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Steve's
email:
Hello all,
I don't know if this is gonna work or not, but I'm gonna try to
send everyone the same e-mail.
I read over what I just wrote and realized I jumped around a lot.
Different things kept popping into my head, so that's why it kinda
reads all jumbled up....sorry.
Well, hell week is over. Between getting awoken by some hysterical
girl at 4 in the morning screaming/crying about fire and horses(A
two minute, one syllable sentence containing no consonants uttered
by Krista), and working 60 some hours of overtime in 4 days evacuating
people and sucking in a little bit of smoke, we are all almost
back to normal. Me personally, I saw a lot of crap I hope I never
have to see again. Houses literally exploding when the fire line
was still 100 yards away, entire hillsides of forest going up
in flames in a matter of seconds, burnt out motorhomes in which
4 people died trying to escape the flames, dead horses that looked
like they had been boiled then BBQ'ed, and the scariest of all,
Walmart with fire completely surrounding it about 1 mile from
our house.
I have never been so exhausted in my life, both physically and
emotionally. All of us working the strike teams for the fire found
ourselves finding humor where ever we could just to help us get
through. Mark and I wound up on the same platoon the last day.
On of the guys had some cigars that he passed out. At one point,
the fire came rushing down the hill right at us in Guatay (between
Descanso and Pine Valley). After about 10 water dumps from helo's,
and some hard work buy some fire crews, the fire decided to stop
at the street and burn along the road away from us. We all thought
it would be a good picture if we lit the cigars up and stood with
the fire crews in the background. It was safe, so don't get mad,
the ground we were standing on had already burned the day before.
The picture of me and Mark came out great. I smoke maybe one cigar
a year, and each time I do, I cough and hack like Mrs. Hardy used
to. I had already sucked in so much smoke from the fire that I
inhaled the stoggy like I had been smoking fro years.
I took about 200 pictures over the four days. I told myself I
would not take any pictures of houses burning; I didn't think
that was right for some reason. However, I did take some of houses
after they had burned.
On the first day, my partner and I got assigned to a platoon that
ended up in Julian to start giving evac notice to all the residents
in the Pine Hills and Wynola areas. The first place I drove to
was to Joe and Paula's house about 2 tenths of a mile before William
Hiessy State Park. They were surprised to see me to say the least.
The fire actually started about two miles from their house, but
with the santa ana winds blowing, their house was originally pretty
safe. In twelve hours, the fire burned from there all the way
to 805 in Clairmont Mesa, then it turned around. At about 4 the
next morning, they got the "Get the hell out now or burn
with your house" notification from some other scared deputies.
Luckily, they got out. Their house went up about 2 hours later.
They are staying with us now, and seem to be doing OK with everything.
They have already bought a 40' trailer they will put on the property
after they get rid of debris. They went up two days ago and were
able to find some collectable porcelain cups, doll faces, and
melted jewelry. The brand new boat they just bought a month ago
didn't even have a black smudge on it. The fire burned right around
it to get to their house.
I saw weird stuff, like a temporary car port made out of PVC pipe
covered by some kind of canvas standing untouched by flames about
ten feet away from what used to be a house. WHY?... That house
was the one Laurie and her ex-husband, Mike, built. Part of our
job now is to protect the victims of the fire from the scum of
the earth that prey on them. The law calls them looters, we have
other names for them. We make contact with anyone we see picking
thru the rubble to make sure they are the owners of the ash. I
talked to one man who was standing next to his "fire safe"
in the middle of his pile of rubble. The door to the safe had
been blown off and was about 25 feet away from the edge of where
his house used to be. Every other safe I saw still standing still
had its door on, but this one was different. I asked the owner
what he thought had happened. He had already recovered some of
the guns that were scattered about the rubble from the blast.
I asked him he if thought the ammo might have blown the door off.
He said he didn't keep any ammo in the safe, He did however have
a 72 year old bottle of scotch. The closest we could figure is
that the scotch vaporized and blew the door off.
Most of the safes are not able to be opened. The locking mechanisms
all melted. Those that have been opened just have a little pile
of ash in the bottom of them. The safes are still there, but the
contents are all burnt up. Joe and Paula went back up to Julian
today to have a safe guy cut theirs open.
The first day of the fire, I got called in at 0430 hours, it was
Laurie's regular day to work so she went in at 10. The fire had
crossed over 67 and was gutting its way through eastern and southern
Poway. (Randy Jones' house was one of the first to go in Poway).
