SESSION
2
Speakers:
Introduction
Bob Krysak: I’d like to welcome you to the second of our
three public hearings that are being conducted by the Ramona Municipal
Water
District, fire ad hoc, Cedar Fire Ad Hoc Committee.
I am Bob Krysak, a member of the Ramona
Municipal Water District Board of Directors, I’m also the President of
the
Board. To my right is Kit Kessinger,
he’s also a member of the Board of Directors of the Water District and
over
there is Diane Conklin who is the head of the Mussey Grade Road
Alliance. This committee was formed by
myself as
chairman of the RMWD at the urging of the
Kit Kessenger: Good morning. Just want to thank you all for coming. This is the second meeting and, of course, in the first meeting we got, I’d say some eye opening information from the testimony that citizens like you provided and that information is going to be very helpful I’m sure to the agencies that are reviewing this fire on a regional and statewide level but it’s also very helpful to us because as directors of the water district, we have to look at our own operations and how those can be improved to better serve the community in emergencies like this and other times and I know that although I’m reserving my final comments about our water operation, water sewer, and other operations that we are in charge of until we get all the testimony and also talk to some of the agencies that were involved. I am getting an understanding and an impression of some of the things that we can improve in our own operations in the future and as a community. I’d like to thank you all for being here and for the comments that you provide and please feel free to speak and we’re all just neighbors and part of the community so no need to get nervous for any of those who tend to get nervous in front of a group.
Bob Krysak: We’re more nervous than you are. Diane would you like to make a comment?
Diane
Conklin: Just for the record, Diane
Conklin,
Bob Krysak: Those names are of people who live in the Ramona Municipal Water District, (inaudible).
Diane Conklin: Let me continue, I think I can help on
this. We were going to send letters to
everyone who had a home down, it wasn’t within the district alone, I
believe,
but nevertheless what I wanted to say is that the one letter was sent
collectively to the
Bob Krysak: On the village, is there a way to get that list (inaudible)
We are working on that. (Inaudible).
Diane Conklin: We are working on that. We
have a list of the addresses, I have that
from David Greis but those addresses don’t have phone numbers and so
what we
have done is put out flyers at the village.
Unfortunately people are no longer there so I think that what
we’re
going to have to content ourselves with is that if we have one or two
representatives from the village at the Thursday meeting, we were
supposed to
have one today but she, her children are sick, so she may come on
Thursday,
we’re going to have to content ourselves with a sampling.
We’re not going to have the full numbers
representing all 190 homes. That is what
we’re going to have to content ourselves with.
I would like to say, however, I’ve discovered and I think that
other
groups have discovered this, fire victims are reluctant to come forward. They do not want to talk about it. They want to forget it. I
called some people on this list to see if I
could get a hold of them and one woman told me, who’s living down in
San Diego,
I think she was an older woman, that she could not come here, she would
cry. She would not be able to talk about
it and she did not want to talk about it.
We’re going to have to content ourselves with a sampling but I
think
that people will be as accurate as possible and that sampling will be a
good
representation of what they suffered through.
So the answer is we are trying to contact. The
number three, I am just for the
information of the group, receiving copies of all of the correspondence
being
sent to the Ramona Municipal Water District, in lieu of or in addition
to
personal statements made here at these hearings. And
the water district is sending these to me
through President Krysak, I would like to tell everyone here, please,
if you
are going to submit a statement, please put your name and address, and
date and
sign the statement because many of these statements do not have names
and that
doesn’t help and also I am missing some of the statements that I know
have been
turned in. My neighbor [three names] I
assume they came in after I got my package but I know some of these
came to the
water district, they’re not coming back to the offices of Krysak and
McNichols
so we’ll just see if we get all of those statements.
Also I will reserve as the spokesperson of
the
Bob Krysak: On the public hearing issues, no I won’t give a timeline of the official report because we don’t know when that will be, I can’t say that right now. As you know, we will sit down after the last meeting and will determine a timeline with your cooperation (inaudible). Regarding any kind of breach of contract, we haven’t determined yet whether that will be any agenda item on the meeting board. Again, we haven’t gotten all the fact, we haven’t made any assessments or preconceived notions yet, we will do the appropriate thing and everyone will be publicly noticed as is required by law.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible). With regard to the completion of the report, yes, that would be fine in terms of discussing it with us, however, the idea is that then we should like that to be made public, perhaps you could make it public at a Ramona Municipal District meeting.
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible)
Diane Conklin: It’s just so people, actually the reason I’m suggesting that is because people will say to you, me, well what’s going to come of this and I think it’s important that people be encouraged to come to these hearings understanding there is going to be a result and I know you’ve announced it but the idea is if there is some kind of idea, that a date will be set for the completion of a report, then I think people have more hope that a report is actually going to be done.
Bob Krysak: Well first of all, a report
will be done and second of all it will be done as expeditiously as
possible. We know that everyone is
watching us investigating the fires and we don’t want to miss that. We will finish as soon as possible.
Diane Conklin: Okay and with regard to the second issue which is the consideration by the Ramona Municipal Water District board of the potential breach of contract with the CDF and looking into the arrangement with the CDF, I would just refer you back to the November 25th meeting where you enunciated the steps, I believe that was the second step that you said would be under taken after this first step which is the completion of the report and so forth.
Bob Krysak: I think that is misrepresentation. There was never any intent to proceed in any particular direction. We will assemble the facts and determine (inaudible). And one of the things I have is (inaudible) whether or not CDF is our fire protection or whether or not we have a local fire department or whether or not we have a volunteer fire department, (inaudible).
Diane Conklin: Right, that does get into the larger question of culpability and I understand that, nevertheless I think that it’s important for the CDF contract to be looked into, if you determine at some stage in the future that you don’t think that it’s appropriate, we can always come back to the water board and request that it be done again.
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible)
Diane Conklin: Right, well we would, excuse me, I’m sorry.
Bob Krysak: A lot of issues we consider ever year when we decide to renew or not renew the contract and I (inaudible)
Diane Conklin: When do you review the contracts?
Kit Kessinger: Diane, I think we can get back to you with a date, when that’s coming up on an agenda.
Diane Conklin: Well under any circumstances except for the date to be set for it to go on the agenda barring that we would probably come back to you. Okay, thank you.
Bob Krysak: All right, now we’d like to start. I only have three speakers’ slips here; I assume I’ll get more as we go through it. I’ll start in no particular order, Olivia. I’m sorry, one minute, Mark you had raised your hand to say something, I’m sorry.
Mark: Thank you Bob, I apologize that this is just a big tangential but it may be helpful. I’m the chairman of a local group called Ramona Disaster Group Outreach and we have been compiling lists of people with updated contact information as they have scattered throughout the county following the fire. We’ve identified approximately 175 family heads if you will of the 190 that you referred to this morning and while we do need to protect the confidentiality of those people, if you do have holes in your information and do need to get information out, we do have a mailing list and we could assist you. Although we could not give you that mailing list, we’d be happy to do that. Also, I would just like to ask if there are any people here in the audience that are not familiar with RDO or have not signed up with us? If you’d please contact me and we could step outside, we’d like to know about you, and we’d like to tell you about the helping information that we do have available. So thank you for your time and I look forward to talking to any of you who would like to talk.
Kit Kessinger: Mark you want to give your phone number or just leave it at that?
Mark: Yes, we do have a 800 number that is not manned by a live person yet, we’re working on that, it does have a voice mail box, you can call 24 hours a day from anywhere, it is 1-800-559-5771. We do check that regularly and if you do have questions, comments, concerns, if you want to volunteer to help, any of those things, give us a call, we will get back to you.
Bob Krysak: All right, Olivia.
Olivia: My
name is Olivia. I
lived at [
Bob Krysak: Excuse me Olivia (inaudible), is there any evidence that, your phone bill or anything shows that those 911 calls went in?
Olivia: Well they said that it should be on 911, that they did call.
Bob Krysak: Have they gotten their phone bill that shows that call on it?
Olivia: I don’t know if phone bills have those kinds of things.
Bob Krysak: Yes they do. They have directly…
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
Olivia: Mine has long distance calls on my phone bill.
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible)
Bob Krysak: Okay so 4:45 on October 25th, Oliver called 911.
Olivia: Olga called
911. The dispatcher said that the fire had
already
been called in. Olga
and Oliver
turned on their scanner. My
daughter-in-law has been deathly afraid of wildfires and always called
me when
they saw smoke and kept me informed.
Several years back they evacuated their horses to our ranch and
then the
fire came through
Bob Krysak: Did he say what time it was?
Olivia: When he left, the time was 2:30 or 3:00 AM,
he wasn’t sure. When Oliver
left his home and he told me that not one emergency vehicle told him to
evacuate and there was no assistance, whatsoever, at his house. Back at my ranch I had been in touch with
Diane Conklin because her house had a strategic view and she could see
that the
fire was coming up close. My house is in
a canyon, in the meantime, a family of two, their two horses and two
dogs who
were friends and neighbors of Oliver
from Barona Mesa evacuated to
my ranch. I asked Diane Conklin if we
should evacuate and she said I should call 911.
I called 911, I can’t remember what time and they said there was
no need
for Mussey Grade to evacuate. When Oliver
arrived at my ranch he was sure his house had burned down, I was
devastated and
discouraged. When other fires threatened
us we had six or seven different fire companies parked on our road and
one
truck parked next to our house. This
fire, nothing, no help, no warnings, nothing.
Olga, the baby with two dogs and
cats left to go to a friends
house in town, they wouldn’t stay. They
knew from past experience that the fire would potentially come our way. The other couple left with their animals. We were always in touch with the Sue
& family and told them about
the danger and said they should get ready to leave.
