History and healing after the fire & Bell-McClendon household

we're in Sonoma to speak to David Bell Tracie McClendon and their son Cashel McClendon. They were living in a rented home in a vineyard in ken wood when they realized they had to flee for their lives. If you have time to prepare grub, the most important

things, which I would say would be a phone because then you, because then you can communicate to your friends, see if they're okay and their family make sure that they can get out as well. Also you have your friends that will support you with your phone.

You can also broadcast on facebook or something, which my mom did. So her friends and other people could get exactly, could know exactly what was happening on the day of that fire. We managed to get out of the house in time, but everything we own is

gone. And we managed to grab my cat, one of our cats and one of our and our dog. But everything we own is gone. We had about 10 minutes to get off property before the fire started to jump to our house. Um, and the road was

completely smoky. There are trees down everywhere and we managed to get down to highway 12. We see that people are turning that people are evacuating. They're turning towards Sonoma. We decided to go down Highway 12 to Santa Rosa. And that's when we saw As we're driving

down Highway 12, there's multiple cars stopped in front of us and it turns out a tree branch has come down and was obstructing the roadway. I tell Tracey, I'm like, we gotta, I gotta help. And I'm like, I wouldn't love you if you didn't. So we

pull off to the side of the road, half a dozen people had exited their vehicles were trying to clear the roadway because these are huge branches that are coming down that are obscuring vehicles. People are running over branches are getting, you know, flat tires or have

to pull it off the road. So We, we get as much as the debris out as we can. It's nothing but open fields down highway 12 up until you get to like Oakmont if you're stuck and there's flames on both sides of the road and then

we're trapped going back like we wouldn't be, I'm like, honey, I love you. But we have to go, I get back in the car, I continue driving and as we progress down highway 12, I'm looking okay. Are we far enough only to see that on both

sides of highway 12, there continues to be a spot fire here, Spot fire there, we get down to Calistoga now. On the other side of the hill, you can see the glow from, I think it's the nuns fire over there and it's intense and I'm like

you need to call your friend because um Tracy's friend lives in right off Calistoga road and I'm thinking if it comes up and over the hill it's gonna sweep right through the middle ranking area. So she's furiously dialing people and I'm thinking to myself, we still

need to keep going. I'm like ken, wood is on fire, you need to get out, Get out, get out Now, kenwood is burning. I kept saying it over and over again, ken wood is burning leave. So we continually drive as we're driving. I tell my son

who's sitting in the seat next to me, I'm like boo boo, I'm gonna need you to be brave. Things are gonna be really difficult in the coming days and I really need you not to freak out. I need you to be strong and I need you

to help us through this because our life is gonna change. He was like, I understand kid is incredibly self sufficient. He's, he's incredibly strong. So to lighten the mood, I didn't tell him. And at this moment we're gonna teach you a life lesson when it's 1:30

AM and you have no place to go. Where do you go? You don't go to Denny's necessarily, you end up at Denny's, you leave a club, it's two o'clock in the morning. You want food. You're not especially picky about the quality. I apologize to Denny's if

they're watching this, I'm sure your menu has changed, but we don't visit regularly enough to know. Um, but I teach my son this is what this is. When Denny's comes in handy, we walked through the door. I'm wearing pajamas, shields wearing pajamas. David's wearing pajamas. I

don't know what we must have looked like when we walked through that door because at one o'clock in the morning, There were people with Diddy's because hey, 24 hours, everyone stopped and looked at us because we must have had the look of utter desolation on our

face. And the waitress came over to us and I went, we just lost our entire house. We just lost everything. What do you say at that moment besides do you want a table? So we're sitting at a table and all I could think is like, okay,

focus on something you need to eat. It's gonna be a long day. They had no soup. That's all I wanted. I didn't want any pancakes. I didn't want any french toast. I didn't want a burger. I didn't want anything but a comforting bowl of soup. At

that point we got some french fries to try to get him to eat something he didn't eat. We asked them if we could bring our cat inside there, like bring your cat inside. We left the dog in the car because she was completely just freaking so

we left her in a car and we're sitting there and I can't think of anything. Um, well, it's not exactly being scared. It's something that I can tell my kids if I do have kids later on in life that hey, you think that's worse. Well, I

lost my house in the nuns fire Me and my mom and my dad when I was 11 x 11 at the time. No, I was 12. Was I really 11? Okay.