Horror from the Hills

The Cedar Fire, October 26th 2003

Saturday evening,  October 25th, we were coming home from our car club's Halloween costume party at our friends John and Jane's home in Escondido.  It was around 11ish or so, and as we topped the grade (Hwy 67) coming out of Poway into Ramona, we saw the fire.  It looked awfully close to our area, but it was pretty small, just standing out vividly against the black night sky.  We zipped home and after several futile attempts to find anything about it on the news, finally got a just quick sound bite about a small fire near Pine Hill Road in Julian, nothing to worry about.  Nothing could have been further from the truth, nor could we even imagine the nightmare that was to come.

0230 Sunday morning.  I awoke to the strong smell of smoke, and grumbling sleepily, got up to shut the open east facing windows.  I started in the kitchen, and what I saw nearly caused me to lose bladder control.  An angry, glowering orange eastern sky faced me from north to south as far as I could see.  I finished shutting all the windows in the kitchen and great room and ran into the master bedroom.  As I was shutting those windows, Dale groggily asked me what I was doing.  "Get up, hurry!" I said, and as he struggled out of bed, one look out our bedroom windows woke him right up.  It would be almost 36 hours before we'd sleep - sort of - again.  I was already thinking about what to take and what to sacrifice, because there was no way any human force was going to stop that monster.

We emptied the safe and started piling stuff into the motorhome.  First thing I brought out was Morgan's urn; no way was I leaving her behind.  Dale and I emptied file cabinets into plastic storage boxes, gathering all the important papers we could.  I lugged the big box of pictures out to the poor Saturn wagon, along with pictures from the walls and desks and such.  In between, we were calling and being called by neighbours and friends.  My friend Tracey, who lived in the Estates where the fire actually started, had been told to evacuate at around 1 am. Since they were going to Phoenix on Sunday anyway, they simply packed what they could and headed east.  I tried in vain to get our neighbours to the east on the phone, finally giving up and running next door to pound on the door and ring the doorbell until finally someone got up.  It was now 3 am, and we got a call from Christine, the wife of Matt the pastor at Dale's church, asking if we needed help.  Figuring that maybe we COULD save all the vehicles, we gratefully said YES!!  In a few minutes, Christine, Bryan and Kathy (Watts), also from the church, were in our driveway.  In the meantime, I'd called John and Jane and asked them to standby with the Excursion and car trailer in case we needed them.  We decided that we didn't need the trailer but the Excursion would certainly come in handy, so they started down our way.  Then, I had to make a call back to Vermont to try and contact our new neighbours to the west, Eric and Vivian.  They had gotten married on Eric's grandmother's farm in Vermont only a few hours earlier, and now I wanted to find out if there was anything they wanted us to save from their new home.  What a way to start your married life, eh?

The orange wall crept ever closer.  The smoke wasn't all that bad, but the forecast was for serious Santa Ana winds, so we knew we were working against the clock.  At around 4 am, John and Jane arrived and we started ferrying vehicles to the church parking lot, one of several evacuation centres in Ramona.  Christine was in charge of the Saturn, I hauled the Viper and Jane of course took the wheel of the Vette, with Bryan following everyone in the Expedition, which by now was loaded to the roofline with stuff.  The dogs were patiently waiting in the backyard, thinking that this was cool, must be going on another trip.  We pulled the motorhome partially down the driveway so that when it was time to go, Dale would have as good a shot as possible in case no one was here to guide him down.

In the meantime, frantic calls to 911 yielded no good information.  It simply wasn't to be had, there was just too much going on in too many places and in the dark of the early morning hours, no one had any reliable information to pass out.  By now, we could hear the soft roaring of the fire and see the intense, leaping flames, even feel the heat.  Dale went through the house, taking pictures of everything that we were leaving behind; we knew we would never see that stuff again.  Jane and I went into Eric and Vivian's house, Jane taking pictures of everything until the battery died in her camera, me grabbing pictures and anything that looked like something cherished including one of Eric's motorcycle racing trophies.  We loaded all we could into a laundry basket and put that into the Expedition to be hauled to safety.