XXX brother, sister-in-law and baby from
While Fernbrook residents, the date was September 8th, 1984. While Fernbrook residents were concerned about their homes and belongings, many seemed resigned to living with brush fires. We were worried at first until the trucks came said [Olivia’s husband] who watched the fires sweep by on every side of the road on the 160-acre ranch. When you’ve got a dozen trucks out there and all these troops it makes you feel pretty good. We wouldn’t want to be alone in something like this. His wife Olivia, it doesn’t mean we weren’t nervous wrecks when all this was over.
Bob Krysak: How many calls were (inaudible).
Olivia: I think I just places the one and I’ll tell you what, I had to, my daughter-in-law reminded me that I had called, I mean that’s why I talked to my son and my daughter to remind me, everything was so horrendous and a blur, I don’t even know what day Oprah’s house burned down.
Bob Krysak: You said that someone had pictures of your house?
Olivia: That’s what I was told.
Bob Krysak: Do you know what time that was approximately?
Olivia: No, I didn’t but we think it’s obviously in the daytime because they saw something and I have no idea and somebody, one of my friends told me that, and you know what, I said, I don’t want to see my house burning down. So I have a copy of this, it’s not too clear but if you want that you can have it.
Bob Krysak: Thank you. Pete.
Pete: Pete, I used to live at [
Bob Krysak: You said this was 10:00.
Pete: That’s when I probably left, yep and the fire
was real close, it had come over the top of the MG camp above Mussey
Grade and
I kind of watched it for a while because it actually died down when it
hit the
rocks for about twenty, twenty five minutes and if they had had some
air
tankers, they would have knocked out that flank right there, I’m pretty
sure of
that. That would have saved about, I
think about thirty homes on the MG camp because it came right down
through
there, I was watching it and it’s real rocky over there and it just
died out
and picked up again. So I have, I know
some of the answers of what is wrong here.
I mean having been in the business I know you want facts about
the fire
but if you look back over the last seven years of the fires in this
county,
Harmony Grove, I was on that fire. In
fact the general manager lost his home in that fire.
CDF was up north. A couple of years
later they had the Viejas,
Alpine Fire in January, the CDF doesn’t do January.
Next year they had the Fallbrook Fire, CDF
doesn’t do February. And that year they
had the Viejas Fire it was the same institutionalized standard
operating
procedure so the failure all along on all these fires has been, in this
county,
the inability to have a rapid assault force capable of an initial
attack to
over power this incipient fires.
Irregardless of some people up north, there’s no means of a
safety valve
down here that we’re going to back fill that 25% with other resources
because
they are the foresters, they are the wild land specialists, they know
east
winds are coming, they know everything I’ve told you and yet there is
just a
12% resource attack and the end result was tragic.
The, you know when you hear about
firefighters risking their lives, I can tell you that nobody risks the
lives of
firefighters more than the fire service.
They were expecting to fight this fire with just 25% back up,
who’s
putting their lives at risk? But the
issue is whether the fire service was putting our lives at risk with
their
policies; they are institutionalized response, a system that they don’t
want to
change. Then unfortunately what happens
after this fire and it’s just a reality is that the profit sharing on
the fire
is unbelievable, but that’s another issue.
I really didn’t expect a response from the CDF and why would
they
respond to my house when they’ve been unresponsive all along. We’ve complained to this board, we’ve come to
this board, we’ve complained to the CDF about our coverage in this
community. Two years ago we came here
and we tried to tell the board here that we were concerned about the
risk down
on
Pete: One last thing I’d like to say is about the
paramedic program and the rescue community.
If you look around at these other communities, you’ll see that
they have
what they call paramedic engines, assessment engines,
Bob Krysak: Art, do you know what time your house was gone?
Pete: Between 10:00 and 12:00 on the 26th, it was right across the street when I left.
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible)
Pete: Nothing.
Bob Krysak: Did you see any bombers?
Pete: Absolutely, there was nothing there.
Bob Krysak: Never (inaudible).
Pete: I had evacuated to the other side of Ramona, I understand they made some drops up on top after we had lost everything. There is one other thought that comes to me and that was there was never any direct plane contact on my home or my neighbors. Okay, so (inaudible), that’s okay but what destroyed our homes was a blizzard of hot embers going horizontal and people ask why did the adobe homes burn and why did stucco homes burn. What happens is the windows break, the glass melts and the fire storm is coming and you’ve got a high pressure here, and a low pressure built up on the house and when the windows break it comes in like a blow torch. So you could get an army of soldier ants and put them around your property for a mile down to bare earth your house is going to burn so weed abatement works on some instances but what’s going to save your house is a fire service who is prepared to overpower these incipient fires in the first place, one, two is have a fire engine at your house and when I was on Harmony Grove we saved some houses even in that blizzard and have an evacuation plan and do what else you can, fire, whatever. So there are answers out there and when the fire service says that there wasn’t anything we could do, I would point out that there were fire engines left to save homes and there are stories out there of saved homes all over the place so that’s part of, if the fire service is going to say that they couldn’t do anything, they couldn’t do it, there was only so much we can do, I hope that they’re not saying that we can’t do it any better because they really need to get together, county supervisors and get all those fifty white helmets together and say look we’re going to put this special ops force together, just like they do in the military and when that red flag alert comes we’re going to activate the special ops and be ready to go and just hit this thing with everything we’ve got and then you try to limit the damage if you can’t do it so that’s something that’s been missing all along, whether they’ll do that or not I really don’t know. So there are answers out there and I hope that it’s not superficial and if I can ever be any assistance to this board I’d like to if you ever have any advice on whatever I know I’d like to help out if I could. Thank you.
Kit Kessinger: Thank you Art.
Pete: (Inaudible)
Ryan: Hi my
name is Ryan, I lived [
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible)
Renate: We had a sleep over that night. The neighbor called me and I didn’t wake up, I didn’t hear the phone, (Inaudible) right across the street, they came and knocked on my bedroom window, (inaudible) before I got my kids out. Got my kids out, we were ready to leave, we left at 6:00 and came back to get our stuff (Inaudible).
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible).
Renate: But they let us go back. MG Village.
Ryan: MG Village, trying to keep people from getting down the bottom of the grade.
Renate: Trying to keep people from going back down but they did let us go back, we got some things, we saw the fire was coming, we loaded up our things and we left.
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible)
Renate: (Inaudible).
Ryan: The insurance will only let us replace the house we had, upgrades and all that comes out of our pocket.
Renate: Where are we going to get that money from?
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible)
Ryan: No I heard. Somebody had told me that there was a CDF car and a fire truck in Kitty’s Café parking lot approximately somewhere between 10:00 and 2:00 on the 26th and people were still going around trying to save houses and they told CDF and firemen, “hey there’s houses over here, let’s go save the houses,” they hadn’t burned yet and they said, “it’s a lost cause,” and I guess they turned around and drove up the grade.
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
Ryan: Yes.
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible)
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible)
Ryan: Yes, and drove back up the grade. No, thank you.
Bob Krysak: That’s my last speaker, if someone else wants to speak, come up to the mic, orderly one at a time, state your name and your address.
Sue: My name
is Sue and I lived on [
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible)
Sue: I’m sorry, AM in the morning on the 26th and we were just waiting to see because we’ve had other fire threats around the area and they never seem to come over to our area so we waited for Olivia’s next call to see what’s going on and then everybody came down to her house, her son, her daughter Oprah and the other friends that they brought down with their kids and horses and then they decided to leave because they felt the threat that it was coming this way so I like around 3:00 in the morning we heard noises up at the gate and we went up to the gate and it was blowing very hard, the wind was blowing very hard and so we went up to the gate and there was a sheriff car parked up there and we asked what was going on and he said, “well there’s a fire over by Barona,” and so we said, “oh really,” and I looked around and I said, “that fire is right up over our, over the ridge there, it should be getting here soon,” and he said it wasn’t a threat yet so I drove back down to the house and I went over to Olivia’s house and I told her the house, that the fire looked very close and we needed to get out and so in the meantime her daughter and I were getting the horses back in the trailer that her son had already come back with them and so we had the trailers, we were loading the horses and we could see the fire coming over the ridge and it was close and we all packed our dogs and cats, whatever dogs and cats we could get, we lost one of our dogs at the time and so we got whatever we could, which was nothing because we didn’t have much warning as far as getting out right away at that moment so Olivia left, we left right behind her and the cop was still up there and we said well we are leaving too because there’s nothing we can do down here so we left the gate open and we left and then we didn’t see anything on the way up the gate, up the road, no fire trucks, no other anybody warning anybody else, it’s like it was dead quiet.
Bob Krysak: What time was that?
