Fire Storm 2007

On Sunday October 21st at around 1:30 pm, We were in Sacrament meeting (at Church) when we began to notice the smell of wild fire. Everyone in the congregation could smell the fire, but the meeting was not interrupted. After Sacrament meeting was over, Bishop Sulzen announced that we would be canceling the remainder of Church so that people could go check on their homes.

The fire was burning in the Witch Creek Area just east of Ramona.

The Santa Anna winds made for very bad fire conditions. It was about 90 degrees outside and the winds were very strong.

On Sunday Afternoon, I went with my father-in-law to help secure a damaged awning on an RV at the home of Carol Gay (a friend of my mother-in-law). On Sunday Evening, The fire was getting much bigger and my In-laws were preparing to evacuate, so I drove over to their house to help them and to bring one of their trailers to our house. When I arrived back home around 9:30 at night, Kaarin told me that all of Ramona is under mandatory evacuation. We loaded up our Tahoe with our photo albums, important files, our 72 hour kits, some extra water, clothes, a couple of computers and our dog. Then we transfered our sleeping kids to their seats in the car (they didnt stay asleep) and we left our house at about 10:30 pm. When we were leaving ramona, Main St. was filled with cars all lanes were heading west (even the oncoming traffic lanes were reversed and heading out of town). We called up the Holiday Inn in Rancho Bernardo and made reservations for that night. We arrived at the hotel around 1:30 am, it had taken us 3 hours to drive those 20 miles to the hotel. My In-laws had left their home about the same time (10:30 pm). It took them about 4 hours just to travel the 2 miles from their house to our house, They ended up arriving in Encinitas at 4:30 in the morning.

Monday Morning I woke up around 5:30 am (after 3 1/2 hours of sleep) because I heard many sirens around our hotel. I went to the breakfast area of the hotel to watch the news (I didn't want to wake my family). the news was reporting that the fire had reached Rancho Bernardo, about 1 mile away from our hotel. The area we were in was under mandatory Evacuation. We left the hotel around 6:30 am and drove to my grand father-in-law's home in Encinitas. We arrived at his home around 10:00 am. We spent a little over an hour at his house, but the smoke from the fire was just too bad, we decided to drive north on the Interstate 5 until we found clear skys. We ended up taking the Ortega highway west and checking into a hotel in Lake Elsinore. We spent that afternoon at a park where the kids and the dog could stretch their legs. That night we got a good nights rest.

Tuesday Morning we checked out of our hotel in Lake Elsinore and drove to Temecula, Warner Springs and then Santa Ysabel. We were going to try and get into Ramona from the east side. The road was still blocked and they would not let us in. We drove back to Temecula and tried to check into a hotel, but they were all full, so we drove back to Lake Elsinore only to find that all of those hotels were full. We heard on the radio that some areas of Rancho Bernardo were being let back in, so we called up the Holiday Inn in RB (where we stayed the first night). They had just re-opened the hotel and were not taking reservations. It was first come, first serve. They told us they still had over 100 vacancy's. We drove straight to the hotel (about 2 hours away) and checked in.

Wednesday Morning we checked our of our hotel in Rancho Bernardo and drove up to the Road Block on highway 67 entering Ramona. There were a lot of cars lined up waiting to get into Ramona, The Highway Patrol said that the Road Block would be opened sometime that day. After waiting in line for almost 2 hours, we gave up. It was lunch time and our kids needed to use the bathroom. We spent the afternoon in Poway then later in the day we went back to our hotel and made reservations for 2 more nights (the hotel was full, but they had a few late openings).

Thursday Morning we left our hotel (but didn't check out). We went back to the Road Block on Highway 67 and told the officer that we needed to get into Ramona to feed "our" goats and llamas (referring to my in-laws animals). They still would not let us in. We spent the remainder of the day in Poway and RB, then we went back to the hotel that evening. At 7:30 that night we learned that Ramona had been re-opened but there was no water. We decided to just stay the night at the hotel, and go home in the morning.

Friday Morning we went to the Grocery store in RB and stocked up on water, then we headed home. When we arrived home we discovered that about 1/3 of our large tree in the backyard had broken off in the high winds. Fortunately it did not fall on our house, but our backyard was full of tree branches. We had to use water from our food storage for washing our hands and dishes and for flushing the toilets.

Saturday afternoon, our water came back on at the house. The water district had put out a notice that the water was not safe for human contact, only to be used for flushing toilets. (no showers, no washing hands, etc...)

Sunday Morning we used a solar camping shower with water from our food storage for showering before church. After Church we read a new announcement from the water district that said that the water was now safe for washing but not for drinking (not even boiling before drinking).

Now, everything is back to normal (except we still can't drink the water). I'm back at work and the kids are back in school. As Inconvenient as it was to be evacuated from our home for 5 days, we are very thankful that everyone is safe and our house didn't burn down. 19 families in our Stake lost their homes. 2 families in our ward lost their homes.

The Church has sent 3 or 4 semi-trucks to our stake full of water, cleaning kits, chain saws, generators, masks and some other supplies to help in the clean-up. Last weekend there were about 600 volunteers from our stake and 5 neighboring stakes who helped clean up in the Poway and Rancho Bernardo area. This coming weekend they expect to have about 400-600 more volunteers to help with clean-up projects in Ramona.

Below are some pictures of the aftermath of the fire: