LWFrisk
Silver Member
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2002
- Messages
- 132
- Location
- 35 Miles north of San Diego CA
- Tractor
- John Deeres, 212, 420, 425
Hi TBN friends
I am sure many of you followed the news report on Southern California’s Firestorm 2003. It hit us hard last Saturday night. What a nightmare. My wife summed it up well in the paragraphs below that she prepared for family and friends and family that we were out of contact during most of the week of fires. We still do not have telephone service and many of the Cell Phone antennas were destroyed so Cell service is very speratic. We still have our home pretty much in tact. Of course, there is soot and smoke smell in everything. Waiting now for our insurance people to come look. In the meantime, I am doing what I can to start the cleanup on the driveway, pool and patio areas. I will attempt to post a photo of one of my John Deere tractors that was totally destroyed. There is a link to our Yahoo photo album where I have posted a few photos for the insurance company, family and friends at the bottom of my wife”s summary. As the rubble is removed, I will post a few more photos if you are interested.
Leo
Family and Friends <font color="blue"> </font>
Family and Friends
Our house is the 5th house on the last block of the San Diego Country Estates, actually within Cleveland National Forest. The Estates comes to a point there, within a triangle of mountain ranges on either side of us. The hunter who set the fire was airlifted out literally from behind our fence at 5:30pm. The fire was visible, extremely small and slow moving until 10:00pm when our flag started to wave--signaling that the Santa Ana winds had started. Within 15 minutes of the winds, the fire whipped down Eagle Peak and hit the end of our cul-de-sac/end of block. It split then, and raced up the sides of the mountains that border us. We evacuated to our Country Club Golf Course parking lot about 2 miles away at the corner of San Vicente Road and Ramona Oaks Road, and the fire paced our car along the mountains as we left. In less than 20 minutes, the fire made it down to there and we moved to Ramona High School's parking lot.
There were no cots available, so many of us slept in our cars with our assorted pets. We had 3 dogs, 3 cats, 2 rabbits, 2 chinchillas, 2 parakeets and a mynah bird in our car with us, along with my son Chris. It was an unhappy couple of nights for all of us sleeping in the car, and the fire came within a quarter mile of the school itself, forcing it to be evacuated as well. Many of the Country Estates residents slept in the Albertsons or KMart parking lots. There was no way to get in or out of Ramona for several days as all the main roads were under fire as well. Several days later, Highway 78 opened for a short time, but then reclosed as the fire hit the Wild Animal Park.
The fire burned four houses each on the left and right of us. It burned our backyard but because of 2 Carlsbad firefighters we still have a house. The sheds, catpen, rabbit hutch, a couple of tractors, motorcycles, rototillers, chipper shredders, etc., are ash now. It burned the right side of the jeep and the right side of the motor home. The pool pump is melted, and the pool is jet black, which is a good thing because many of the small animals tried to run away from the fire and ran into the pool instead. The whole bottom of the pool is filled with rabbits, packrats, birds, mice, etc. Sad and horrible, but at least the poor things didn't burn like their friends who hid under our sheds, etc.
We have no phone service. We have been told it may take a month to restore. Cell phones haven't been working except in a few sections of downtown Ramona, so we have no way to contact any of you by phone to assure you we are ok. We just got internet restored today and we think it's stable, so that's probably the best way to contact us for a while.
We've put some pictures up. The first three are the most historical. They are of the fire on the top of Eagle Peak just as the Santa Ana winds started and you can see it racing down the side to the Country Estates. You can see the end of our block with all the neighbors gathered right before the fire became THE FIRESTORM. The rest are pictures of our backyard, the neighbors houses that were lost, pictures of the sky where at 3:00pm it was as dark as night. They are very jumbled, but we'll try to fix them up a bit later this week to make them more understandable. Click on the link to take you to them: PHOTOS
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I am sure many of you followed the news report on Southern California’s Firestorm 2003. It hit us hard last Saturday night. What a nightmare. My wife summed it up well in the paragraphs below that she prepared for family and friends and family that we were out of contact during most of the week of fires. We still do not have telephone service and many of the Cell Phone antennas were destroyed so Cell service is very speratic. We still have our home pretty much in tact. Of course, there is soot and smoke smell in everything. Waiting now for our insurance people to come look. In the meantime, I am doing what I can to start the cleanup on the driveway, pool and patio areas. I will attempt to post a photo of one of my John Deere tractors that was totally destroyed. There is a link to our Yahoo photo album where I have posted a few photos for the insurance company, family and friends at the bottom of my wife”s summary. As the rubble is removed, I will post a few more photos if you are interested.
Leo
Family and Friends <font color="blue"> </font>
Family and Friends
Our house is the 5th house on the last block of the San Diego Country Estates, actually within Cleveland National Forest. The Estates comes to a point there, within a triangle of mountain ranges on either side of us. The hunter who set the fire was airlifted out literally from behind our fence at 5:30pm. The fire was visible, extremely small and slow moving until 10:00pm when our flag started to wave--signaling that the Santa Ana winds had started. Within 15 minutes of the winds, the fire whipped down Eagle Peak and hit the end of our cul-de-sac/end of block. It split then, and raced up the sides of the mountains that border us. We evacuated to our Country Club Golf Course parking lot about 2 miles away at the corner of San Vicente Road and Ramona Oaks Road, and the fire paced our car along the mountains as we left. In less than 20 minutes, the fire made it down to there and we moved to Ramona High School's parking lot.
There were no cots available, so many of us slept in our cars with our assorted pets. We had 3 dogs, 3 cats, 2 rabbits, 2 chinchillas, 2 parakeets and a mynah bird in our car with us, along with my son Chris. It was an unhappy couple of nights for all of us sleeping in the car, and the fire came within a quarter mile of the school itself, forcing it to be evacuated as well. Many of the Country Estates residents slept in the Albertsons or KMart parking lots. There was no way to get in or out of Ramona for several days as all the main roads were under fire as well. Several days later, Highway 78 opened for a short time, but then reclosed as the fire hit the Wild Animal Park.
The fire burned four houses each on the left and right of us. It burned our backyard but because of 2 Carlsbad firefighters we still have a house. The sheds, catpen, rabbit hutch, a couple of tractors, motorcycles, rototillers, chipper shredders, etc., are ash now. It burned the right side of the jeep and the right side of the motor home. The pool pump is melted, and the pool is jet black, which is a good thing because many of the small animals tried to run away from the fire and ran into the pool instead. The whole bottom of the pool is filled with rabbits, packrats, birds, mice, etc. Sad and horrible, but at least the poor things didn't burn like their friends who hid under our sheds, etc.
We have no phone service. We have been told it may take a month to restore. Cell phones haven't been working except in a few sections of downtown Ramona, so we have no way to contact any of you by phone to assure you we are ok. We just got internet restored today and we think it's stable, so that's probably the best way to contact us for a while.
We've put some pictures up. The first three are the most historical. They are of the fire on the top of Eagle Peak just as the Santa Ana winds started and you can see it racing down the side to the Country Estates. You can see the end of our block with all the neighbors gathered right before the fire became THE FIRESTORM. The rest are pictures of our backyard, the neighbors houses that were lost, pictures of the sky where at 3:00pm it was as dark as night. They are very jumbled, but we'll try to fix them up a bit later this week to make them more understandable. Click on the link to take you to them: PHOTOS
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