Sue: This was like around 3:30 that time and we do not see that other people warning the rest of the community to get out because we thought we were over, we were like getting out but we just thought everybody was gone because there was no other movement around, we just thought that we were the last ones to get out because we were the last ones on the road so if we would have decided to get out last minute we probably would have gotten trapped or, because of the ways the fires came in. I understand that we did take the risk living down on that land, we do and everybody takes the precautions to make it fire safe, you know because there are bushes, there’s bushes and trees everywhere you move. There’s no reason why we couldn’t have anybody down there to help us fight fires or save some of the homes that were there because some of the homes were like, there were areas that were so far down that they were able to be saved, they were opened, they were right there, easy to get to, it wasn’t like they were in steep, deep areas and I want to say I have a nephew that works as a fire, hotshots, CDF, fire department or forestry and he was fighting the fire up in San Bernardino area and at that time his crew, they were keeping contact with us on the phone, his friends who had cell phones and he kept asking us how is it going and I’m like, it is pretty bad, our house is going to burn down and he requested, or his group went to his commanding officer, or whoever he was in charge with and they asked if they could come down here, they were like we have to go back to our houses, our families are in danger and they said no, their responsibility was up there right now, we had no responsibility down here at all. He just felt so bad that he just kept calling and apologizing that his crew could not be down here to help everybody in our family. (Inaudible). I know a lot of people were in danger by the fire in the Country Estates and everything but on Mussey Grade it just felt like it was just Mussey Grade, you know, no big deal because there’s families and citizens were down there trying to fight their homes, you know, why couldn’t we have a fire truck or whatever fighting with us, you know. They were able to do it, it wasn’t like it was nothing they couldn’t do, it was something they could have done, try to at least to do something to save some of the homes, some of the people that were killed, you know and I know that we’ve lived down there for twelve years and the community here, Mussey Grade community have been very devoted and they work very hard to keep it that way so that it’s a beautiful place to be down there, it’s a family, that’s all they could think of is why weren’t they being protected. They took the precautions to protect the place in the first place and they should have deserved to have a chance. I mean, thank you everybody on the Mussey Grade Alliance for being there. We all know what they’re talking about, fight the planning boards and everything because we know the safety and like Pete, the Salvation Army, if they would have had all the construction, imagine the traffic down there. You know to get out and evacuate people, it would have been very ugly and you know, and thank you for Olivia for always keeping us in a preventative mode, always think fire, always think fire and she’s always been very good with that and we appreciate her very much. We’ve been living with her for almost twelve years now and we love her very much and we just feel very bad for her loss and our loss because she feels a lot for us and her daughter and for her she didn’t only lose her home, she lost a lot and she feels responsible for all of us and she’s a great person, she is.
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
Sue: No, I’m just saying she’s involved with the Mussey Grade Alliance and that she is, she lost a lot, not just her home, the community is affected a lot and I just want to say thank you for giving us the opportunity…
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
Sue: Saturday the 26th, yeah Saturday. Thank you, yeah that was it, I was confused. Thank you.
Bob Krysak: Thank you.
Thomas: My name is Thomas, I live at [Fernbrook]. We are one of the fortunate ones, the group that still remains there so we are all thankful for that. Unfortunately I can’t say it’s as a result of any efforts by the fire department, it just happened to be that we’re very fortunate. We were woken up by our neighbors at about 4:00 in the morning on Sunday, gathered our belongings, put them in the van and waited for the fire to get a little closer before we actually evacuated. I got my family out about 7:00 that morning and I went back to gather the pets, the family was safe. 7:00, I stayed there until roughly 10:00, highway patrol was directly in front of our house, told everybody it was time to go. So we stayed as long as we could, we made it. I came back that night.
Bob Krysak: You said the highway patrol was in front of your house. Were they stationary there or were they moving around up and down the road?
Thomas: He was stationary there on that road and I didn’t see him going down any of the side roads at that point. So I stayed there as long as I could and took the pets at that time. I came back about an hour later I’m estimating 11:00, 11:30, the fire line had been moved up, further up the road and then I turned around and left. It had been obvious that the highway patrol stated that everything back behind us was gone. He also stated that café was gone and we could see flames to the right, apparently it wasn’t accurate, the café is still there, our house is still there, little pocket. I came back in that night, I made my way past the blockade at the top of the road, made our way all the way down, it was probably right at dusk, I’m not sure exactly what time it was, I know it was getting dark, lots of stuff still on fire on the way back there, my neighbors property was, the wood pile and some structure, small structures were on fire. 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, I’m not too sure at that time any were worth saving, they were already down, however my neighbors property, her house was still standing, had the fire went from the wood pile out to her wood shed to her house, she would have lost her house, my house directly next to it, it may have been gone as well and then it could have just carried on and possibly wiped down that whole pocket that is still there today so I never once saw a fire truck come down Mussey Grade Road. In 1998 shortly after I moved in, like two weeks after I moved in, there was a fire. They had like four or five fire trucks right in front of my house. We have a fire hydrant right in front of my house, I thought when I moved in what a great place to have the fire hydrant and in 1998 they were just waiting at that fire for it to come over the hill so they could fight it. Unfortunately I never saw any fire trucks come down, I assumed the bombers would be coming, you know to fight it as daylight came, I never saw those. We were just told that there aren’t going to be any fire trucks dispatched down here, that was by the highway patrol.
Kit Kessigner: When was that?
Thomas: That was approximately, probably right around 9:30, 10:00 at the latest on Sunday morning and so at that point it had become very obvious that we weren’t getting any kind of protection or support. At that time and I hadn’t seen any of the aircraft flying around so it became obvious that that wasn’t happening at that time either so like I say, we evacuated and left the house. That’s pretty much my statement.
Bob Krysak: At 11:00, you went back down at 11:00, 11:30 in the morning. Did you notice if there were a few structures that you could identify that were still standing that ultimately may have burned?
Thomas: When I went back at about that time the fire line had been moved up so I couldn’t notice any structures back behind there that were or were not standing, okay, there’s a curve right around, there’s a sign that says “Welcome to Fernbrook,” there’s a curve right there and everything past there I could not tell, I couldn’t see so I had no idea what was really happening. I was only told that everything back there was gone, it seemed to be apparent because I could see flames on the right hand side of the road, you know would possibly lead me to believe that everything back there was gone so I just turned around and left and I was eager to get back there that night after everything had swept through to see what was still there.
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible) A lot of structures survived the firestorm but ultimately were started by a spark or (inaudible).
Thomas: Likely my neighbors house probably would have went up if I hadn’t gotten back there and used the house, or the hose right off the house, so I mean everything else behind me was gone and that was just a natural progression, it was very much on fire, the wood pile, when I got there.
Kit Kessinger:
Thomas: It didn’t, no.
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
Thomas: I hate to speculate, the fire was coming down on both sides of us, I mean coming down to the, what would that be the west, coming down from the west and from the southeast was bearing down so it just, we’re in the valley there, it’s flat, perhaps the winds didn’t get just right and I would hate to speculate why, I mean we have a great clearing around us as well as some other people do but the way things were, that didn’t seem to matter a whole lot for a lot of places.
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
Thomas: I never did with the highway patrolman being there, it had become obvious that they were aware of things, no I did not.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible).
Thomas: On Sunday the 26th obviously, I’m estimating probably, well I was woke up at 4:00 in the morning by my neighbor, I would estimate 7:00 in the morning.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Thomas: He was only in front of my house as the fire line moved up.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible).
Thomas: Probably a half an hour, forty five minutes and then they would move the fire line further up the road as the fire progressed.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Thomas: Sure, he went further up
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible).
Thomas: No I don’t believe so.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Thomas: Yes, all those.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Thomas: Sure.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Thomas: Oh sure, several of the structures that are no longer there were there when I left, I mean they were still up when I was evacuating.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Thomas: That wasn’t accurate obviously, ours was still there and that little pocket but I don’t know if he knew from first hand knowledge or seeing the fire but one might assume, it’s ravaged the whole area so I don’t know if he had personal knowledge that everything was burned up or just was assuming.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Thomas: The highway patrolman.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Thomas: Yes.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Thomas: That’s correct, it’s probably about 100 yards up the road, that’s where the fire line was at that time.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Thomas: Sure. Thanks.
Ulma: I’m Ulma and we live at [SDCE] and I decided I should come and sort of verify some times because we were right on the front and I called in, I called 911 at 5:37.
Bob Krysak: Another 5:37.
Ulma: Well there must have been some other ones, I don’t know but the reason I know that is that someone from Northern California in the 911, they were doing an investigation and they called me later and they asked me if I had made a call to 911 and I said I had.
Bob Krysak: 911 called you?
