STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And let's continue now because we're going to meet one of the people driven away from home by a wildfire in California. It's called the Valley Fire, near the famous Napa Valley. It has destroyed hundreds of homes and forced evacuations in multiple towns.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
That includes Hidden Valley Lake, which Bob Rider had to flee over the weekend.
BOB RIDER: Hidden Valley Lake is a bedroom community for the most part. Some retirees but mostly families with children and animals and even some livestock up here. It's a very agricultural community around us.
INSKEEP: Sixty-two-thousand acres or so have burned, threatening many locally owned businesses.
RIDER: Every business here - and there aren't that many - but maybe the two-dozen businesses or so that we rely on for our day-to-day lives are our friends and neighbors.
INSKEEP: Rider himself, as a matter of fact, owns two of the businesses in town.
RIDER: Initial reports Saturday night were that that was all lost. And when we gained some clarity, in fact, everything around my sport shop burned. My building is fire-damaged, but it is still standing. I don't know what the interior is going to look like. And I also own a commercial portrait studio, and that building also is standing and appears to be relatively undamaged. The fire literally jumped from one side of us all to behind us all and went into the subdivision.
GREENE: Now, Rider's home is also still standing, so is the local elementary school. And Rider himself is safe. He was attending church when the fire approached.
RIDER: We grabbed a few essential things from the office and fled. And I was able to catch my family as they evacuated, and we were able to evacuate together. But the church did not survive the fire. The church was leveled. There's nothing left of our church.
INSKEEP: And you hear the story there. Some buildings destroyed, others leaped by the fire. And it's hard to tell now what the results will be for any given home or business. Bob Rider and others are being told not to return home for at least the next four to five days. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.