On Sept. 7, Amber DiBello and her family were at Lake Tahoe soaking up the late-summer sun when they started receiving messages and photos from friends and neighbors about a fire near their home, prompting them to hurriedly pack up.
On the way home, DiBello saw people gathered on the Mount Rose Highway near Slide Mountain and pulled over to join them. She followed their gaze down the mountain toward Washoe Lake and the wildfire that was quickly growing in Davis Creek Regional Park.
“It felt like we were just so far, at least 3,000 feet above it, and at the time, we were thinking with the wind direction that it wasn’t likely the fire would go uphill,” she said.
The DiBellos live near Sky Tavern, the nonprofit ski and snowboard training center located a short drive down the hill from Mount Rose Ski Tahoe. A drive from their neighborhood to Davis Creek Regional Park would involve a winding, 20-minute descent. But as the crow flies, the distance is just under three miles.
They arrived at their house, still in their bathing suits and covered in sand. Assuming they would return home in less than 24 hours, DiBello threw in a load of laundry and began leisurely packing suitcases for herself, her husband, their two young daughters—a 2-year-old and a 4-month-old—and their two Bernese mountain dogs. She thought through how to pack for an emergency and what to bring for an infant. She packed a sleepsuit, a small crochet blanket that her baby likes to hold, and a portable bassinet.
Then the power went off. The DiBellos heard sirens growing louder as emergency vehicles moved closer to their home.
“That’s when we were like ‘OK, we need to get out of here,’” DiBello said. “I think we were out within 30 minutes after we first walked in the door.”
“The fire was 200 feet behind our house The bulldozer lines are literally behind our house. They spent 16 hours bulldozing those lines. That’s what saved our house. Our house should not be here.”
Amber DiBello
The fire, now known as the Davis Fire, spread rapidly, threatening homes and businesses. The National Weather Service had issued a red flag warning that morning, with winds reaching up to 30 mph and humidity falling between 12 and 15%. According to Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District communications manager Adam Mayberry, such high winds and low humidity can cause fires to spread faster than firefighters are able to reach them.
“All of the conditions were just right—and then, of course, down in the Davis Creek area, there was a lot of timber and just a lot of fuel for a fire to be successful,” Mayberry said.
In less than 48 hours, the fire engulfed 5,000 acres, according to the Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District (TMFPD). It reached some homes so fast that residents barely had time to evacuate. DiBello said one of her friends, who was out of town when the fire started, couldn’t grab anything at all.
Chaotic winds pushed the fire northeast, then northwest. Because of this, the evacuation zone was large enough to affect 12,000 to 14,000 people and was in effect for more than a week, according to the TMFPD. Mayberry said that residents dispersed to shelters, family or friends’ homes, hotels and short-term rentals.
DiBello said that finding a safe place for her family and two large dogs was a challenge.
“I have everything for a newborn at the house, and I don’t have everything for a newborn anywhere else,” she said. She called a friend in Arrow Creek, but that neighborhood was also in the evacuation zone. Hotels weren’t an easy option, as many don’t allow pets.
“We … certainly got some resistance from people who didn’t want to evacuate, or, once they were evacuated, they wanted to know when they could get back,” Mayberry said.
Brian Jordan, who lives down the street from DiBello, stayed to protect his home.
“It wasn’t that I wanted to be there when the fire came through,” Jordan said. “It was that I had a lot of work to do around the house to prepare it, in case a fire did come through.”
He said that his car was packed in case he needed to leave quickly, and that he cooperated with officials and made them aware of his plan.
“I was monitoring the fire as best as I could and knew my exit routes,” Jordan said. “I absolutely never felt like I made the wrong decision.”
Waiting out the fire
DiBello recalls those evacuation days as some of the most stressful of her life. Her family relied on short-term vacation rentals for shelter, moving five times and seeing rates increase “due to demand.” Amber and her husband, both engineers, worked remotely.
“It was not a great environment,” she said. “I was unable to sleep and unable to make good decisions. Schools were closed, so we had the kids home, but we still had to work.”
Amidst the chaos, DiBello said she worried about losing things like the trees and hiking trails near her house.
“Those are places I bring my newborn and my toddler,” she said. “I kept thinking about those spaces that I was scared we would lose.”
During the week-long event, several agencies worked on the fire, including Reno, Sparks and Carson City’s fire departments, the Bureau of Land Management’s fire response team, Nevada Division of Emergency Management (Homeland Security), Nevada Energy, the Nevada Division of Transportation and the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.
