Pete - "When I
retired from the fire
service some neighbors would come to me and ask me for some advice on
how to
protect their property and I would tell them I only had one thing to
tell you,
I’m only going to give you one piece of advice, and that is when you
design the
protection, fire protection for your home and your family, do it with
one
thought in mind, the fire service, the fire department doesn’t exist,
they’re
not going to come."
Ryan - "At our
house for a little while and the fires
come through like every year down there and there has always been fire
trucks
and CDF, they always come down, we waited for light to come and hoping
that the
planes would come and they never did.
If
it wasn’t for our neighbors and the community I think it would have
turned out
much more tragic than it did.
Then come
to find out that I guess the main fire missed our house and at like
maybe 2:00
in the afternoon I had reports my house was still standing and just
little
backfires set in and it took the house out"
Thomas - "
I immediately,
with my neighbor, grabbed my hose, and I have a pretty good pressure
out of my
hose, fought her fire.
The fire line
came up to our house within ten feet and then when we were there we
finished
putting out the rest of the fire.
There’s lots of embers and lots of structures still on fire at
that time,
smoldering"
Victor - "
It was a new
home there were no vents on the east side of the house.
The eves were entirely stucco, tile roof, I
had the vents in the roof plugged on the east side of the house in case
any hot
gases got into that house from the windward side of the house, I grew
the
groundcover which worked, it got singed but it’s still there, it’s
alive. The
fire did not reach my house... I
was there to see my house with the roof on fire totally intact so the
fire did
not burn the house... I had quarter inch tempered glass windows
on the
fire side of the house.
I’ve grown up in
California, I know what Santa Ana winds are, I know what fires are..."
William - "I think
this was probably around midnight or after, one
of the
firemen came up and says, “you have to evacuate right now,” and I was
out
hosing things down knowing it was kind of futile and I said, “well I’m
trying
to hold on until we get some fire trucks up here” and he said, “there
aren’t
going to be any fire trucks."
Zelma
- "so we
come
rushing up to this gate and it was locked, needless to say on the other
side of
the gate were two cars, one was a woman with four children in it crying
her
eyes out because they couldn’t get through the gate, it was locked,
behind her
was another car with some friends in another home so it was two
families there
and they were just stopped.
"
Archie
- "By 1:30 the fire crested that
mountain and came down the side of the
mountain. I was standing there in
flat-footed amazement with my mouth hanging open because it burned from
the top
to the bottom in ninety seconds flat, it was the most incredible thing
I had
ever seen. At that point we said okay,
we’re out of here, we’re not waiting for anybody to tell us."