It was time to load up the dogs and haul the motorhome over to the church parking lot.  The flames were cresting the last ridge before the homes across the street from us.  Christine and I guided Dale down the driveway, then off he went while Christine followed with the Saturn and I rode my Harley.  We got The Beast and the dogs settled in and went back for more stuff and to watch for awhile.  It was now daylight, and if possible, that made the scene even more ugly.  Now we could see the vortex of smoke from burning brush and trees swirl over the ridgelines in huge black tornados.  Still no sign of any air tankers nor firefighters.  A lone paramedic van cruised slowly up and down Willow Oak (our street) and the southern end of Southern Oak Road.  Once or twice, a sheriff's cruiser came by to check on things.  We just figured that the resources we needed were in use elsewhere; by that time, there was no cable, thus no TV, Internet and the phones were mostly useless.  Cell phones weren't working much either, so we were literally cut off from the outside world, and had no idea that the Paradise fire was raging to our north in Valley Center.  The fire approached Mark's home, on the dirt road that tailed off the end of Southern Oak, and we knew it was a goner.  At one point, we all swore we saw it burning.

In the hours to come, I ferried back and forth between the church and the house; it seemed like every time I came back to the house I stuffed yet another load into the groaningly overloaded Expedition.  At one point, I was grabbing bars of soap (I make my own) as well as an armload of brand new clothes I'd just bought and never even worn.  Dale's motorcycle jacket and our motorcycle boots, his Tommy Bahama shirts and some dress pants, my big pink plastic cup with my Marvin the Martian acrylic straw, a copy of Corvette Quarterly magazine I hadn't yet finished, a Breyer model of the famous Saddlebred "Wing Commander", Skeeter's unfinished scrapbook - all into the truck they went.  Dale's two Kincaids went into the Excursion along with our shotguns; the handguns went into the fireproof safe with some hope they might survive the fire.  And every time I drove down the driveway, I was sure it was for the last time.  I looked at the house, looked at the flames reaching towards us, said a silent prayer and apologized to the house for not being able to save it.

By now, the smoke was so thick that Dale told me to go to the church and stay there.  He would wait until the last moment and release all the birds from our outside aviary, then run for it.  The wind was at times howling, then eerily still, allowing us to hear the roar of the flames and feel the heat.  The sheriff cruiser was telling people to get out NOW.  The flames stood balanced on top of the last ridgeline, hungrily eyeing the feast laid out below them.  And then, a miracle straight from God Himself, or rather, God and Orange County - a long line of firetrucks and their crews rolling onto Willow Oak! Trucks from Winchester, Yorba Linda and Orange County had arrived!  Hope filled the air, you could actually feel it.  This time, when I left the development, I actually thought there might be a home to come back to!

The rest was just sitting and waiting.  With the cell phones pretty much useless, contacting ANYONE was hit or miss.  Sometimes, Dale would get my voicemail but I wouldn't get the message for an hour; sometimes, we'd manage a short conversation.  He was in our neighbour's up top, Bob and Eli's, yard, looking directly down onto our home.  He was also watching the 100 foot high wall of flame behind our neighbour's across the street's homes dwarf the puny dwellings.  Finally, the smoke was so bad he just knew it was from burning homes, in spite of the firetrucks parked in driveways of each of them.  At one point, the only thing he could see of our home was the spa and the shed, but he was ready to jump the fence and do battle with embers if need be.  He had tried to turn on the sprinklers outside but the power was off, so he hooked up hoses to the city water spigots and arranged them for fast use around the house.  Benny stayed to protect his brand new pool and the palapas he'd JUST installed the day before, and so did his neighbour Nancy and her boyfriend.  They were the front line of the fire moving into our development as you'll see from the pictures following.  The fire crews were working to save that line of homes, knowing that if they went, there would be no stopping the wall of destruction moving into the development and gutting it.  