Ulma: They are doing an investigation, somebody
from
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible)
Ulma: Maybe it was CDF, I don’t know, anyway so I said do you have the exact time that I called because I had looked at my clock but I had already reset my clocks and so he said that it was 5:37 and I said that’s what I thought it was and so what transpired is that I was sitting at my desk and we look right out at the back, the fire was right out my window and I could see the white smoke coming up and I called 911 at that point. My husband had gone up to the water tower, the trail that goes down to the punch bowl is behind our house and he walked the dog up there and he had run into a young man up there who had been trying to call 911, he saw the smoke and he ran into a young man who had been trying to call 911 for several, he said about ten minutes and he couldn’t get through so that would, you know, push the time back probably. When [husband Uri] walked in I said, “did you see there’s smoke over there,” and he said, “yes,” and I said, “well I’ve called 911,” and so he took the dog because we heard the helicopter coming in from the pick up down on Ramona Oaks and so he took our dog down there and saw them as they landed and they were unloading Mr. Martinez to be put into the patrol car and it was still daylight, it was almost dusk but it was still daylight so I figure that he came back into our house, Uri did, about maybe 5:45 from his walk and then walked right on down there and saw them loading Mr. Martinez up. So that time, that was 5:37, at least from me they got a call but they must have gotten some from some other people and they did say they had already received information that there was a fire. The smoke was very white and very clear, it was just two little plumes, I thought, I said to Uri, “oh I help they get something on there and dump a basket of water on there real quick because they can get this out.” It was not black, it was just very early in the fire and then I think we’re kind of naive about fires because we’ve never really been in fires except for that we have, there have been fires that have burned out behind us. That one mountain just right behind us burned but the CDF was right there and they put it out and we just had great confidence in them doing that and so I felt very peaceful and relaxed about just going about my business and we had dinner and then we began to watch that nothing was happening and people began to gather up on our road, we’re the last road up there behind, well the last road before the forest and people were just coming up and sort of milling around, you know 8:00, 9:00 and we went out into the street and we could see the flames beginning to move and we just thought, well they must be going to do something about this you know and I always just say, let me know if I need to do anything so I feel very peaceful and go about my whatever I’m doing. About, I was outside about 9:00ish, going 9:15 watching, we called our neighbors because it looked like they weren’t home and they have horses so we were concerned, our neighbor wondered if we should get the horses out and so we called them and they were home so people just were milling around but I know an exact time when I went in the house, I don’t know what time but at 10:00 I looked at my clock and I thought well I’m just going to go to bed so I got ready for bed and went to bed and about twenty of 11:00 or a quarter of 11:00 our friends, the XXXX’s came pounding on our door and said, “you’ve got to get out of here,” and so I said, “well what do we do,” and she said, “well just get your stuff together and get out of here,” and so she started loading things up into her car and just different treasures around the house you know and left. Apparently I did never hear this but my husband said this, that there was a warning, they did come by and say you need to evacuate, it was not mandatory, this was early, this was probably around 10:30 or something like that, in that time frame because our friends came at a quarter of 11:00 and while they were there loading us up and by the way we do have a picture, they took a picture of the flames behind our house while she was there and my clock, they took down one of my old clocks and it stopped at 11:00 so that, I know a time that they were almost finished loading us up and we have that picture of the flames going all across that ridge there, up very close to our house and of course Christopher lives on the next hill next to us and so we left. They apparently came and said we needed to evacuate.
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible)
Ulma: No, it was a sheriff but my husband heard it, I didn’t. No knocking at the door so if you were inside and closed up, at least I never heard them but he was outside and so they said we needed to evacuate within twenty minutes and so you know we threw some clothes in the bags and our dogs in the car and at about, I’d say 11:25, we left, Our neighbors, the YYYY’s, we were all leaving at that time and I didn’t see any fire equipment, I saw no sheriff, I saw nobody and we were front line, I mean the fire was going to hit us first before it hit those houses all along, probably Christopher’s house burned first at 12:30, they said. I have a LA Times, I don’t know if you’ve read this but we had the battalion chief who was in charge of the fire here in the Estates came to our home, he was out showing an LA Times news, photo photographer the area and they’ve written a very comprehensive, it’s the most comprehensive article, four pages in the LA Times, Sunday morning that I had seen where I could get a picture of really what went on timeline and everything and so we had our home, we have a quite a bit of open dirt and stuff and the Estates has mowed back behind and around to the side, they couldn’t get clear behind us nor behind the YYYY’s house and I don’t think they could get behind yours Christopher, so we had an open mowed area and so our fire, in fact then we left and then we went to the other side of the Estates. We stopped at ZZZZ’s house, she didn’t know anything was going on and we stayed there and we watched the fire because her balcony overlooked our whole area and it just looked like it was wiping out that whole area, I didn’t see how it could possibly, how anything could survive and the flame would just move back and forth and you’d go out and we called and our phones still answered so we knew our house was still standing or the phone was still standing.
Kit Kessinger: From where you were watching could you see any emergency vehicles going out?
Ulma: No.
Kit Kessigner: It was just the fire.
Ulma: In
fact this battalion chief, Zambro is his
name, when he talked with us he said, well Christopher
knows, there was no fire
engines, you asked if there was one coming in, they said no. So we had no fire engines up in that area and
we would be the first all along there, you’re on Cherish and probably
just all
the houses that are right there, we’d be the first ones hit and there
was no
one there and I thought why don’t the bull dozers start backfires or do
something you know.
Bob Krysak: We’ve heard stories that at some point around 6:00 or 7:00 or even as early as 5:30 that there was a CDF truck out there, in fact watching the fire.
Ulma: You mean that evening, the 25th? Well there was the pick up.
Uri: From the pick up, I’m Uri by the way, but from the pick up that was up by the water tank and those two guys that had called in on the 911, probably within a half hour there was a fire truck up there observing, I don’t know if it’s a CDF or, more of a fire truck than a pick up truck and there was also a fire truck, I’m pretty sure down where they were taking Martinez off of the helicopter, I know there was a couple of paramedic trucks and three police vehicles that I also think there was a fire truck there also and that would have been right around 6:00 or something like that. So there was fire, there was equipment there early on by not when the fire was in progress.
Unidentified Speaker: The fire was already in progress.
Ulma: So I don’t know, then as I say we left and we watched and we thought that there was no way that we could have survived and then we went into town and we stayed in there and we called a friend who we knew had stayed in the Estates and he walked over to our home and he said it was still standing so we felt of course that we were blessed but when we got back on Tuesday and you said divine intervention, when I left I just said Lord you’re in charge, it’s your house and it burned up to this, close to the post in the back of our house, to the deck, and it looked like God just said stop and it stopped with this much to go, no reason to stop, nobody was fighting it. So anyway, when we came back and we don’t have to face what our neighbors have to face. I think it’s very sad, I know this battalion chief, he was overwhelmed, he couldn’t get any help and he called for it and then when I read in this article that there was three hundred and some firefighters in the back country, asleep, because they’d been told to go to sleep and they’d fight the fire in the morning, that really disturbed me. I’ve only seen that one article and we have all the papers and I need to go through it where they were talking about the people from the other side, the back side, that were watching it and could see where it was and their decision not to act on it and so I definitely believe that had they dumped a little water on it, they could have stopped all this chaos.
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible).
Ulma: This is the Sunday, December 28th. In fact our backyard is pictured in there with my husbands arm and it’s a long article and it tells about the whole sweep of the fire and had some very interesting information to me that I hadn’t read anywhere else. Did you have this paper?
Bob Krysak: We have a lot, we do have it.
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible)…(end of tape)
Victor: People
lost their lives; I don’t understand
how that could have happened. What I’m
looking for, more than anything, is an accurate timeline of what
happened
between 4:30 PM on Saturday the 25th and probably when I got
back to
my house, I think it was about 1:30 AM and nothing I’ve read in the
newspaper
is even close to accurate during that period.
Even the site where it says the fire started, that’s not
correct, it’s
off by a couple of miles. The reason I
know is, that if you stand in my driveway, it points right up where the
fire
started, and that’s the only thing that you can see from my driveway. A retired fireman found my driveway and
parked his truck there so he could watch the smoke and he had a scanner
on and
I walked up to see who this was driving up in my driveway around 6:00
and he
told me who he was and he had a scanner on and I listened to the fire
fighters
talking to each other up on the hill and I could testify as to what
they said
because I’ll never forget it. “The fire
is two to three acres, it’s in an inaccessible area, we can’t get to
it, we’re
going to wait for it to burn down to the road so that we could get at
it.” Nobody said we need helicopters,
nobody said
help, nobody said anything, it was just a small fire, it was just a
little
column of smoke like it was a large campfire type thing.
I knew the
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible)
Victor: Everything that happened, there was no alarm. There was no concern, there was nothing. People were sleeping after the thing exploded so why would they be worried about this fire up in the hills, it hadn’t exploded yet. There’s a wrong mentality in this whole situation. Nobody, nobody that was the expert in fires recognized what could happen and try to do something to prevent it. That’s my conclusion. Okay we evacuated around 11:30 as the fire was arriving at San Diego Country Estates, in contradiction to that newspaper article.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Victor: I did not look at my watch, my wife did. She said it’s 4:30; I know it was well before 5:00. The sun was shinning very brightly, the smoke column hadn’t risen it’s full height yet, this fire had started within the previous ten minutes or fifteen minutes so I would say that that fire started no later than 4:30 PM.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Victor: I called once because when I called I was given the very specific information that the Julian Forestry had been notified and were on route or on scene and that the Ramona Forestry had been notified and were on route and on scene.
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible)
Victor: Forestry, I don’t know, whatever, she said the Julian Fire people and the Ramona Fire people, Forestry had both been notified, were both on route or on scene and all I was interested in was getting an alert because the fire had just started.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Victor: No, she wouldn’t know, again the purpose is to ring the bell, not to manage the fire. I’m not the fire fighter, I’m not going to give them my opinion on what should be done, I’m just astonished at how little they’ve done when there was notification when the fire was very small. It ended up costing me my house, which we can get into that. When we evacuated at 11:30 PM, as I say, the fire had arrived at our homes, we left with smoke and flames visible within a few hundred yards of the house. No fire trucks were there except these two small trucks that I hear about, I did not see those.
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible)
Victor: That would astonish me too, how could they leave.
Bob Krysak: They leave at some point.
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
Victor: I can’t imagine they left, I don’t know. They did, I guarantee that, no one came. Let me go through my story. No fire trucks as I left I said well we’re going to see all these fire trucks roaring up Ramona Oaks on their way to defend our houses, I would have bet money on that, not one fire truck. As we’re evacuating, as the flames are reaching our home, not even one fire truck on its way up Ramona Oaks Road which is a mile and a half, two miles up San Vicente which is another mile and a half, two miles. So there wasn’t a fire truck within three or four miles of our homes when Christopher’s home caught fire, in my opinion, when it caught fire.
Bob Krysak: And you went down Ramona Oaks?
Victor: The only way out is down Ramona Oaks, down to San Vicente.
