What I Did On My Summer Evacuation Well, summer had passed a month before the evacuation, and we were still barely hanging onto Daylight Savings Time on that first day of the fire, and it was still hotter than heck, so I think I can make this title work for this column. And since it’s back-to-school time (again!), I can write that age-old school essay assignment that we all remember so well. I’ve heard scores of these stories during the past week from my friends, neighbors, teachers, school principals and strangers, and they’re all interesting, so I’m going to write mine. If I get my days mixed up, just shoot me, or give me an “F.” What I Did on My Summer Evacuation First, like many of you, on Oct. 25 at a little after 9 a.m. I heard what sounded like a thousand sirens coming from everywhere. I started heading toward the Rim. I grabbed my camera, my pad, and was jumping into my Isuzu Trooper when my wife ran out with the phone. It was our editor, Davey Porter, calling me from New Mexico, of all places, to tell me there was a big fire in Waterman Canyon. I said, “I know...I mean, I didn’t know, but I heard the sirens and I’m going to check it out.” That call was too Twilight Zone-ish for me. Man, can’t you just enjoy some time off? And how did you know this, anyway? I thought. But I didn’t ask him at the time. Did I mention Davey was in New Mexico at the time? I went over the Rim and you could see it right away. My heart sank and raced at the same time. Just a few minutes after this blaze had started it was huge. The I-won’t-even-say-its who started the fire were probably not even to Highway 30 yet. As Chief Bagnell told me a week later, it was obvious that this was not a normal start in the canyon. I took a few shots, then shot back at full speed to the three most important things in my life, because the time we had talked about for so long had come. When I got home, they had the car almost packed already. They hadn’t seen it, but they sensed from Davey’s call, the sirens, the high winds, the whole Edison thing, and our preparations over the last months, that now was the time. So we headed down the hill with my wife’s Subaru, my Isuzu Trooper, two kids, two rabbits, a dog and a few belongings. In Redlands we dropped off the rabbits at the house of a friend of my daughter’s who had lived up here until last year. In Redlands, I kissed my wife goodbye. That was the last time in those nine days that we would spend a moment alone. She and the kids went on to my in-laws’ house in San Clemente in Orange County and I went back up the hill with my trusty and aptly named border collie, “Sparky.” He was my trouper in the Trooper for a bunch of this. Along the way back I made failed attempts to get up on the 38, the 330 and the 18, took photos and covered the frantic evacuation of thousands of people and cars from the area around the San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino down the hill (which is an untold story that could have been a huge tragedy in this fire), and finally got back home five hours later up the 138, 15 minutes after the power went off in Crestline. About an hour later my 11-year-old daughter told me on the phone that a new fire had started in Crestline near Playground, where my son’s best buddy and our good friends and his parents live. I went to the glider port on Playground, and watched and photographed 60-foot flames tearing up the hill from this new fire. I knew then it was only a short matter of time before the mandatory evacuation would be called, but in my neighborhood the evacuation was called because the Old Fire was threatening. I’ll do this from the standpoint of my new across-the-street neighbor. A few days before, escrow had closed on the house he had just bought there. He was just settling in when sheriff’s deputies cruised by at about 10 p.m., and on loudspeakers announced that we were in imminent danger and that we had from one to three hours to evacuate to safety. Can you imagine what it would be like to be moving furniture into your new house on the same day you had to evacuate it? And the police were right—we were in imminent danger. Five hours later, a firestorm engulfed Skyland, and was stopped only a brisk five-minute walk through the forest from our homes. We didn’t know that then, but we complied with the order because these guys sounded serious. It took me a while, though, and during that time they came back and told me again to get out. I first went to the evacuation center at San Bernardino International Airport, checked the situation and facilities out, and because I couldn’t sleep, I decided to go back around to Sultana High School in Hesperia to the other evacuation center. On the way, it was approaching 2 a.m., and suddenly I had the happiest thought I can remember having that day. I reset my clock in the Trooper back to 1 a.m. and got a big thrill, because I had gotten that hour back and would get another hour of sleep once I got up the freeway and highway to Hesperia. Talk about looking on the bright side... During all of this, driving would be my life. My house is in Crestline, my family was in San Clemente on the coast in Orange County, I begged an old friend and client to give me office space with power in his building in Escondido in northern San Diego County, and the newspaper had moved its offices to its sister paper, the Hi Desert Star in Yucca Valley near Joshua Tree. So that was my route, back and forth and around and around. In the nine days