Witch Creek Fire

The Witch Creek fire is apply named for more than one reason. It started in the Witch Creek area right before Halloween and gave lots of people a serious fright. I decided to blog my account so that I can remember exactly what I saw when I reflect. Our family made it through the fire safe and sound. It is truly amazing to me that there were so few injuries and deaths from the fire. It was the biggest fire in So Cal's history. We had a harrowing experience that was absolutely surreal. There was a triple threat which made for the perfect fire storm. The humidity was near zero, it had not rained for a long time and we were behind on rainfall, and we had strong Santa Ana winds which gusted and kept the fire hopping and aircraft out of the sky.

The fire must have started some time on Sunday (10/11/07) because the smoke first appeared that day. We didn't have too much in our neighborhood but it was quite thick the to south of us a few miles. We stayed up late Sunday night and watched the news to see what was happening and decided that we should stay awake in shifts to make sure that we had time to make decisions. The wind was blowing so hard that my wife had a hard time going to sleep so she stayed up the first half of the night. I woke up at 3:00 am but the the newscasters were not indicating that there were problems or that the wildfires were moving so rapidly, so I went back to sleep. The wind was howling around our house anywhere from 40 to 60 mph and the smoke was continuous.

At 4:30 am another family (the Johnsons) that lived a couple of miles away called us and let us know that their neighborhood was on fire and that their area was burning. They pleaded with us to pray for them and we told them to come to see us. The woman was upset and their baby was wailing in the background. Krista and I got up immediately and prayed for them, alerted the prayer chain at our church (RBBC), and got on the phone to our parents in TX and AR for more prayer support. We packed our clothes and I disconnected our computer and we moved them all to the front hallway of our house. I went outside and the air was choking thick with smoke but I didn't see any other problems. I had a bandana over my face and a pair of safety glasses that I had borrowed from work. We watched the news again and nothing was being said about the fires in our area or the San Pasqual Valley which is to our NNE. We made a decision to started packing our kid's stuff "just in case".

By 5:00 am, the smoke was thicker and hot and I decided that we needed to get the kids up and get everyone dressed. I went back outside and a house a block away and up the hill from us was igniting and beginning to throw sparks our direction. There was an eerie reddish-orange glow in the smoke on that side of the hill. I realized that we were going to have to get out and that the fire was in our neighborhood. While I was assessing the situation, debris from one of the failing houses were launched into the air and embers started falling all around us. A 40 foot palm tree in a neighbors yard across the street (and upwind of us) caught fire when one of the embers landed in the turtleneck of material that surrounded its trunk. As the collars of dead limbs burned and fell, the 60 mph wind literally caused fire to rain down on our house, our yard, and specifically me. I ran into my house and wet the bandana that I had across my face and returned to start packing our minivan. While I was outside, I began hearing a series of explosions that I thought might be power tranformers exploding. It sounded like dynamite was being used in our neighborhood, we officially lived in a warzone. The embers and ash from the palm tree were smashing against our house and larger embers from other houses on fire were falling on our yard as well. Krista could hear the material from inside the house and thought pinecones were hitting the windows and roof. I started loading our minivan and singed my hair and saturated my clothes with smoke. I took another load out to the minivan and saw that our side yard was catching fire and I went over and stomped out the fire. I ran into our house and told Krista to get everyone ready to go and that we were out of time. I got all our stuff packed in our minivan and our side yard was fully ignited. I moved our Saturn out of the driveway because the fire and heat from our shrubs was making the car smoke - the heat was intense.