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible)
Victor: I had a horse trailer with horses, a dog, my wife wanting to get out of there and I knew the fire department, what’s the secret, the fires been going on for seven hours, I need to go and stop at the fire department and tell them there’s a fire, it never crossed my mind that that would have any value at all, it shouldn’t. Anyway, how did I learn about the fire? Direct observation from my home of the initial smoke column, it was very small, rising straight up. What emergency agencies did I call or attempt to call? I called 911 immediately, on my cell phone, disconnected as I said. One interesting thing, like I say, I know at least four or five other people who called around that time, 4:30, 4:45.
Bob Krysak: Those people (inaudible)
Victor: They are supposed to be here, I’ve got the names of some of them. Okay, again this is all going to come out, I took time to fill out inventory lists and going through everything I lost. My only comment is I’ll know when I made my call, first I called to see if there is a record, I’d like to hear my conversation, I was told those were not available and whatever so I said fine.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Victor: I called the fire, or someone, I called just the fire department and we’ve talked to the fire chief here and my wife’s asked him all sorts of questions and said he would get answers to…
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Victor: I don’t know the name of the chief here, the one down on San Vicente, that fire station there, by the high school, the main fire house. She went there and talked to the chief for a hour and had a good conversation and he wrote down a lot of questions and we’re yet to get the answers back. Anyway, my only comment is, I figure I would know when I made my call because my cell phone record bill comes in every month and it lists every call I make and the time. I called AT&T and asked them for the time, could they look it up in their computer? I spent a week to two weeks trying to get that information, I couldn’t get it from AT&T because they don’t have it available because the billing is not done yet and they installed a new computer system and they couldn’t do it. Finally I got the bill, there’s nothing on it.
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible)
Victor: Right, well my call is gone and so is the
call of at least two other people who called earlier.
I made the mistake, I think of giving my name
to people from the CDF at that very first meeting I went to. They came up and asked me whom I was and so
forth. I was talking to these fire
chiefs from
Kit Kessinger: What time, Victor, Victor what time?
Victor: This is, you know, the fire was over the hill on its way to Mussey Grade, I’d say it’s probably 12:30, 1:00.
Kit Kessinger: You’re secrets good with us.
Victor: What, which secret?
Kit Kessinger: That you snuck past.
Victor: Yeah, no and I got stopped a couple of times,
I kept trying to get in and there was roadblocks and they said you
can’t go
past. I turned around and I helped
people with horses for a while. Finally,
I was leaving, I said well I can’t get it, I’m going to leave and they
were
pulling the roadblocks back because the fire was further back and as
they were
pulling them back I said well I was leaving, I was actually going to
leave and
I got down to where the arena was, the Western arena and I said well
they’re
busy, I’m going to turn left toward the arena, I’ve got a trailer,
they’re
going to assume, I drove down whatever that street is, got to the end
of that
street and if you turn right it’s the western arena, if you turn left
it’s the
recreational center and all that, I said okay, I’m going to try one
more time,
I turned left and as I’m going past the recreational center, here comes
a
patrol car down that street and I said well he’s probably going to stop
me but
let’s see. They were getting out of
there and he just drove by and let me go past so I drove up to Cope,
turned
left and went back to Ramona Oaks and it was like the surface of the
moon,
there was no living soul in sight and the fire was well past that area
so I
said okay, turned right and drove to my house.
I estimate it’s around 1:30 in the morning by now, between 1:00
and
1:30, like I say the fire got there at 11:30 so this is two hours after
the
flame front got to my house and I drove up the hill to my house and the
first
thing I saw when I first caught sight of my house was a totally
unpacked house
with 100% of the roof in flames, nothing else burning, just the roof,
this is
an all tile roof, a new house with every fire prevention technique
known to the
construction industry but the roof was entirely in flames.
Not a broken window, not the porch, somehow
the fire got into the attic and the attic was in flames.
This is 1:30 to 2:00 in the morning and every
time I use it’s before changing clocks.
I don’t think most people had time to mess with their clocks
that
evening, its pre-changed 1:30 to 2:00 in the morning.
That fire couldn’t have been going for more
than a half an hour because only the roof was going.
So my home probably caught fire around 1:30
in the morning. Secondary fire, I got
there, there was a fire truck and a water truck in the cul-de-sac. The wind was blowing at least 50 miles an
hour, it was a horizontal ember thing, I ended up with a lot of embers
in my
eyes, the firemen had their masks on and hats and outfits and I had
this hat
on. The fireman came up to me and said,
“who are you,” I said, “I’m the owner,” and he said, “well I’m sorry,”
I quote
this, “your house did real well when the fire came through, we thought
it had
made it and somehow the fire got up in the attic and by the time we
noticed it
there was nothing we can do.” I don’t
understand necessarily either but there’s only two guys and they were
trying to
keep my house from lighting up all the other houses around it so I said
fine,
the ground was on fire, the fire had passed but all of the mulch that
we were
required to put on our ground to prevent erosion was on fire. So I spent two hours there watching my home
burn from the top down, listening to the windows break, knowing what
was in
there, putting out a burning ground so my neighbors homes would not
catch
fire. The firemen were protecting down
wind of basically the house next door to me and when that was done they
left. I was there for two hours with
very little water pressure filling up my horses water bucket and
carrying it
down and putting out spot fires around my neighbor’s homes so that they
wouldn’t catch fire. I finally was
exhausted and I left I presume around 4:00 and my house was still
burning. I took a picture of it, I got
back in the
truck to leave and I said I still have that damn camera, I really ought
to take
a picture so I walked up and took a picture of it and it’s an
interesting
picture because it has these horizontal red streaks going through it
because
the wind was blowing so hard and the home was still half up, it kept
burning
for hours and hours after that. The
firefighters, I presume they left around 3:00; I left around 4:00. I never saw another person there.
I’ve told other neighbors were up there, my
hoses were strung out, so let me tell you the evidence that there were
people
there. I don’t know who they were. All of my hoses were strung out and burned,
there were tracks, tractor tracks in the greenbelt between the national
forest
and my house so they had some sort of equipment there driving around
whether it
was a vehicle or what, I don’t know.
There was no grading or de-brushing because there was no point
in it, it
all burned but there was evidence that people were doing something. Maybe it was the neighbors; maybe it was
firefighters, I don’t know. What effort
did I take before the fire? 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 have a barn that’s exactly the same way
with a
big difference, there’s ten foot holes, openings so the horses will
walk in and
out of, it’s lined in plywood, it has open windows, not even bars on it
but the
rest of it is built exactly the same as the house.
It isn’t even singed and it is in the path of
the heavy flame front that came through there because it’s directly
above a
gully that could not be cleared but it had four to five foot bushes in
it and
everything else and that’s where the ground cover got mostly burned but
the
hottest part of the fire that reached my home didn’t even singe my barn
and I
was there to see my house with the roof on fire totally intact so the
fire did
not burn the house, whoever said that the windows blow out when the
fire moves,
it didn’t happen in my 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,
this house
was, the architect came back from a trip that next week and my wife, a
realtor,
wanted to take him on a tour to show him what happened and his comment
was, I
know one house that didn’t burn, it was my house. She
said when they got there his jaw hit the
floor because everything was done to protect that house from fires. So we’ll do a little more when we rebuild
it. In fact I’m not going to have a vent
that goes into the attic without an ember trap and if I have to invent
one I
will because there is no reason for embers to get into the attic of a
house and
apparently they do. Okay, what did we do
during the fire? I wasn’t allowed back
but before leaving I did turn the propane off and I locked the house
considering I had a lot of nice things in there, they’re all gone. There were two firefighters there when I got
there at 1:30, there was a water truck, he left once, got refilled and
came
back and they did save the house next to us.
I spent my time saving the other houses around there that were
upwind of
mine. In my opinion what could be done
better? This is what I wrote before, we
need a special team of fire extinguishers not fire fighters that go
like the
Marines, they go there before you have a firestorm and put the thing
out and if
they fail then you bring the Army in to fight the fire.
We don’t have those extinguishers, that’s not
the mentality of the people in charge of this fire.
They should have a mission to do this and the
authority, they should not have to ask permission from anybody to get
the
resources needed to put the fire out.
What is this business of needing to call
Bob Krysak: Thank you sir. (Inaudible).
Unidentified Speaker: The system that’s in place, normally when there’s a fire, if this fire had started, not later in the day, but at 2:00 in the afternoon, when there’s a response it’s a wild land response, in other words you get so many engines, hand crews, dozers and air tankers, in one sentence when they dispatch them. But I think we need to find out is if this fire happened before the cut off time, why did they send an engine and not the air tankers because if any time before that cutoff that should have been in the dispatch. You do not send an engine to a wild land fire and then call back for help. I’d also like maybe perhaps if you could verify, I’ve been told that there were two air tankers, not helicopters sitting at Ramona Airbase, fully loaded. Normally what’s also at the airbase is the spotter plane which has a battalion chief and a pilot and it’s called Air Command or Airco and in my experience working at the airbase and other places, if we even see smoke, the spotter plane immediately goes off even before dispatch, flies out there, verifies the smoke, the fire, the location, tells the ground crews the best way to get in and then directs his air tankers to hit the fire, either the flanks or whatever. I would like to know, we would like to know, if Airco was at the base with those air tankers prior to the cutoff, and why they were not dispatched. The other little piece of information is that the U.S. Forest Service is also stationed at the airbase and they have what they call Helitack, H-E-L-I-T-A-C-K copter. This is a special type of helicopter that normally has five fire fighters on it and when a call comes in they are flown directly to the fire, you don’t need roads, and they drop off these specially trained firefighters, a little remote and upwind from the fire and they immediately start to cut a line and then the helicopter goes double duty and gets a bucket and starts dropping water on the fire to protect it and put the fires out so that’s like a four minute response if all things being equal to Cedar Creek from the airbase. They’re right there and again they’re in the air even before that alarm goes off and if we could find out where they were in this time period. So those are some of the, because this is not making sense to me, there’s something very very wrong of why those air tankers weren’t, and the thing about a cutoff is also, I’ve seen them fly, a helicopter cut off time to giving it everything you have, giving it 100% effort so hopefully we can get some answers to those questions, that would be great if that could happen. Thank you.
