California Retailers Support Communities During Wildfires

Homes burned to ash, 150-year-old trees vanished as if they had never grown and soot blackened the countryside behind wildfires that spread through tens of thousands of acres in Northern California.

At least one local hardware store owner fought the flames alongside family, friends and neighbors, and also provided food and other supplies to town residents who didn’t evacuate.

“It was the scariest thing I have ever encountered because flames are coming basically at you and you can’t see because smoke is surrounding you and you’re trying to escape,” Natalie Sender says. Her family owns Sender’s Market and Ace Hardware in Mountain Ranch and Sender’s Market Ace in Valley Springs, California. Twelve out of about 40 employees had their homes burn down.

In Middletown, Cobb and Hidden Valley, California, Hardester’s Markets and Hardware employees closed for business and fled.

“Employees could see fire coming from up on the hills. They basically climbed in their cars and headed out of town,” says Ross Hardester, owner of Hardester’s Markets and Hardware. Thirty of the business’s workers lost their houses or apartments to the flames. Store managers were making phone calls for days to check on every employee, even tracking down the people who had moved into tents at a local campground.

In Mountain Ranch, Sender’s family stayed behind with their neighbors to use local tractors and bulldozers to build barriers to protect their homes from the fires.

The family business is a combination hardware and grocery store, and they used it to support firefighters and community members who stayed behind. Ace Hardware was able to keep the store stocked because the local sheriff’s department escorted an Ace semi truck beyond the guarded evacuation lines.

The Sender’s team offered support to help feed and talk with impacted individuals, many of whom escaped with their cars and, even a month later, couldn’t start rebuilding.

“The thing about a small town is that most of their families’ homes burned, too. Most of their friends’ and families’ and neighbors’ homes are also burned,” Sender says.

Hardester didn’t fight fires, but he kept his Middletown store open, even though he thought his businesses in Cobb and Hidden Valley had burned. He, his brother and some employees spent a few nights at the Middletown store so they wouldn’t be prevented from re-crossing the evacuation line to get to work.

The store sold its typical groceries and hardware supplies, but also provided a hub for people to come and get information.

“Out of all the chaos and heartache, it was nice for people to be able to come in and see there was some normalcy to life,” Hardester says.