Laurie was evaking houses near Espola and Garden right in the
middle of the fire storm. She got on the news that night. At one
point, she and her partner were driving their cars down Garden
Ave. in the thick smoke when she heard a load crash on the top
of her car. Matt was behind her about 100 yards. She pulled over
after hearing the pop and discovered the two left sidelights on
her light bar were gone. She had hit a downed power line. Pretty
bad huh! Not as bad as Matt. He tore off the entire light bar
from his roof.
My platoon was working the Descanso area on third day. We saw
funny stuff like Harleys parked way out in the middle of 1-acre
dirt horse corrals. Not so funny the next day when we returned
and the Harleys were still there but the owner's house was not.
We're driving along in the Pine Valley area making P A announcements
to evac when a guy on a Honda crotch rocket comes ripping around
the corned, locks his breaks up, and motions for me to roll my
window down. The knucklehead screams at me saying, Do you know
a safe place I can put my bike? I gotta find a safe place for
it, then I'll run back up the hill and get my wife!!! Remember
my mention of trying to find humor; we all just started laughing
hysterically. Either this man's priorities were all screwed up,
or his wife was just butt ugly.
The first day we were out, we were assigned to keep people out
of the Shadow Hills area About 2 miles from our house. It's a
one-way in/one way out type deal with all the houses being in
the millions of dollar range. It's the area just west of Crest,
and it too, was under marshal law. Four huge houses burned up
there. We contacted a man standing in the middle of his rubble,
it was (a retired major league baseball umpire). He was crying.
I started to get all teary eyed myself, with the other three deps
from my car. We turned around and saw a guy get out of his car
and start to take pictures of Paul amid his ash. I ran over to
the guy and told him he had to leave. The guy told me it was a
public road and that he had every right to be there. I informed
him otherwise, nicely the first time. The guy told me to pound
sand. I got a little pissed off and asked him for his driver's
license. He asked me why I wanted it. The real reason was to write
his info down so if we caught him up there again he would go to
jail. What came out of my mouth was a little different. I told
him I wanted his address so I could have friend go torch his house
and take pictures of him crying in the middle of it. The guy got
into his truck, looked at me, and apologized. Whew!!!! I got away
with that one!!!!
Nothing can describe the vastness of the destruction down here.
Just on my beat alone, about 60 houses went up. The fire ripped
through Moreno Valley and came within 100 yards of burning Krista
and Austin's house. The whole eastern slope of the hill going
up to Crest is gone (about another 100 houses). The valley leading
up to Crest from the west is gone (more houses). Muth Valley,
which was a community of million $ houses about 3 miles up Wildcat
canyon road is like a moonscape. There are only 8 houses still
up there compared to over 100 that used to be. Barona indian res
got hit hard. But the casino is still there, DAMMIT!! Haven't
seen Scripts Ranch or Tierra Santa in person. Alpine lost a lot
of houses. Harbison canyon is all but gone. Both campgrounds in
Cuyamaca are gone except for a couple of buildings here and there.
Cuyamaca Lake has no more trees around it, just black sticks everywhere.
It looks like it does everywhere else. Remember the mountain on
the north side of the lake that had all the cabins on it? It's
barren except for the fire station and two houses.
Word has it that the Indian reservations down here are all getting
together and are going to pay for complete re-construction of
any fire fighter's house that burned. That's very cool. Here's
something I think is even cooler. Austin's football team played
it's last regular season game last Saturday. They killed Steele
Canyon(Rancho San Diego/Jamul) 43-0. Three of the kids on Austin's
team lost their houses to the fire. Every Friday night, the team
watches films of the last game at a church just down the street
from our house. This last Friday, our team got an unexpected visit
from the kids on the Steele Canyon team who they had just humiliated.
They came bearing VCR's, TVs, play stations, stereos, clothes,
food, you name it, they brought it for the three on our team who
had lost everything. There still are some good people out there.
We keep looking the bright side of this fire. San Diego County
is pretty damn ugly right now..........but it will be really pretty
2 years from now. It just won't look the same!!!!
I want to thank all of you for calling and making sure we down
here were all OK. WE ARE! I could write pages of pages on what
it was like down here, but I won't. You'll just have to ask us
the next time we talk.
Love ya all,
Steve
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