In late January of 2004 the Ramona Municipal Water District,
at the request of the
The Cedar Fire tapes were professionally transcribed using
funds provided by the
In order to provide a version to the general public, it was decided to create a redacted version of the document, with all addresses removed and all names replaced with pseudonyms. This was done to assure the privacy of the speakers as well as to circumvent any shortcomings in the transcriptions. This redaction was performed according to the following conventions:
The names of all speakers were replaced with pseudonyms. The pseudonyms were chosen so that they occur in roughly alphabetic order (ex. Albert, Betty, Carl, … etc.).
These names are selected totally at random and convey no information about the speaker aside from gender. Where husband and wife speak together or sequentially, they are assigned the same initial letter (ex. Albert and Alice). Incidental names are replaced with a series of capital letters (ex: XXXX, YYYY, etc.).
Exceptions to this rule include Water Board members Kessinger and Krysak, public figures, including CDF officers, and MGRA members Diane Conklin (spokesperson), and Joseph Mitchell (responsible for redaction), and former Ramona Planning Group chair Sam Mitchell (no relation to Joseph Mitchell).
All address numbers and many street names have been removed. Open and closed square brackets [] signify where these, or other, information have been removed. Some exceptions, for example “Kitty and Ira’s Café”, which is a landmark in Fernbrook, have been preserved. Often, the exact location has been replaced with a general area (ex: [Fernbrook]). These areas are defined below.
There were two general areas in Ramona where structures were
lost during the Cedar Fire. The first consists of San Diego Country Estates,
which is a development of small to moderately sized lots abutting the
The fire then passed through sparsely populated ranchland
and the northern end of the Barona reservation before
impacting the second population center in Ramona – the Mussey Grade area. Areas
named in this redaction within the Mussey Grade area include
Should egregious inaccuracies be found in the transcriptions, or if speakers wish their names to be attached to their statements, please contact the email address below. These modifications will be included in future versions.
The Ramona Municipal Water District can be contacted at:
760-788-2201
Joseph W. Mitchell
for the
jwmitchell@mbartek.com
January 1, 2005