By LESLEE BASSMAN,Four Points News

Neighbors Jesica Gierke and Don Dickson are urging newcomers to Four Points, those who have moved here over the past eight years, to take precautions against the spread of wildfire.

Two Steiner Ranch families recall the 2011 wildfire, an event that destroyed six out of the 10 cul-de-sac homes on their street, Varner Court.

It’s the threat of complacency they fear now.

“We all think that it’s not going to happen to us,” Gierke said. “When I spoke to my neighbor, those exact words came out of my mouth because things like that happen to other people. But they don’t. We are surrounded by beautiful amazing trees, nature, and nature is not always so tameable. There are some compromises that come with that. It could potentially happen again.”

Jesica Gierke tears up whenever she talks about 2011. For the Steiner Ranch mother of two and her husband, David Gierke, the year was “life changing.”

The family was out of town in Mexico when their Plateau neighborhood was evacuated. At the time, David Gierke received alerts on his cell phone about a power outage at their home. When Jesica Gierke called their neighbor, she discovered wildfires were spreading in the area but she and the neighbor assured each other that their homes “would be fine.”

On their way back to Austin, David Gierke’s cell phone flashed news that smoke and broken windows were detected inside their house.

“At that point, we knew our house had definitely caught fire,” Jesica Gierke said, adding her neighbor’s house was also in the path of destruction.

Although their dog was rescued from beneath the stairs of the burning house, she said the family’s cat succumbed to the fire.

“We didn’t even come all of the way to Austin,” said Jesica. “We just drove to San Antonio and stayed with my parents because there was nothing here for us.”

On the morning the Gierkes were set to return to the site with their then four-year-old daughter, Jesica said she took a pregnancy test and it was positive. She stayed out of the rubble for the safety of the baby.

“Our stairs were standing, which was how the dog was able to make it,” Jesica said of what was left of her Varner Court home. “All of the second floor was completely gone.”

She said the fire “jumped from roof to roof,” with her home’s fire beginning on the rooftop before working its way downward. Her daughter’s bedroom was the first space to burn and the family found bits of pieces of photographs strewn across the yard, she said. Jesica’s four-month-old car was a total loss as it was crushed beneath the fallen portions of the home.

Fortunately, because the family was out of town when the fires broke out, Jesica said they had all of their important documents with them and a change of clothes.

Don Dickson wasn’t as lucky.

A neighbor of the Gierkes on Varner Court, Dickson said his wife left her wedding ring and purse in their home as it went up in flames in 2011. He terms the experience, “devastating,” recalling the massive amounts of smoke he saw out his window during the last afternoon the couple spent in that house. Dickson said he ran outside to find his neighbor, Mike Wilson, calling to him that the fire was behind Wilson’s home.

“About that moment, a fire marshall turned the street with his bullhorn blaring, ‘everybody evacuate now, get out now’” he said.

He ran inside and told his wife, Shirley Dickson, that the two of them needed to leave.

“She grabbed our dog, I grabbed my daytimer and hers,” Don said. “She left her laptop laying there, her wedding rings. I had on an old pair of gym shorts, flip flops, T-shirt and my old Navy baseball cap.”

The two left in their separate cars, he said, “with the expectation that the fire department would come and save the day.”

At that point, due to the Bastrop wildfires proliferating simultaneously, Don said there was only one fire truck in the neighborhood. He and Shirley were finally allowed back into the neighborhood three days later.

“When we turned onto the street, I just broke into tears because a 3,200-square-foot, beautiful home that we had lived in for about 16 years was two feet of charred bits of rubble, ash and stone,” Don said. “And everything we had with it was gone, there was nothing left.”

They didn’t have time to take anything with them and “lost 100 percent of everything,” said Don, a 20-year-veteran of the insurance business.

“All we had were the clothes on our back and that’s it,” Don said.

Community neighbors and nearby church members pitched in with food, supplies and helping hands to sift through the remains of the Varner Court homes in hopes of finding remnants of the residents’ lost lives.

“We clung unto God to pull us through it,” Jesica said of the experience as she fought back tears. “I know they are just things. We got so much more out of that tragedy that’s irreplaceable but sometimes the little things still hurt.”

The Gierke family moved into a rental apartment for about two months before relocating again into a leased home.

“We knew we wanted to stay and rebuild,” Jesica said. “The community just completely rallied around all of us who had nothing anymore.”

Eight days before their second child, a son, was born, the Gierkes returned to their rebuilt house on its original lot.

The Dicksons leased a furnished home in the neighborhood, but said they had to replace what they lost: everything they inherited from both sets of parents when the elders passed away; their son’s baby pictures and sports memorabilia from Little League and soccer; his memorabilia from two tours in Vietnam; and all of his wife’s childhood photos.

“We cried a lot of tears during this event but we’ve gone past that now,” he said, adding that, as with the Gierkes, he and Shirley rebuilt their home on the original lot.

Don advises residents to plan ahead, pack an emergency suitcase and make sure their home insurance is up-to-date.

In his new home, Don has cleared the brush 30 feet behind his fence and added a heavy sprinkler system that can shoot water about 30 feet out the back of his house, both efforts aimed at deterring the spread of wildfire.

“We’re trying to do anything to prevent fire from crossing into our property line,” he said. “And we’re not the only family that has done that as well.”

As for the Varner Court neighbors, the group gets together every year, every anniversary of the wildfire that took their homes and “has a little party, all of us together,” Jesica said.

“My neighbors in the cul-de-sac, we became a family, really,” she said.