5:30 am: When the kids came out they were frightened by the fires and blinded by the ash and embers in the air. The side yard was on fire next to our driveway and Krista could not buckle Elizabeth because of the intense heat so she sent her to the back seat and told her brothers to hold on to their sister. We got all the family loaded into the minivan and pulled out and were down the street when Krista realized that she had left the family cats in pillow cases in the living room. We turned back and I went back in to get them since I was the only one that could see in the ash and fire that was swirling around our house. Krista took the opportunity to put Elizabeth in her carseat and buckle her in. While she was doing that, the neighbors to our west who live across the street opened their garage door and their 14-year old daughter started screaming since all the houses in her line of site were engulfed in the firestorm. When I came out of our house, the whole East side of our house appeared to be on fire and the trees between my house and the neighbors house to the east were on fire. As I was locking the front door, a firetruck drove up and told me to "get out and take care of your family, we'll save your house"- I didn't see how they could make that claim. As we drove away, everything on the East side of our house was on fire, the oleander bushes on the west side of our house were engulfed in fire, our wooden fence was burning on all sides, and the trees around our house were igniting. I figured we had lost the house. I did not need headlights as I left our street because the orange glow was so intense. As we drove away, we were wonding where we should go and what we should do. The flames were peaking over our garage and the house was totally lit up. I started honking my horn to warn others - there was no advanced warning for our neighborhood other than neighbors looking out for neighbors.

We went to a friend's house who lived about 8 miles away and I dropped the family off and went and filled the minivan up with gas. When I got back, Krista told me that my Friend's wife had gone out to pick up some food and fuel their vehicle. Evi got back shortly with food but a mandatory evacuation notice was broadcast for their whole community and we had to leave. We found out that Rancho Bernardo was an uncontrollable fire. The fires were jumping around and hopscotching fire units faster than the firemen could drive. We evacuated their house and started driving towards my work and I realized that I had left my keycard at home. Krista called another of our friends and they said that they had just finished praying for us and their area was safe for the time and that we should come stay there. When we got there, we were able calm down, the kids got to eat and they told us that the husbands company had already made arrangements for their family and one more at a hotel 20 miles away "just-in-case". Within a couple of hours, their community received a voluntary evacuation notice and we left for the hotel. We ended up staying at the hotel for the rest of the day and the husband's company provided food and lodging for us. They ordered in pizza and then BBQ for the 2 meals that we were there. We checked out Tuesday afternoon.

I went to a city government site later Tuesday and saw that our house was not on the "destroyed-by-the-fire" list though our neighbor's house to the east was on it. I owe the firefighters who snuffed the fire at our house a huge debt. A total of about 70 families lost their houses within about acouple of blocks of ours. There was wholesale destruction of property in a way that I could not imagine.

The Aftermath: On Wednesday, I was allowed to go to our house for ~15 minutes with a police escort to assess our situation and pick up needed medicines, toys, etc. The Westwood subdivision was still under mandatory evacuation orders due to the possibility of gas fires and electrical fires. The police were also patrolling the neighborhood to discourage looters. The fire took out our neighbors house completely, burned all our side yard between the houses and torched most of our fence around the house. It destroyed 1/2 the oleander on the west side of our yard and burned our fence to a crisp. The majority of the kid's toys in the side yard were destroyed. The firefighters had removed all the pictures from our walls in the house and dumped them in the front yard to preserve them. I boxed them up and started getting stuff out of our refrigerator to redistribute to friends with electricity. The cable box/pillar beside our driveway was missing and had been burned into the ground. Our cable had died Monday morning about 15 minutes before we had leftand the power had been out since Monday. On the bright side, the phone still worked. Some of our neighbors still have both power and phone.

I had hoped to be able to go back to the house Thursday to save what I could out of our deep freeze. We were not able to though we did get a loaner generator on Friday. Our freezer and refrigerators both thawed and we lost almost all our food in them. The fact that the firemen moved our family pictures outside indicates to me that the loss of our house was closer than we can imagine. It was truly a miracle that our house was not lost. I believe that our prayer support was the only explanation.

Update: On Saturday the firecompanies who had fought the fire in our area came around to view the houses that they had saved and meet families. In talking with the crew of engine 22A, it became apparent that they did not want to lose any more houses to the fire and drew a line in the sand at our house. They fought the fire with a curtain of water to protect our property and the other properties that were behind our house. Engine 22A out of Point Loma and Engine 40 out of Rancho Penasquitos were the ones who drew the line at out house. Krista and I actually made National news when we met the Firemen on Engine 40.

You can see the stories at:

The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/10/27/progress_reported_in_calif_fire_battles/
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/26/AR2007102600911.html?nav=rss_nation
The San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/10/27/MN7VT22A7.DTL

It was very cool to meet the firefighters who worked so hard to save our neighborhood.