Tuesday afternoon started out like any other summer day here in the Tri-Valley, the Pleasanton, Livermore, Dublin, San Ramon, and Danville area east of San Francisco in the Bay Area. By dinnertime, friends and former neighbors in Ruby Hill were packing cars and driving out under an evacuation order.
The Little Fire broke out around 2:40 p.m. near Vallecitos and Little Valley roads in Sunol, close to the Callippe Preserve Golf Course. It grew fast. Fifty acres within half an hour. One hundred fifty acres by 3:30. Seven hundred acres an hour after that. By early evening it had passed 1,000 acres, and the evacuation zone stretched to cover Ruby Hill and the neighborhoods around it. At the peak, orders and warnings touched more than 10,800 people and over 3,200 homes.
I am a former Ruby Hill resident. I lived there twice and raised my kids there. I love the country feel of it, the vineyards, the sense of space you do not usually get this close to town. But Ruby Hill backs right up to those rolling hills, and that is exactly the beauty and the risk in the same view. Watching friends there scramble to leave Tuesday night was a hard reminder of that.
The good news, as of Wednesday morning, is that crews stopped the fire's forward progress overnight, containment is climbing, no structures have been lost, and most evacuation orders have been lifted or downgraded to advisories. That is a genuinely good outcome. But the speed of it all, fifty acres to a thousand in a matter of hours, is the part worth sitting with.
Why This Matters Even If You Were Never in the Evacuation Zone
Most of us do not think about a go bag until we need one. The families who evacuated Ruby Hill this week did not have days of warning. Some had less than an hour between hearing about the smoke on the ridge and being told to leave. That is the nature of a fast-moving vegetation fire in our hills, and it can happen in any of the neighborhoods that back up to open space, not just Ruby Hill.
If you live near open space in Pleasanton, Livermore, Dublin, San Ramon, or Danville, this week is a good nudge to get ready before you need to, not while you are watching the smoke column grow.
A Simple Emergency Packing List
This is not meant to be complete or fancy. It is the short list of what actually matters when you have twenty minutes and a car.
• Important documents (ID, insurance policies, passports, deeds) in one folder or a fireproof bag
• Medications and a basic first aid kit
• Phone chargers and a portable battery pack
• A change of clothes and comfortable shoes for each family member
• Pet food, leashes, carriers, and any pet medications
• Cash, since card readers and ATMs may not work if power is out
• A few days of water and any specialty food items your family needs
• Photos or a phone video walking through your home, for insurance purposes
• Car with at least half a tank of gas during fire season
Keep this list somewhere you can find it fast, and talk through it with your family so nobody is guessing in the moment.
A Few Things Worth Doing This Week
1. Sign up for Alameda County emergency alerts (AC Alert) and download the Watch Duty app if you have not already.
2. Know your evacuation zone. You can look it up on Cal Fire's incident pages or through Genasys Protect.
3. Walk your property and clear anything flammable within five feet of your home, even a small cleanup helps.
4. Talk with your family about two ways out of your neighborhood, not just the one you use every day.
5. If you have an out-of-area contact everyone can check in with, make sure the whole family has that number memorized, not just saved in a phone that might die.
To My Ruby Hill Friends and Neighbors
I am so glad everyone is safe and that homes were spared. Ruby Hill has always felt like a small town tucked inside a bigger one, and this week showed that in the best way, with neighbors checking on neighbors and people opening their homes to those who had to leave.
If you are still working through what this week meant for your home, whether that is defensible space, insurance questions, or just wanting to talk it through, I am here.
Patty Recupero
REALTOR® | Elation Real Estate | CA DRE 02112275