Dani and Mike Price have been left to believe an air conditioner may have saved their lives.

With smoky skies from the Point Fire casting an eerie shadow over their 30-acre property and home on Dry Creek Road June 16, the couple took refuge in their guesthouse.

Central air, not available in the main home, gave Dani, who was suffering from bronchitis, a safe haven from the soot.

The couple had been given no order to leave their property, as they were about a mile and a half from the advancing perimeter of the Point Fire and outside of the evacuation zone. They went to sleep.

At 3:30 a.m. June 17, they received the most alarming wake-up call of their lives.

“A car was driving up the road and it was jarring,” Mike Price said, referring to the road that leads to their property. “Then we saw all the flashing lights and we thought ‘What the heck is going on here?’ ”

The ranch house the couple called home was engulfed in flames from the garage on one side to the kitchen on the other.

“We grabbed our sneakers and just ran and saw the smoke,” Dani Price said. “We were in complete and utter shock. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing. It was surreal.”

By 5 a.m., the one-story, 2,700-square-foot house had been reduced to rubble, with just a few charred wooden structures framing empty windows.

The guesthouse, just 1,000 feet away, had been spared. The flames didn’t spread, even amid the stiff winds that night.

“The scary thing is, if we had been in the house at the time of the fire, maybe we wouldn’t have woken up soon enough,” Mike Price said.

Also intact: another guest cottage on the property, as well as a refurbished barn with a cellar that stores more than a thousand wine bottles for the couple’s two business ventures: Maison du Prix, a global online wine shop, and Fat Dragon, a wine label they had launched just a week before the fire.

Vineyard unscathed

The property’s prized 11-acre vineyard, planted mostly to Rhone varietals, appeared unscathed.

And nine chickens, in a coop just 12 feet from the burning house, survived.

“After the fire, they were all cuddled up in a ball in the coop,” Dani said. “I want to bring them closer to us (in the guesthouse) because they’re probably thinking ‘Where are my people?’ ”

For the Prices, however, the prime question in that hour and in the days since has been: What caused the fire? The Dry Creek Road home was not inside the expansive wildfire evacuation zone on the northern edge of Dry Creek Valley. So Northern Sonoma County Fire Protection District was dispatched to the address for a structure fire, said Jason Clay, spokesperson for Cal Fire’s Sonoma-Lake-Napa unit.

Embers can travel far

On Wednesday, Clay said that until an investigation has been conducted, the cause of the fire that claimed the Prices’ home cannot be determined.

But embers from wind-driven fires, like the Point Fire, can travel far, he said.

“In wind-driven fires, the crown of the trees can throw off a lot of sparks and they can go long distances,” Clay said. “In the Glass Fire of 2020, the embers blew from the eastern side of Napa Valley into the Mayacamas Mountains. As the crow flies, it’s roughly five miles.”

On the afternoon and evening of June 16, the Point Fire was being pushed by winds out of the northwest and low relative humidity, Clay said.

The Prices’ home sat southeast of the fire on Dry Creek Road, which rims the eastern floor of the valley, roughly paralleling West Dry Creek Road, where flames encroached June 16.

Gusts at the time hit 28 mph, according to the National Weather Service. And those prevailing winds put the Prices’ home directly in the path of embers borne aloft from the fire.

It was still difficult, though, for the Prices to imagine an ember could potentially travel that distance and ignite a fire to burn their home.

“We never connected the winds to the destruction of our home,” said Mike, sharing their reaction in the immediate aftermath.

Major wildfires, of course, can create their own wind systems and extreme weather events, sometimes generating pyrocumulonimbus storm clouds to generate thunderstorms and even spawning tornadoes that can make the infernos grow even faster.

Fueled by winds that reached up to 68 mph, the Tubbs Fire traveled at terrifying speed from the rural northern part of Calistoga into residential areas in northern Santa Rosa on Oct. 8, 2017. Erratic, gusty winds caused spot fires well beyond the fire front as it roared across 12 miles in less than four hours, leaping across the six-lane Highway 101 and frontage roads into Coffey Park.

“My dad was a New York City fireman and he always said ‘the wind is the enemy,’” Dani said Wednesday.

The couple’s two labradoodles, Huxley and Harlow, stood by her side.

Looking at their house for just the second time since it burned, she winced.

“I almost want it to be demolished,” she said. “It’s hard to look at.”

Cherished items lost

After watching their house burn early June 17, the Prices returned to their guest home and tried to get some sleep.

“But that’s when everything goes through your head,” said Dani, 51. “You think about all you’ve lost. Like our wedding pictures. We got married in 2002 and we have our photos and a box of negatives. No digital copies anywhere.”

The fire erased belongings that held some of their cherished memories, one trinket at a time.

A plate from Paris, a water glass from Provence, an antique clock.

“Thirty-two years of love letters — poof,” said Mike, 54.

“You collect things along the way, through the journey of life,” he said. “Everything has a story.”

Still, the couple have managed to keep the loss in perspective, especially with a loved one facing cancer at the moment.

“We were shocked, sad and exhausted,” Dani said.

But, she added, “they’re just really things, even the wedding pictures. Would I rather have my husband and dogs safe or my wedding pictures? Of course I’d rather have my husband and dogs safe.”

While their house was still smoldering early June 17, a firefighter told the Prices they didn’t know the cause of the fire but they didn’t rule out the possibility it could be linked to the Point Fire. The wildfire destroyed 10 structures, three of them homes, and damaged two houses, according to the latest Cal Fire tally.

“We don’t know what else would have caused it and the firefighter did not either at the time,” Mike Price said.

If their loss is grouped in with that count, they’ll join the growing Sonoma County club no one wants to be part of: that of wildfire survivors.

But even if it isn’t and their fire is found to be one apart, a standalone, fluke structure fire amid a bigger wildland blaze, their next steps likely won’t be much different.

Plans for future

While it feels daunting at the moment, the Prices plan to rebuild the ranch house.

“Construction fatigue is a real thing,” Dani said, referring to the building they have done since they purchased the property in 2018.

The couple plans to use the same fireproof materials that went into the two cottages, the refurbished barn and the chicken coop — with metal roofs and Hardie fiber cement board siding.

“When you go back and see the chicken coop next to the house, you start to really appreciate taking very simple steps, like the materials you use. They can have a really big impact,” Mike said. “I don’t think I appreciated that nearly as much as I do now when I look at that little chicken coop, as silly as it sounds.”

They also plan to develop their wine shop. (The name Maison du Prix — French for “house of price” — is a play on their last name.)

Their collection for sale, stored in a customized, perfectly cooled cellar in their barn, ranges in price from $100 to as much as $12,500 per bottle.

Their Fat Dragon wine label will also keep them busy. With 450 cases produced so far, they have a lineup of fetching wine, predominantly Rhone varietals crafted by winemaker Luke Stanko at Windsor’s Grand Cru Custom Crush.

The label name comes with its own back story: Dani’s 2008 visit to the Happy Valley Racetrack in Hong Kong, where she bet on a horse called Fat Dragon, drawn to it simply by the name. Its odds: 44 to 1.

And win it did.

“I’m the ultimate optimist,” Dani said. “We were completely and utterly shocked by the fire. When something bad happens, I let myself feel sad. I tell myself ‘You deserve to be sad or disappointed.’ I give myself two days to be woe be me. But then I focus on the positive. It’s onward and upward.”