The community weighs in as the Soberanes Fire roars on.

A campfire was left burning at Garrapata State Park, or maybe nothing more than an unnoticed ember when whoever started the fire walked away on the morning of Friday, July 22. By 8:45am, it had burned 5 acres. By midnight, it had burned 2,000.

In the days since, it’s claimed at least 57 homes in neighborhoods that feel worlds apart, off of shady Palo Colorado Canyon in Big Sur to oak-studded hills in hot, sunny Santa Lucia Preserve in Carmel Valley. As of press time, the Soberanes Fire had burned 45,800 acres, roughly the size of Washington, D.C., and was just 25-percent contained.

One bulldozer driver, 35-year-old Robert Reagan, died in a rollover while battling the blaze.

Cal Fire investigators spent 150 hours before announcing its cause – an illegal, unattended campfire – Aug. 2.

And the fight to contain the fire continues, with officials hoping for full containment by Aug. 31. As the community faces the continued uncertainty of the blaze and rebuilding in its aftermath, we continue telling the stories of people affected by the fire, ranging from loss to triumph.

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In 1983, Neil Selbicky cut redwood slabs he’d picked up along Highway 1 to make his cabin deep in the Carmel Valley woods after his previous cabin was destroyed by a mudslide. On Tuesday, July 26, he watched the Soberanes Fire destroy his two-story, 1,200-square-foot getaway.

Selbicky and a friend were walking up to the cabin to check on it as the fire approached – fast.

“I saw a little bit of smoke as I drove up, then it just erupted into flames,” he says. “All the walls were just engulfed.”

His friend yelled at him that they had to leave the burning cabin behind – the propane tanks were about to blow. They turned and left.

Selbicky, 83, is already planning to rebuild, for the second time.

Sitting in a weathered lounge chair in his Pacific Grove home, which he and his wife Joan bought in 1960, Selbicky is antsy for the insurance adjuster to make a report so he can get back up to the 100-acre property on Garzas Trail in the Santa Lucia Preserve.

Joan sifts through photos of the cabin, reminiscing about numerous family gatherings and birthday parties. She pauses, thinking about all the memories lost in the fire: her doll collection, baby cups from their now-grown grandchildren and their baby handprints on the wall.

For her husband, it was a getaway from the busy world, even if only a mere 20 miles away from home.

“I liked getting away from people,” he says. “The isolation was nice.”

Fridays after work as a retail clerk, and then a few times a week after retirement, Selbicky would drive 40 minutes on curvy roads to arrive at the getaway. At the cabin, he grew wine grapes, apples and plums, and kept bees.

Only a small carport and his “honey room,” where he processed honey, survived the fire. Everything else, including the wine cellar, became “a war zone.”

Asked what he has learned from the fire, Selbicky is succint: “Nature does what it wants to do,” he says.

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Around 11pm July 22, the day the Soberanes Fire broke out, Palo Colorado resident Nate Preiss got a call from Cheryl Goetz, chief of the Mid-Coast Fire Brigade. Goetz was on vacation, and she wanted Preiss to check in on the progress of the fire, and to tell residents in the area to evacuate if it looked bad.

Preiss, a 24-year-old who’s lived along Rocky Creek Ridge Road for the last four-plus years, hopped on his dirt bike and charged up a dirt road to Twin Peaks, where he could get a good vantage point.

“When I got to the top, it looked like a volcano. I knew it was coming for us,” Preiss says. “It was unbelievable how tall the flames were. I’d say 100 feet.”

Preiss cursed to himself the whole way down the mountain, while also stopping to inform his neighbors to pack up and evacuate immediately. “I was like Paul Revere,” he says.

Among those he urged to evacuate was his girlfriend Makala Asch, who was interning at Charlie Casio’s goat farm just adjacent to where Preiss lived. Together, they gathered their things, and Preiss got the neighborhood’s valuables into a fire bunker under his place.

He also fire-safed the house and property of his landlord/employer Aaron Patch – who was also out of town at the time – by moving outdoor furniture and propane tanks away from the house.

That helped save the home of Patch’s family, but unfortunately, in the heat of the moment, Preiss forgot to move the propane tank at his own place, which he thinks is why it burned to rubble.

“I can’t believe I did that,” he says.

Preiss and Asch got out of Palo Colorado in their minivan around 3am July 23, and spent the first night in the van before heading to the evacuee shelter at Carmel Middle School the following day. They were hoping for something more comfortable though, as Asch had broken her jaw a week before the fire after tripping down some steps, and was scheduled for surgery July 27.

But when all the openings in homes that were listed at the shelter had been taken, they looked on Airbnb on July 26, at Asch’s suggestion.

Within five minutes, they struck gold, finding the Monterey house of Linda Fehringer, who was offering her place to victims of the fire for zero dollars a night. Fehringer says they can stay there as long as they need.

“It was a blessing, it was like she’s our guardian angel,” Asch says, sitting on a deck with Preiss, just feet away from Fehringer’s swimming pool July 29. “I don’t know what we’d do without her.”

Later in the day, Preiss planned to hike back up into Palo Colorado and retrieve his motorcycle that he stashed in the lower canyon, and ride it up the road to help his neighbors.

“I’m an able-bodied man, and my girlfriend is in a good place now,” he says.

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Erin Carey joined the volunteer Mid-Coast Fire Brigade two years ago, shortly after moving to Palo Colorado canyon. The training was intensive, and Carey doubted she would really need it. “I said, ‘Am I ever really going to be at the front line of 30-foot flames?’”

Beginning on the evening of July 22, Carey fought the Soberanes Fire for seven days straight, alongside 15 other brigade volunteers. They’d sleep for a few minutes, maybe an hour, when and where they could – the floor of the fire station but more commonly on the ground, waiting for the fire to approach.

“Thank god for adrenaline,” Carey says.

Adrenaline powered her through the hardest day, when the brigade worked almost 24 consecutive hours defending houses. Carey was part of a three-member team that sprayed goopy fire retardant gel on homes. “It’s kind of gross,” she says. “We were covered in slime and called ourselves the slime team.”

The group also inhaled lots of smoke from poison oak that day, irritating eyes and lungs. Carey started coughing, and a week later, she hasn’t stopped.

When they finally left the fire that day, Carey was last to jump onto the pickup truck, and stopped to snap a photo of her proud, exhausted colleagues on the way back to the fire station. “We saved some houses and felt really good about that,” she says of their successes.

Back at the station, paramedics administered eye wash and put ice packs over everyone’s poison oak-scorched eyes.

Carey’s home itself is far down the canyon and was never in danger, but she was moved to save others: “They’re more than just homes. They’re people’s souls in a lot of instances, people’s life’s work.”

Some homes couldn’t be saved, and Carey watched them burn to the ground. “It felt like a death,” she says. “I just hope the community understands we did the best we could.”

For ongoing coverage of the Soberanes Fire, including a video of Neil Selbicky at his burning cabin, and a list of ways to donate, visit www.mcweekly.com/soberanesfire