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible)
William: Two
quick minutes. I’d like to wait and give a
full report
Thursday night if I might. I live next
door to Victor and our house, I guess,
and I’m told by the fire people
that it was the first house to go. We
back up to the
Diane Conklin: Please state your name and address please.
William: William [], []out in the Estates. But couple of things, I want to get my facts straight before I make a full report and I found out yesterday that one of my neighbors that lives up on the hill above video taped almost this whole thing and they have the fire from when it was back on the other side, down by the river and it came up and it shows, shockingly when it hit my house and my house went up and they also, she videotaped as they were leaving the area and part of the video tape inadvertently scanned down across the dash board of the car which had a clock so there’s a timeline there and I don’t know if you would want a copy of that or I can’t deliver it or guarantee it because I have to get permission from the owner.
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
William: Oh okay, why the same one?
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
William: I’m going to pick up a copy myself tomorrow, I scanned it very quickly. One of the things on the timeline when I talked to her she wasn’t sure whether she had changed that clock so it could be an hour off but she was going to talk to her husband and verify whether that timeline was…
Unidentified Speaker: Does that videotape include (Inaudible).
William: It includes a couple of shots of the police vehicle, nothing of any fire equipment, and again, the details of our situation, I’ll tell you Thursday evening. But needless to say, we lost our entire house and the last thing that happened, and 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.”
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
William: Well I’m going to have to try to come, to check with, we left about the same time that our neighbor did that had the, whether it showed that the clock was an hour off, I believe it was probably around midnight or after but I appreciate the…
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
Bob Krysak: All right let’s take five minutes, for folks that have to go.
(Miscellaneous talking in the background.)
Bob Krysak: The next speaker will be Zelma.
Zelma: I’m Zelma and we own a home at [Barona
Mesa]. We also own a ten-acre parcel out
in the
Bob Krysak: On which day?
Zelma: This was Saturday, October 25th. That evening as we came in at 9:00 we saw the
red glow in the sky and mentioned that there was a fire and looking, it
looked
like it was, you know out in the Cuyamaca area, not near the Estates or
anything so we didn’t panic, didn’t see fire trucks, it seemed to be no
mass
confusion through the Estates going up to our home and we have a two
story so
our kitchen window overlooks the east and so as we looked out the
window we
could see the red flames which looked way out, the red glow way out in
the
Cuyamacas, we weren’t panicked or anything.
About 10:00, about an hour later, my son-in-law called on the
phone, in
a panic, and wanted to know if I had heard from my daughter who lives
out on
our ten acre parcel at the Four Corners and my son lived out there also
in his
own trailer and I said, “no ZZZ, you need to remember she’s at a
wedding shower
this evening down at Mission Valley so she’s not going to be home.” And he said, “no, she was too tired, she was
going to go to bed” and he said “I keep calling the phone and I get a
busy
signal” and so he wanted to know if she had tried to call us because of
the
fire and he went on then to tell me how bad this fire was getting and I
wasn’t
aware at the time that it really was coming towards the Estates and so
I then
got off the phone and started calling my daughter and all I was getting
was
busy signals and I thought well at least she’s aware of the fire, she
must be
calling her friends, you know letting, or people calling her and she’s
on the
phone saying yeah I’m fine, etc. so we didn’t panic and we just kind of
kept
walking out to the kitchen, looking, watching the fire, it didn’t seem
to be
moving much. The glow in the sky didn’t
seem to be changing so at 12:00 we took one last look and went to bed. Nobody had come, no fire engines, nobody had
said the Estates is going to be evacuated, no warnings, no planes,
nothing so
at 12:00 we went to bed. About 12:15 I
hear my doorbell just ding, ding, ding, ding, ding and my front door
being
pounded on so I went running out there, I knew whoever it was was in a
hurry
and three of my sons girl, well they were girls, friends were at the
door
wanting to know if I had heard from my son and I said no I hadn’t and
they were
in a panic. They live over off of
Rainbird and they came to say that he had been up at our property that
the end
of the Estates was on fire and all of the homes on Barona Mesa were
burning
down. Now I’m in a panic and this is
where my children are living on our property and so they wanted the
cell number
and I gave it to them, shut the front door, I was in my nightclothes,
ran in
just grabbed a coat, I didn’t even get dressed, got, my husband heard
all the
commotion, had come out and I said, “we’re leaving now, get the keys.” The Estates is on fire and that’s what they
had said, the end of the Estates was on fire and Barona Mesa was
burning. So he ran down to the garage,
grabbed a chain
because there is a locked gate as you go in through
Zelma: Okay so my husband ran got the car keys, put on some clothes, we jumped in our little Suzuki Jeep and we headed down Barona Mesa towards the fire station that is on Vicente Road there in the Estates, past that, there was no activity that I saw but with the fire I figured they’re all gone so I didn’t…
Bob Krysak: What time is it when you left your home?
Zelma: This, okay we left our home by 12:30 got…
Bob Krysak: You didn’t take a lot of time?
Zelma: No, no we did not. I’m in my nightclothes with a coat on, that was it and threw on my sandals and we were, we came to a roadblock right there at Ramona Oaks and so my husband drove right up to the roadblock, I jumped out and there was a man and a woman volunteer sheriff there and I explained to them they need to move the roadblocks so I could get through because I needed to go get my kids and he said, “no we’re not moving the roadblocks, you can’t go, you need to get out of here, go back home,” because he saw us come down from the Barona Mesa Road area, he said, “you just need to go home,” he said, “the end of the Estates here is being evacuated,” and I said, “well my children have not been evacuated, I’m sure I would have heard and I need to get through the roadblock,” and he was very adamant he was not going to let me through that roadblock. “Nobody is going through that roadblock,” he said and I saw the line of cars, people coming out, evacuating out so I ran back to the Jeep, got in, I told my husband he won’t let me through and my husband said, “you need to go back and explain to them they don’t live here in the Estates,” so I got out, ran back over and I explained to them they live in the Four Corners area where the dirt roads are and he said, “they’ve already all been evacuated, the fires up in that area, they’re all out of there by now,” I said, “well I’m sure my children aren’t because we’re on top of their hill, a mountain and it’s hard to get to, I’m sure they haven’t been evacuated because I haven’t heard from them,” and he said, “ma’am, they’ve all been evacuated out, the warnings been set, you are not going through, we are not moving the roadblocks,” so I went back to my car, got in, told my husband they’re not moving the roadblocks for us, we can’t get through. While I’m in my Jeep I was very upset because he then proceeds to move the roadblocks because here come five or six cars pulling horse trailers and he lets them through. Now I jumped out of my Jeep and I went over and I just screamed in his face, “I’m going through this roadblock because my children are out there, that’s my family, they’re going to burn if you don’t let me through,” he said, “sorry ma’am, we’re not letting you through, only the horse people through to rescue the horses,” I said, “you’re telling me horses are more important than human lives, I’m going through the roadblock,” so I went back to my Jeep and I told my husband, “gun it” you know and he came running, he started the car and comes up and the man stood right in front of our car. Well we couldn’t hit the man, we weren’t going to run someone down, so he stood right there and would not let us through and he had thrown that back when he saw me.
Bob Krysak: I don’t know if I would have had that same expression if I was in your…
Zelma: That’s true.
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible)
Zelma: Well because that was the fastest way, at the
time, we’re so used to going that way, that was the way we were trying
to
go. At that point he was not going to
let us through, because we go up Rainbird.