When the fire reached those homes, it found plenty of fuel.  Brehm built Holly Oaks Ranch to be one of the premier "natural" setting developments, which means they didn't scalp the lots, but carefully cleared the pad and driveway for each home, leaving as much native vegetation and rocks as possible.  This was a good thing, but also a bad thing in that it invited the natural cycle of burning right up into our living spaces.  However, they also built the homes with this in mind, with full interior sprinkler systems and excellent fire resistance for the exterior.  The other thing that was in our favour was the fire department's "notice to clear" notices they sent to every home back in May.  We all bitched and grumped about spending the time and money to hire workers in to clear the dead underbrush and to meet the fire department safety zone requirements by thinning native vegetation, but almost all of us complied.  The one residence on the street that didn't, our neighbour's to the east, nearly lost their home when the fire jumped the street and climbed up the weeds right into their backyard.  To hamper things, fire crews couldn't access the backyard due to mounds of junk piled alongside the house.  Dale managed to get a hold of me on the cell and sound the alarum to the tenants to come back and defend the house while he was defending both ours and our neighbours across the street, Ron and Susan's place.  They did lose all the plants on the back porch but the house survived.

Ron and Susan's place had about the closest call of all.  They landscaped entirely in natives from Las Pilitas (www.laspilitas.com) under the direction of well known California native plantsman Greg Rubin.  They too had just finished up another round of plantings as well as distributing over 80 yards of shredded redwood mulch and installing more French drains and irrigation.  The plants were very young and obviously not yet established enough to survive such a conflagration, and many did not, although the Engelman oaks appear to be badly bruised and beaten but not dead.  The big story was the mulch.  It burned and smouldered all the way around the house, and because it was right up against the foundation of the house, it scorched the walls all the way around the house.  The fire crews raked it away from the house, probably saving it.  However, a wicker chair on the back porch up against the wall caused a serious problem when it blazed up.  The fire crews were concerned the intense heat might have started the interior insulation on fire, so they kicked in the back door and cut open the drywall to pull out the insulation and make sure it wasn't burning inside the walls.  On the outside, a wood pile that Susan convinced a reluctant Ron into moving out into the yard and away from the house turned into a very large campfire, and the mulch smouldered around the propane tank on three sides.  I think everyone in the neighbourhood took turns trying to put out that mulch over the next several days.  You'd see Aubrey drive by, stop, get out and turn it over and pour water on it; then Nancy's boyfriend would spend an hour doing the same thing; then Dale and Benny and me, all trying to make it stop, and all in vain.  The lesson learned here was to NOT put the mulch up against the house, because it WILL burn.  And once burning, it's almost impossible to put out, it seems to just need to burn itself out.

By late Sunday afternoon, we were out of danger except for hotspots on the hill, some of which continued to burn for 2 weeks. The bottomland where I walked with the dogs in Dog Walk Paradise was barren of all vegetation, including poison sumac and as you will see in the pictures, resembled the aftermath of a nuclear explosion.  Trees were still falling from time to time as the smouldering fire continued to eat at them.  A week and day after the fire, a welcome rain started falling at night fall.  I was on the back patio, in the dark, enjoying it when suddenly, across the way on the hillside, a brilliant blazing torch lit up the night.  A smouldering tree had finally burst into its final death pyre; two hours later, the torch went dim and shortly thereafter a snapping crackling crash sounded the death knell as it fell.

We started ferrying vehicles back home, but elected to leave the motorhome at the church - just in case.  Bone tired, we started to unload stuff we'd need for the night.  The dogs, who'd been so good and patient throughout the whole ordeal, got their supper and milled around outside, wondering at the new and strange scents filling the night air.  We kept driving around watching the flames continue their paths unabated throughout the area, burning back towards already blackened ground and areas covered in the brick red fire retardant dropped earlier by the CDF planes, where they were stopped cold.  Still no phones or cable, so no news.  There was no sleeping tonight for anyone out here; the roads leading out of Ramona were closed except going to Julian (that would change within the next 10 hours) where people were evacuating to.  Our hill to the south looked like a thousand houses were on it; twinkling orange lights of all sizes seeded the blackened hillside looking like thousands of street and home lights.  In the bottomland, it was straight out of a Halloween story, with blazing orange eyes staring out through the blackened boles of the trees in the deep gloom, only to suddenly wink out and reappear somewhere else.

