An email Candice sent on Wednesday Oct 24, 2007
Hello -
We are home and safe now. It's been a very long 3 days, with 6 dogs and a bird! (We aren’t supposed to be here, but yesterday we trekked through San Dieguito park with the dogs and just walked home.) So I actually have some frozen dinner studio food that will feed us if we can’t get back out!
They finally came by with the bullhorn about 4 on Monday. Larry was at the other house on el vuelo (towards Lake Hodges) because he was very concerned they would not protect it. It is the last street in RSF before going out del dios to lake hodges. There is a riverbed right below the street and sure enough that is where the fire blew through on Monday night.
In short, the fire was burning on both sides of our street, about 1000 feet away from the house, while Larry built a fire break across the street and then with the help of another man chopped down a large palm tree that was burning and sending embers in the air and causing trees to catch fire at the house two doors down from us...keep in mind that at this time, fire trucks were driving by but not stopping because there were several structure fires down the street and on the next couple of streets over. We are very grateful and lucky as about 15 homes burned within a very close proximity, 5 on our street. Some of the homes that are on the list of destroyed are just in the center of no destruction but we know the homes and they are older and have shake roofs.
Some pictures she took on Thursday Oct 25, 2007:
Our visit to the El Vuelo house on 10-25-2007. First, the pool.
Then we walked down to where the fire burned through. A shot of the palm tree that Larry chopped down. Shots of the area where Larry built the fire break.
This is from the horse trail that leads down to the river bed. That is one of the paths the fire took to get to our street...
There was just one problem. The wood chips were smoldering and crackling and they were HOT. We walked down with some kids who lived along the trail and their mom called the fire dept but when the firemen came they were called off to go fight a flareup in the Rice Canyon fire, so with the homeowner nearby we connected enough hoses together to reach the area with water. Soon some more firemen arrived to take care of it. They were from Chico, CA and I took their picture.