You go Ramona Oaks to Rainbird and then Rainbird hits the
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
Zelma: No, well we were going, we were trying to go east, that is east. By now all my arguing, because we were there by 12:30, I would say it’s getting close to 1:00, I mean, I was out of that Jeep three times now arguing with him, probably about 1:00 in the morning now and so I mean at this point I was in a panic, you know, and I told my husband, I said, go the back way, we have to go through the ultra glide port so we went off that way and went down the road, nobody around so it’s dark, we could see the red glow in the sky but there was no traffic, nothing and we came to the locked gate that was there that the Barona Indians have now put up and it was locked and I kept saying all the way, do you think they would have unlocked the gate knowing there was a fire and 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. Now there was no fire in that area yet but the whole sky was red, we knew it was right over that hill by now and so my husband said, “hook up the chain,” well thank the Lord, that’s why he had the chain, the Lord had just said, “put the chain in the car,” and he did. So we hooked up the chain and we had a little Suzuki Jeep and I’m looking at the cement, you know this metal post, this big, it was a fat post and I had to loop the chain around it, crawl under the Jeep, you know to hook it up and so he starts pulling and we barely budged the thing, well it took us twenty minutes just revving our car and frontward and reverse and finally it gave after that twenty minutes. I didn’t think it was going to give but it gave and in the process out of the left from the tree area some man came walking out yelling and screaming, “what are you doing out here, you woke me up,” you know and I said, “sir you are so happy we woke you up, there is a huge fire,” and I said, “look at the sky, my god, it’s right over the hill, get your family and get out,” and he says, “oh my gosh I got to go get my horses,” well that was the last thing I wanted to hear about horses because I’m trying to save human lives you know and I don’t mean to offend horse owners because we love horses, I know you love them, my best friend owns horses and I love them, but at this point I just wanted to get my children, and so we woke him up, he went running back so I know we saved him and his family and since I’ve been back to the area and looked, his home is totaled, it’s flattened as well as the other two families that we finally let through that gate as soon as we got that gate open we let them exit out first and so then we hit the road and went up and we got up to the top and the whole mountain to the south of our ten acres was all on fire and I’m looking around, smoke was everywhere, it was so thick that I was just looking and the fire had come and burned past our property and was on this next hill just all on fire and as we drove through there’s two homes there on the right so we were honking our horns trying to wake them up, we just plastered our horn up to our property and I got out and went running in to my daughters home there and thank heavens she wasn’t there so I happened to see the cat, I tried to get the cat, couldn’t, and so anyway, looking around we grabbed our motor home and we drove out of there with everything on fire. The property next to us was on fire and was coming up and everything was fine and it looked like the fire had burned past and was going towards the Mussey Grade region. Now this, I would suspect no later than probably by 1:30 in the morning by now, and so we went ahead, I wanted to double check neighbors and my husband said, “no, you can see the way the fire is, we’re going to get trapped in here,” because it was in the Barona Mesa area and it had already burned past us, he was afraid it was going to come down the hill into the area we had just come because all below us was on fire as well and I looked across the hill south and I could see two other homes on fire so he kept yelling at me, “we’ve got to get out, got to get out, we’re going to get trapped,” so as long as I knew my kids weren’t there I was happy and we left. I got home and my children were at home so they didn’t, they wouldn’t allow them to turn left on San Vicente to go to Barona Mesa where our home was, they had to go all the way around but that was okay and I knew who she had argued with, you know, so that was okay, he had his road block thing on the brain and that was what he was…
Bob Krysak: If you had run him over they wouldn’t have had that.
Zelma: That’s true, that’s true, that’s true. But I feel at this point we had saved three other families that we know of for sure and that was probably why we had to go that way, is how I look at it. But anyway we got home and throughout the evening we kept watching the fire because by now it was burning through the Estates, coming closer to our area and we watched it progress and I would say probably about 2:30, 3:00 in the morning the fire had reached the hill just west of our street there on Barona Mesa and I thought it quite interesting because we hadn’t seen hide nor hair fire engines, hear anything and all of the sudden I heard some engine, no sirens, just engines and I look, coming up because we’re right at the corner of Vista Vicente and Barona Mesa, right there is our home and so the engine, we saw a fire engine coming up and I said to the children, I said, “look there’s a fire engine, finally,” you know and it came up to the corner and stopped right there and then more came behind it and they just stopped and next thing I know they turn down Barona Mesa, went right to the bottom by La Plata, where La Plata turns right and they stopped, right in the middle of the street and six engines were right there, just stopped in the middle of the street, no sirens, nothing. Then six more, because I counted them, there was six more that had come up to the stop sign and stopped, going down Vista Vicente so we have twelve fire engines right there just sitting, parked, and I’m watching the hill burning and moving up towards the homes and I’m thinking firemen, engines and they’re watching the fire burn up towards the homes.
Bob Krysak: About 3:00 in the morning?
Zelma: Yes. And I’m thinking when are they going to go up there to put, to protect the homes on the top of the hill, at the top of La Plata and they just sat there for fifteen minutes so I went out and I started screaming at them, “what are you doing, sightseeing,” and I felt sad because two of the home owners were on our front deck watching their homes at the top at this point and seeing these engines just sitting there. Finally the six that were in the street area parked, turned and went up La Plata and we watched the lead truck go half way up and he reversed into the driveway of a home and then the truck behind him did the same so each one took a driveway, backed in and stopped. None of them went to the top of the hill. At that point I’m watching and the fire had already started consuming the homes at the top of the hill. There was no engines at the top, we saw no fire spray, we saw no firemen up there trying to put out the homes and we watched, the two owners watched their homes burn to the ground and here were the fire engines right there half way up the hill, didn’t even try to protect those homes that we could see from our vantage point and there never were engines and even at this point nobody had come to tell us to evacuate, we’re still in our homes and many of the neighbors had already filled their cars and had left, we hadn’t, nobody had told us. There’s a canyon right behind our home which comes right up to our backyard area and so with the wind blowing, as hard as they were blowing by now, plus the fire itself creates wind and we could hear that wind, it sounded like a train, it was incredibly loud and we just kept waiting for sparks to fly and hit our canyon and that’s what we were waiting for and when that happened we had been watering everything down and we were just waiting for that canyon to start catching on fire and that was when we were going to evacuate ourselves because no one had told us to. We watched the fire consume those homes, proceed east, or west I’m sorry, along the mountain, probably about, I would say probably by 4:00 in the morning we’re watching it directly behind our backyard come down near Nectar, threaten all those homes along Nectar Avenue, proceed to burn up the hill and up to Calistoga Place and we watched three more homes burn down on Calistoga Place. We did see firemen there, we counted four firemen back in the brush area moving around but they, we only saw them there maybe ten minutes, at that point I guess they figured it was hopeless or what I don’t know, because they left and those homes burnt down so at that point I had told my daughter when we saw the kids that her home was fine, everything was there, the fire had burned past our property, you know, the wind had carried it through, thank the Lord her home was saved and the whole bit so by 6:00 the next morning when it got light we all got in our cars, we drove up there and needless to say everything was to the ground, the fire had burnt it all down so my daughter had had two minutes to get out, my son, the story my son tells is she had been sleeping, the dog, her little puppy had knocked the phone off the hook that’s why we all had a busy signal, she was sleeping and my son who was in the Rainbird area there, had gone up to make sure the property would be okay and so he got up there, I think he said about 10:00 and was watching the fire burn in the Cuyamaca Mountain Area and they had watched it for hours and he then said as they were watching, it was probably 12:30, 12:45 they had watched the fire burning, getting closer towards the Estates, not realizing the fire had burned down into that fifteen hundred foot valley, it had burnt down there and had burned all along the bottom of that valley because about 12:45 he said, sorry…
Bob Krysak: A little background music.
Zelma: I’m sorry, they just hung up. What happened is as they were watching the fire about 12:45 to 1:00 in the morning all of the sudden he saw a little glow behind him, turned around and the winds had picked up by then and he said he saw the flames crest over the hill and he, within ten minutes, he saw the flames, I’m sorry it wasn’t even ten because they were out of there by ten minutes, within five minutes he saw that fire swept across hitting those homes and moving at such a rapid rate. He ran in and woke up my daughter thinking they’d been safe all those hours, woke her up, you have two minutes AAAA, get your keys, get the puppy, get out of here, we’re leaving we have to go. The fire is now at the bottom of the road, within five minutes he saw it sweep across and they then hauled out of there racing the fire, laying on their horns because there had not been one plane, one fire engine, no one had ever come out to evacuate anyone from that region and all I can say is thank God my son went out there or my daughter would have gone down most likely in the home because as fast as that fire was coming so there was no warning.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Zelma: Yes, I’m Zelma,
[], owning a ten acre parcel
in the
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible).
Zelma: No I was screaming from my deck, “what are you doing sitting there, there’s a fire, go fight it, go save those homes.”
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible).
Zelma: They were in their truck, it was early, it was dark.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible).
Zelma: No, no, no.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible).
Zelma: They were there a good fifteen minutes.
Diane Conklin: Then what happened?
Zelma: The six engines that were on the street in front of our home down to La Plata, those are the six engines that left and went up half way and backed into the driveways of the homes on that street.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible).
Zelma: Yes, yes and then they left, we never saw one fireman.
Diane Conklin: On either fire?
Zelma: No, no we watched the homes burn to the ground.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible).
Zelma: Not from what we could see from our vantage point, no.
Diane Conklin: The four fire engines you saw by your home?
Zelma: Later on yes.
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible).
Zelma: Yes, I’m sorry
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible).
Unidentified Speaker: We need to be fair on this and I saw that fire and after midnight I don’t know if anyone would go to the top of a hill in the path of that fire and risk their life and their equipment. I don’t think it’s unreasonable, that was not a fire that you could do anything about at that point, it was a wildfire, it was a fire storm, it was a holocaust and so I think to say these firefighters in their trucks were sitting there at the bottom of the hill seeing that fire come towards them I don’t feel like, would you have gone up that hill? I wouldn’t.
Zelma: But if that was my duty to go.
Unidentified Speaker: It’s not your duty to kill yourself. The question here …
Zelma: No, but it would be my duty to save homes and those homes were fine.
Unidentified Speaker: Not at the risk of human life. We got to be reasonable with this and I think the question is, what were the standing orders, and I would imagine at that point, the standing orders were do not get in the path of this fire with any human being. My concern is that there were human beings in the path of this fire, they weren’t getting out. The homes were gone, there’s nothing much you can do, but what about the people, I don’t understand that part of it.
Zelma: Okay thank you.
Bob Krysak: Archie.
Archie: I thank you, I seeded my time earlier to
other commitments. I’m Archie,
I live on [SDCE]. We’re over on the
north side of the area and to the west of where the fire burned down on
Bellemore. I feel bad making this
comment because our experience was so completely different than so many
other
people who have spoken here already.
I’ll try to be brief. We were
awakened at 1:14 in the morning, I remember because the image of my
alarm clock
is burned indelibly in my mind, to the sounds of very high winds in the
back of
our property. My wife and I both woke up
almost simultaneously, at the same time we heard sirens and lots of
them and we
looked at each other and said this isn’t good.