Monday morning dawn saw an eerie stillness, like a blanket, settled over our area.  Smoke drifted and small fires burned still on the hillside.  We slowly came out to view the devastation and breath silent prayers of thanks for being spared.  Then, we learned that Holly Oaks didn't escape ruin; our neighbours to the east on the south end of Southern Oak, Glen and Sandy, had lost their nearly new home.  Embers apparently had swirled under the eaves while the firefighters were battling to save our homes on Willow Oak, which had appeared to be in the greater danger, and what was now left of their home was some blackened timbers and a slab.  Our community, under our "mayor" George, rallied to supply them with needed items as they moved into their temporary home in Rancho Bernardo.  Brehm came through with the house plans and the town of Ramona approved plans and permits, making Glen and Sandy the first in Ramona to get everything needed to start the rebuilding process.  And, like everyone who moves into these simple but elegant homes in Holly Oaks, Glen and Sandy have no plans to abandon the area.  We are a close knit community and they know that anything they need, we're here for them.

A pathetic sign of the times occurred the Monday night after the fire.  The Chargers were unable to play their Monday Night Football game at our Qualcomm stadium because it was being used as an evacuation centre, so they moved to Tempe Arizona to play in the Cardinals stadium instead.  Admission that night for 70,000 fans in attendance was FREE; however, it was asked that spectators, who were prepared to pay over $25 a ticket, make a donation to help the fire victims. The final tally?  Less than $2.70 A PERSON.  Sickening is what it was.  In contrast, that Friday a rally and fundraiser was held at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego; in less than 4 hours, over ONE MILLION DOLLARS was collected.

And Mark's home, on the dirt road off the end of Southern Oak?  Untouched, completely untouched except for one small scorched shed well off from the home.  That was a miracle beyond words.  Everyone was sure it was a goner, that there was no way it could escape the fire, yet it did, unscathed.  Our whole end of Holly Oaks Ranch looks like the fire burned through and afterwards, someone came along and dropped homes on the burned lots.  That only one tragic loss of a home occurred here is astonishing, and when you see the pictures, you'll understand.  Now, 3 weeks later, the rains have come and soon we'll be seeing Nature renew herself yet again, in a totally natural cycle of death and rebirth.  None of us will ever be the same again; some still sleep uneasily at night, and the smell of a fireplace or barbeque causes momentary jitters.  We scan the night sky for orange glows not attributed to the rare street lights from time to time.  We mourn the loss of native wildlife that is inevitable yet rejoice when, a week after the fire, a covey of quail return.  The sound of coyotes filled the air 4 nights after the fire for the first time, and buzzards, hawks and crows have been feasting on the roasted corpses of those who fled in vain.  Small greenies are already poking through the black and grey ash behind Ron and Susan's home, and now the process will accelerate.  Life, for the living, continues.

As for us, we were the fortunate only ones who didn't lose a single blade of grass or dry twig; not a single scorchmark mars our property.  Why, we'll never know; luck played a huge part in that, I'm sure, but I also believe that every home out here had an angel sitting on the roof.  Some of those angels were clad in the yellow brushcoats of the fire crews and some in the hastily thrown on clothing of neighbours armed only with garden hoses and courage, but they certainly were there.  And we can't thank them enough; words simply aren't enough.

Thank you to all who showed extraordinary courage in battling the Cedar Fire, and especially to those who gave their lives in the battle.

There are a LOT of pictures in these albums.  Suggest DSL/Cable modem for optimal viewing.  Please - if you use these pictures, give credit to Dale and Dusty Craig under the picture you use.