downtown Mariposa on Wednesday, but, Pennington said, restaurants and markets have probably suffered financial losses from spoiled food and canceled deliveries.

By Thursday afternoon, sheriff’s deputies were telling business owners to close shop.

At a community meeting Thursday evening, however, Binnewies, the sheriff, said he hopes to lift restrictions on the downtown area Friday so all the businesses can reopen, even though firefighters are still mopping up areas nearby.

At the Mariposa County Courthouse on Bullion Street, a wishful handwritten sign, posted Tuesday, still hung on the door: “The Court has been evacuated. We hope to be open tomorrow.”

The Greek Revival Building, constructed in 1854, is the oldest courthouse in California and the site of landmark cases on which much of U.S. mining law is based, according to the state’s Office of Historic Preservation.

The cause of the Detwiler fire is still under investigation. The blaze has triggered multiple road closures along Highways 49 and 140, which, fire officials said, have affected access to Yosemite. The park has remained open as the firefight continues near Mariposa.

Land along Highway 140 was scorched. Trees were charred, dirt blackened. A sign just off the highway advertised property for sale. Behind it, the earth was burned.

Heidi Falany, 31, of Fresno said her husband’s grandparents’ house along rural Hunters Valley Road appeared to have been one of the first destroyed by the flames.

She said her husband’s late grandfather, Joe “Papa Joe” Falany — a World War II Navy veteran who survived his ship being struck by kamikaze pilots in the Philippines — built the hacienda-style house with a red-tiled roof on the family’s Casa de Falany Ranch in the 1970s.

His 90-year-old widow still lived there. Heidi Falany said the family had not yet broken the news to her.

“My husband was just in shock, just like me,” Falany said. “But we’re both Christians, and we believe it’s just possessions and we have our family still; we’re thankful that it was just the house.”

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Bernhard and Vives reported from Mariposa. Rocha and Branson-Potts reported from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Joseph Serna contributed to this report.

UPDATES:

9:20 p.m.: This article was updated with a statement from the Mariposa County sheriff on restrictions on downtown Mariposa possibly being lifted Friday.

8:35 p.m.: This article was updated with new information about how many structures were destroyed.

This article was originally published at 3:40 p.m.