of the evacuation and the 12 days that our newspaper was uprooted, I came only about 220 miles short of driving the equivalent of the entire distance (2,779 miles) between Los Angeles and New York. After giving all of that credit to my dog, I have to say that my wife, Shelby, was the biggest trouper in all of this in our family. In addition to being displaced and tending to the emotional and basic needs of our two children, she is a Forest Service employee, and her station in Sky Forest was out of commission during the time because of the evacuation and power outage. So she was working with her Forest Service laptop computer and phone out of her mom’s house in San Clemente—one of many stories out of that crew. People from her Forest Service Enterprise Unit helped create the Big Bear Discovery Center and Children’s Forest near Running Springs, both of which were threatened to different degrees by the fire, but both were spared. During the fire, her unit was continuing to work on promoting and implementing new interpretive centers in national forests in the western part of our country, even while her local supervisor’s house and station were threatened by fire and he was locked out of it. She did her regular job while she made sure she did a sterling job of fulfilling her more important calling of just being “Mom.” I’m sure lots of guys can tell that story. I saw many of them at the evacuation centers who went to their jobs in the day and came back to wives who may have had jobs, but who had reverted to their most important position in this crisis. To be fair, I have to say that in some cases those roles were gender-reversed. When I arrived back in Crestline on Sunday morning the situation was scary. Skyland had just burned and from my vantage on Old Mill Road it appeared that the fire was still threatening to crest all along the south ridge of Lake Gregory and down into my neighborhood. I sat there for two hours with a couple from my neighborhood and waited until it looked safer. I went home, grabbed the rest of my computer equipment and some more belongings, all the while running out to the driveway repeatedly to ensure the fire wasn’t cresting the hill. I also needed a shower, so I got everything ready, still running out to check. When the water was hot, I ran out for one last check before I jumped in. Yes, I was buck naked, so arrest me. First and last time that will ever happen in my driveway, I promise. At least I hope so, anyway. To make this long story shorter, I left and went to San Clemente to spend the night, and had to go all the way through the Angeles Forest to Glendale on the Angeles Crest Highway, and then go down to the coast, because the old fire (not to be confused with the Old Fire) in Rancho Cucamonga had closed the 15 and 215. On Monday, Tuesday and part of Wednesday, I alternated between writing, driving, taking photos, driving, writing, thinking that my house had burned down and verifying that it hadn’t. Not much sleeping on these days. I took a break on Wednesday night, went back to San Clemente, and did a job I usually do—making dinner for everyone. I watched the firestorm on television like a lot of people did on that night. Early Thursday I hit the road again for home. Probably anyone who went through this can relate to how fatigue sets in after a while. By the Thursday after the fire, the danger was passed and I was exhausted. Watching me, you would have thought you were watching an episode of “I Love Lucy.” Since I had an oil lamp going, I took out my big fire extinguisher and set it in the middle of the floor of the dining room. Then I went downstairs for something. On the fourth stair from the bottom I tripped, fell the rest of the way and slammed my forehead against the wall at the bottom. Dazed, I just went back upstairs. Because I didn’t want to trip again, I went to move the fire extinguisher. What I didn’t know is that the pin had fallen out of the trigger. So, of course, just as Lucy Ricardo might have done, I grasped firmly on the handle and trigger, lifted it quickly, and was so startled that I just kept squeezing for a second, discharging that whole soda acid mess all over my nice wooden dining room floor. After cleaning up I decided to limit any further damage to me and the house, so I blew out the lamp, lay down on the couch and went to sleep until daylight. On Friday I drove back to Escondido. I saw my family briefly in Escondido, where they had stayed a night in a hotel to give Grandma a break. Then I worked for a little while, packed up my computer, then drove a little farther south to the headquarters of Brehm Communications in Rancho Bernardo to pick up a check. Brehm is the parent company of our two newspapers up here, and the management was great to us during this period, even this non-employee, helping us out with expenses and moral support. They even did a story on our reporting efforts, and ran it in their newspapers around the country. I left there and headed back home. Most of the rest was relatively boring. Lots more driving, writing and taking photos. The fire was out and the crews were mopping up. Everyone was waiting for the big event, which finally came on Sunday when everyone started coming back. That’s my story. One of these days I’ll tell some of the others I’ve heard, some of which are actually funny to tell the truth. I’m sure you have your own, and I’ll probably hear bits of it. Stay safe. |
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