I sent the following out to some friends in response to concerns about the San Diego area fires and was asked by a couple to put it on the strike point. Three strikers and their families (and there may be more) who were affected by the fires are Frenchy & Paula Choquette, SS 431, Ron & Vickie Hartinger, SS-212, and Bill & Ann Brooks, SS-208. All of us were evacuated on Sunday evening/Monday morning, The Choquettes and the Brooks had homes to come back to, the Hartingers did not. Many people have asked what they can do for the Hartingers, Ron tells me the insurance company is really taking good care of them and at this point they are fine. The email I sent follows:

I’m a little slow in getting this out but here is how last week started out. I begin with … “We dodged another bullet”; the San Diego fires missed our home. (For those of you who don’t know Poway, where we live, is located about 20 minutes north of downtown San Diego. Poway is on the south side of Rancho Bernardo and about 3-4 miles south south east of Escondido. Ramona is about 6 miles northeast of Poway. ) The Witch Creek Fire which started Sun 21 October followed a lot of the same path as the Cedar Fire four years ago. This fire had flames about 4 blocks from our home but the nearest home to burn is about 1-1.5 miles away. In the Cedar fire the flames came to within one block and the nearest home to burn was just under a mile away. Now you understand what I mean when I say we dodged ANOTHER bullet. Sad to say that was not the same for all of our friends, Ron and Vickie Hartinger lost their home sometime late Tuesday/early Wednesday. They were evacuated early Monday morning so they are OK but lost everything they had except for the cars.
As I said the fire started Sunday afternoon just north of Ramona, Ca and at about 9 PM or so all Ramona plus San Diego Country Estates was given the order to evacuate (Frenchy and Paula headed to Vista , Ca. He'll have to tell us more of their experience). We called Ron and Vickie to check on their son Doug who lives in a development located between Ramona and Escondido. Ron said they had just been told to evacuate and that Doug and family plus some neighbors were on their way to stay at Ron and Vickie’s house. Ann and I watched the fires on TV and paid close attention to what was going on, we went to bed about midnight but kept the TV on plus one of us stayed awake. Somewhere around 1:30/2:00 AM Ann told me they just evacuated Sonata (a development in the southeast corner of Escondido). Our friends, the Northern’s, live there so I called them to see if they knew what was going on, they did and had already left the house. We invited them to our house but they were going to stay at the shopping center to see just what was going to happen. While I was talking to the Northerns the TV announced that the northeast corner of Rancho Bernardo (located about a ½ mile south of Sonata) was being evacuated. The Barnes live there so we called them, they were up and heading out the door. We said come on over its fine here, Tom said its 3:00 AM, and I said so what. The Brackx live just a short distance northwest of Sonata so I called Kathy and Julie (Jack was in Florida) to let them know what was going on. They started to get ready to evacuate. By this time the Fire had crossed I-15 just south of the Hartingers so I called them, they were just leaving as they had just been evacuated. Ron’s, Doug’s and Doug’s friend all headed to Oceanside, I-15 was now closed due to the fire. Tom and Sandy arrived about 4:00 or so, we exchanged what we each knew and went back to watching the TV. The fire was moving due west passing about 3-4 miles north of us. As the sun came up we said we’re doing good, looks like the fire missed us, all of our friends are safe….. let’s go get some donuts. Around 8:00AM or so The De Priests, who live about a mile or so north of us stopped by and left two cats with us and were going home to look for a third cat. While they were home they got the word to evacuate, they found the third cat and headed back to our house. As they were driving up our driveway we got the call…..EVACUATE. As you can see these things really move fast when you have winds gusting to 50-70 MPH.
We had been expecting the call and were close to being ready to go. So, the six adults, four cats and a dog (our son Mike was ready to go but stayed back to keep an eye on things) headed to Coronado where our daughter Michelle has a small studio apartment. Needless to say we more than filled it. The fire raged back and forth depending on the wind all day Monday and Tuesday continuing to grow and threaten more homes.

We knew things were really bad in Rancho Bernardo, South Escondido and north Poway but did not know till Wednesday how it affected any of us. In Sonata The Northerns had 10 homes burn, the Barnes had 25 homes on their street burn, the De Priests had one home on their street burn and the Hartingers and the eight neighbors next to them all lost their homes. We are told that 1500 plus homes burned, over 500,000 acres burned and that 500,000 people were evacuated and we still have fires burning as I write this. Mike stayed home the whole time (but had his truck ready to leave in an instance if needed), I was out one night and Ann returned on Wednesday (Michelle needed someone to help watch all the cats).

We are really lucky and fortunate to have what we do have. Ann and I and all of our friends will do everything we can to help out the Hartingers. Ron tells us everything is insured but we all know that it will be a very long and at times frustrating time for Ron, Vickie and Mark. Our prayers and thoughts are with them.

Take Care,
Bill & Ann
Monday, October 29, 2007