Owner’s dedication saved 1,000 animals
Tireless effort helped all creatures at Safari West survive blaze
Peter Lang stood firm as his wife and employees and dozens of overnight guests poured out of Safari West, outside Santa Rosa, into cars bound for anywhere but the path of flames shooting west from Calistoga toward the giraffes and cheetahs kept among the vineyards of Wine Country.
It was late Sunday night, and people all around were fleeing for their lives from the Tubbs Fire, one of the deadliest infernos in state history. For a brief moment, Nancy, his wife, tried to persuade the 77-year-old founder of the unusual preserve to leave. There was no conversation to be had. “I’m not leaving,” he said. “I had to stay the course,” he explained five days later, as he ate a plate of chili and corn bread in the same Levi’s jeans he’d been wearing all week. “I got 1,000 birds and animals that are here because I put them here. It’s my responsibility to deal with the consequences.”
From the moment Lang bought the land in the foothills of the Mayacamas Mountains in the 1980s, after noticing the forest and grassland and warm weather resembled the savannahs of Africa, Lang has cared for it. It took four years of breeding before the couple could open the facility in 1993.
Since then, they’ve converted the former cattle ranch lined with oak trees into a wildlife preserve offering safari tours featuring 90 distinct species, including rhinos
and hyenas. Guests can spend the night in cottages or raised luxury tents. They call it the Sonoma Serengeti, and every year 60,000 people come to see it.
As a child, Lang was surrounded by animals. He grew up helping his dad direct animal-themed TV shows, and in many ways Safari West was the “culmination of a wonderful life I’ve had.”
Starting about 10:30 p.m. Sunday and continuing past dawn Monday, Lang was focused on saving it. Minutes after his colleagues drove away, he began putting out fires. He drove the perimeter of the land, spotting flames racing down a slope and toward him.
“Boy, do you feel alone,” he said. “I was alone.”
Lang ran his truck tires over spot fires, then stomped out others with his boots. Walking over to an area for cheetahs, hyenas and birds, he pulled out a hose and sprayed hot spots, like flames that crawled up the side of the cheetah barn and burning grass that lined the pen for hyenas, who were breeding.
“We were able to extinguish that,” he said. “I use the big ‘we.’ Me and that hose. We are the we.”
For hours, Lang walked for miles, back and forth across the property, disconnecting hose lines and adding new ones until he finally noticed he was dragging 400 feet of hose.
“When you’re amped up and doing stuff, you don’t know how far it’s been,” he said. “I’m a walker anyway. Everybody uses golf carts to get around here. I walk everywhere. It’s much better for a kid my age.”
Later, as the fire was surging miles to the west, engulfing whole neighborhoods, Lang drove one more circle around his property and came upon a group of five nyala — spiral-horned antelopes indigenous to southern Africa — trapped behind fencing as a grass fire approached.
“At my age, I don’t do a lot of running up to corners or vaulting fences, so I walked up and climbed the 8-foot fence,” he said. Having done so, he herded the nyala to safety.
From his vantage point at Safari West, Lang could see his own nearby property in flames. The next day, he learned that all four homes and three barns there were gone. So, too, were a lifetime’s worth of goods he had planned to donate to a museum — art, minerals, collectibles, pretty much everything he’d ever owned.
“The fire was pretty bright and it was a full moon,” he said, wistfully. “You wished you couldn’t see as well.”
When Lang finally escaped, he had only his truck, his passport, his Levi’s and a shirt.
Still, he felt lucky. He and his wife were alive, and a small home on the Safari West property survived, meaning they have a place to stay for the time being.
Owing to Lang’s hours of firefighting, none of the 1,000 animals on the property was lost, even though flames scarred much of the land and damaged fences, cars, equipment and some buildings.
“We had good things working for us,” he said. “It’s hard to believe in miracles, but I didn’t do this all by myself. Things intervened that made it be able to happen.”
Starting only hours after the blaze ripped through, dozens of employees began showing up to help protect the land from further threats and begin rebuilding. As for Lang, he spent some of the ensuing days helping put out fires threatening nearby homes.
“We’re moving on,” Lang said. “Frankly, I didn’t think that at my age I’d be starting from ground zero, but I’ve always been determined. I was never going to retire anyways, so nothing has changed there.”
The park plans to reopen by March 1.
As he reflected on his night of firefighting, Lang thought of all the past safety drills at the preserve — training for hypothetical animal breaks, worker injuries or fires.
“On paper, they sound terrific,” he said. “But as Mike Tyson said before one of his fights, ‘They all have a plan until I punch them once and then the plan is out the window.’ The plan went out the window. Just ask Mike.”