We looked out the bedroom window and by that time there were
already embers
landing on our Jacuzzi cover just outside the bedroom.
So we didn’t even wait to look out the
windows any further, we got dressed, went out in to the front of our
home which
faces kind of south and to the east. We
saw a large glow on the horizon and we did not realize at that point
that it
had already reached the boundaries of the Estates out near Christopher’s home and Victor’s
home. So we realized that evacuation was
immanent. At that time there was an
awful lot of traffic in front of our house.
There were black and white units of both the sheriff and the
highway
patrol going up and down the street with flashing lights, they were not
making
announcements at that point. We wanted
to see whether the fire was progressing south or whether it was going
to flank
and head north to the northeast, which would bring our home into the
path of
the fire. Now our home is just off of
that big rocky area in the back side of the Estates, I don’t know if
that’s
what’s called
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
Abby: I have a different perspective myself, my name is Abby, I live at [SDCE]. We were in Descanso and left Descanso between 5:00 and 6:00, we’re not sure time wise, we’re doing a little sightseeing on Boulder Oaks and passed forest service units with sirens going, heading down Boulder Oaks towards the Cedar Creek Area. Yes, on the 25th. We came around through, because we had horses so we were getting in time we needed a good hour to get home from there and we were going through Cuyamaca. Came through Cuyamaca and past units which were CDF units coming up and we were probably west, I’m having a hard time pinpointing between west of Pine Hills, I know that we were west of Pine, at least west of Pine Hills and past units coming up with their sirens and red lights going and at that time we just thought, gosh there’s got to be a fire someplace and that’s about all we thought.
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
Abby: I don’t know.
Diane Conklin: Morning or afternoon?
Abby: Oh no, no, no. 5:00 in the afternoon between 5:00 and 6:00 in the afternoon is when we had past the units and we left Descanso. At 9:30 Saturday night we had the people that we had left in Descanso, they have a view through Cuyamaca and they called wanting to know if we knew where the fire was, they could see the glow, so from 9:30 on I was watching it and also calling friends. I have a friend who has a ranch, friends who have ranches up in Santa Ysabel and from where I look if you go out the back side of our house and we’re out on a back porch deck I can see back out the area towards Ramona Oaks and which we call that the big valley, the gorge, everybody else was calling the gorge, we call it the big valley, it looked like it was up on Tulock Ranch and I called and she had said it was on the other side of the big valley, nothing to worry about and I had also called her daughter who they had gone out looking for it and couldn’t find it. Ultimately 80% of the Tulock Ranch burned after it came back and doubled back, however the fire went. About, I’m guessing it was midnight without the clocks being set back I had kept looking, our bedroom window faces east so I kept looking out and my husband got up to go to the bathroom and about that time I looked out the window and said, “I see flames,” he said, “I’m getting dressed.” I picked up the phone and two doors down from us we have a really close friend who’s husband with CDF who recently passed away so I knew if she knew anything about the fire she always had the scanner going so I had called her and I said Linda I see flames and she went okay and that was the last I talked to her for twenty four hours at least. She, her children live across the street, I made three phone calls, one of them including to the people who were talking about where I have the video, they evacuated with us because when I called her she was hysterical, I didn’t even know they knew about the fire and she was hysterical, they had been closing everything down so I’m guessing time wise it had to been about between probably about 12:30 and I never saw the fire. At that point I picked up the phone, called a friend and said, “we’re surrounded by fire, we’re on our way down,” and by the time this other friend got there, the one who had the video, we were loading horses and she had left with my husband and her husband and some of our other animals and by the time I just told them I’d meet them at the ranch and then I doubled back and came back about 1:30, I’m thinking, is that about the time we left the ranch to come back in, it’s about twenty minutes to a half hour to get back in, I had forgotten medications and they did, they didn’t want to let me in but did let me in and at that time it was burning down behind our house and let me tell you about the wind even burning towards our house, my house was very hot and the embers were just totally blowing past the oak trees were on fire and it was on fire behind, we’re pretty clear behind and it was burning through what we call kind of a pasture area that we’ve totally kept clear and there were fire units on our street at that time, at least two that I recalled but they were, I was assuming they were monitoring up further and we had also at the time that we evacuated and left we had full units come through including a helicopter going through with bullhorns and sirens and everything to tell us to evacuate which would probably been around midnight, 12:30 some time around that time without the clocks being set back, that’s what I’m guessing and truly I’m guessing, it was in that period.
Bob Krysak: You say helicopter?
Abby: There was a helicopter and there was, they were going through with sirens, I had made about, I made three phone calls and then we just started packing up, getting our stuff and getting out and I too left in my pajamas and when I came back in I couldn’t get out of my house fast enough. I have a cedar house with three wooden decks that I don’t know about with Ramona but after a fifteen year old house that’s only been oiled once, it’s dry and I thought I’m getting out of there, grabbed the last animal that we couldn’t catch and picked up medication and grabbed a couple other things and left.
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
Abby: No, our house, we did not loose one house on [] and our next door neighbor who he is a firefighter at the time said to my husband said there’s nothing to worry about, he said we’re okay but the way the winds going, plus we so totally cleared behind us even down if I am, I’m going to be real honest, if I would have let the girl who’s husband was CDF clear when my husband and he wanted very much to clear the brush out under the oaks behind us, I’m going no because that far down that’s down in that river bed down there our oaks wouldn’t have even burned because the ones that are west of us did not burn but then a few houses down further that would have been on Pappas, one that we called the tree house that was a cedar house sat virtually in the oaks and that one went to the ground and took a couple others with it when it went but at that time, by the time that I saw it from 9:30 and I monitored it the entire time till when I saw flames, by the time he got dressed and I had made a few phone calls when I had just seen flames at the east end of Ramona Oaks we were surrounded so that’s how fast that fire moved. I just feel there wasn’t anything you could do at that time other than watch, I mean it was just, it was beyond belief as to how fast and when I saw the video tape I just, my whole body was just seeping up because I literally never saw it look like that, we were too busy getting out but it was after the fact and where we evacuated to we were threatened by Paradise Fire down there and so that one we stayed, we were gone a week before we came home. Time wise that’s…
Bob Krysak: Bob and Betty.
Bob: Hi, I’m
Bob, this is my wife Betty. We’re from [MG
Village], we’re on Mussey
Grade Road and we saw the fire coming down the road, well we didn’t see
it,
what happened was the wind woke us up at 3:30 in the morning, we looked
over
the horizon and there was this orange glow covering the entire southern
hemisphere. I didn’t believe it was fire
for a few minutes, I thought it was too big, it was impossible and so
we
watched it for a while, we collected the laundry off the line and
things like
that, we never really believed the fire was actually going to make it
that far
up to us. Around daybreak I went down,
drove down
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
Bob: I actually called 911 eight or ten times, it wasn’t easy but I did get through.
Bob Krysak: What times?
Bob: Everything from between from the time we got up around 3:30 in the morning up until 8:00, eight to ten times and I did get through and transferred to CDF dispatch or where they transferred me to, they just kept telling me to get out, get out, get out, don’t tell me what I already know, I want to know when the fire trucks are getting here. I was frantically yelling at them on the phone and still no fire trucks ever showed up.
Bob Krysak: Did they respond to you as to what fire trucks were on the way during your 911 calls? Or were they just telling you to get out?
Bob: They just kept telling me to get out. The 911 operators only told me to get out and then they transferred me to the CDF and I don’t remember what exactly they told me, I was too frantic. No fire engines ever did show up until 2:00 PM that day when the fire was approximately three miles past me to the north coming toward the highway and then they started hitting it with a lot of water bombers, fire retardant, they did an incredible job at that time.
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible).
Bob: Yeah, they saved those people, that big ranch behind it. At that point they were doing a real good job and uh…
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible).
Bob Krysak: No some people have come here and have been sitting here for three to four hours already and I’d like to give them the option to choose not to speak today or come back on Thursday.
Diane Conklin: (Inaudible)
Laura Madden: I just have a question, we came today to this meeting, my question is what are you guys planning to do, we lost everything.
Bob Krysak: What are we planning to do?
Betty: (Inaudible).
Bob: We missed the first thirty minutes of your meeting.
Betty: Because
(inaudible) but they didn’t,
everything’s gone so what are you planning to help us to recover
everything?
Bob Krysak: Our position is to write a report that is when all the facts are learned from this meetings and provide them to the various agencies that are investigating the fire to determine what if any culpability there is (Inaudible). As far as what kind of, are you talking about financial assistance, none. (Inaudible) to bring lawsuits or they can do whatever they want to do, that’s their option to do that, we’re not doing, (inaudible), we’re just gathering the facts and generate a report by what happened in the fire, what could have or should have been done differently and what people suffered as a result of that.
Betty: (Inaudible).
Bob Krysak: We don’t know what until we write the report.
Bob: Then what will be revealed at the conclusion of this meeting?
Bob Krysak: When, again when we have a report, there will be public notice when the report is ready and you can access a public document for that (inaudible).
Kit Kessinger: The last meeting of this series is this Thursday so after this last meeting we’ll start working on, we’ll get together and talk about.
Bob: Sometime before…
Kit Kessinger: It will take a little while
Bob: Before you complete…
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible)
Unidentified Speaker: I didn’t see anybody bring up the fact about the sheriffs helicopter that was on its way at 4:30 Saturday, the day of the fire beginning and it was turned around.
Bob Krysak: (Inaudible).
Unidentified Speaker: It had a bucket and on its way and they turned it around…(end of tape).