Four days in, on Sept. 11, the National Weather Service issued a warning predicting high winds and low humidity. While aircraft operations were halted due to the wind, ground crews worked to secure the fire’s perimeter, which led to a dramatic increase in containment. The following day, fire officials updated the public that the fire did not grow as expected.
By the sixth day, some residents were cleared to return home, and businesses began preparing to reopen. By the eighth day, all evacuations had been lifted.
DiBello said that when she finally made it home, seeing burn scars and fire retardant on the road made the situation feel that much more real.
“The fire was 200 feet behind our house,” she said. “The bulldozer lines are literally behind our house. They spent 16 hours bulldozing those lines. That’s what saved our house. Our house should not be here. This Sky Tavern community was like a peninsula of safety. If you look at the fire map, it was on all three sides of my house.”
Communication glitches
According to the TMFPD, the fire consumed more than 5,800 acres, including two commercial buildings, 14 residences and 22 other structures.
When the Davis Fire broke out, Truckee Meadow Fire began sending send data about where the fire was spreading and which resources were needed to Washoe County Homeland Security, which manages emergency situations in the region. Program coordinator Jessica Adams-Lopes and her team used that information to update the fire’s page at PerimeterMap.com, which showed evacuations, closed roads, shelters and other information regarding the fire.
Adams-Lopes said some homeowners argued that the maps weren’t being updated fast enough, but she believes the tool served its purpose.
“We think it led to less confusion,” she said. “People were looking at it.” In fact, during the fire’s seven-day duration, there were more than 2.4 million views of the Davis Fire on PerimeterMap.com.
“We have to work together. I think the information was maybe not given out as timely as some would have liked, because this was a very dynamic situation, which is why we do hope neighbors are checking on each other.”
Adam Mayberry, Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District communications manager
Some residents and business owners complained that a lack of information led to confusion about the exact location of the fire and the direction of spread. Dan Collins, who lives in the neighborhood near Sky Tavern, said when he woke up the morning after the fire started, his family packed go-bags, but still continued with a normal routine. He and his wife traveled down the Mount Rose Highway with only the clothes they were wearing to get gas and spoke with an officer about whether they would be able to come back up to grab their things.
“He told us everything should be fine for us to get back up, because none of the roads were closed,” Collins said. “So we dropped the dogs off at my in-laws and grabbed gas, and maybe 45 minutes later, they said, ‘There is no way you’re getting back up to your house.’”
Mayberry said that while he understood the homeowners’ concerns about communications, the department’s priority was to evacuate people, to stop the spread of fire and to contain it to the perimeter zone, which included efforts to save homes and businesses.
“We still frankly needed our residents to get the word out,” he said. “We have to work together. I think the information was maybe not given out as timely as some would have liked, because this was a very dynamic situation, which is why we do hope neighbors are checking on each other.”
Said Adams-Lopes: “I would say that just the scale of this fire was so much greater than the fires we’ve had, at least in recent years, and so I think there is a lot to comprehend.” She recommended an online resource that can help emergency crews assist the public in the event of another fire.
“Smart911 (Smart911.com) is a new fire platform that allows folks to put in their household information, such as if they have any pets, if there’s any access information, how many people live there, etc., and then, in theory, that information should feed into our 911 dispatch, making information readily available to first responders in an emergency,” she said.
DiBello said she has already seen a change in agencies’ responses. On Oct. 4, high winds began kicking up smoke from hot spots of the Davis Fire. Police officers went door-to-door in DiBello’s neighborhood, asking everyone to evacuate the area.
“I had three sheriffs personally evacuating us and helping me get my kids out of here,” she said. “We didn’t have that last time, because there were way too many houses to evacuate.”
Since again returning home, the DiBellos have been trying to slow down and enjoy the little things, like family dinners and school functions. DiBello has also been organizing donations to help people who lost their homes in the Davis Fire and those impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. She said the situation has changed her perspective on disaster situations.
“People we didn’t even know were sending gift cards and helping us from so many miles away,” she said. “So that’s immediately what we’re doing now. The day we came home, I donated probably 600 pounds of clothes that I gathered in maybe two hours. I was thinking, ‘Why haven’t I done that for years? Why have I not been donating this way?’ People had done it for me, and now I need to do it for others.”