opening. it finally does open and then we start moving out, hopefully with everybody following us out, which was our plan with everybody following us out single file. ashley gets into the driveway is hered for us to leave. as i was coming down the zrif way, the fire was doing two things, it was laying flat across the dive way so you could barely see the asphalt. so it looked like you were driving through literally a tunnel of fire. right outside our gate was a barn, it was completely engulfed in flame and the flame now with the fire blow iing that flame w
was going on. just for information, this is a confirmed fire, approximately 20 acres mid slope. and i was listening to them watching it get darker and darker, realizing the planes were not going to come. do we have any way to get any aircraft down here? is there any available? division three, that s negative for aircraft. it s after cutoff. they had a very difficult time finding an access point to get to the fire. the fire still looks to be approximately 20, 25 acres. it s very difficult to access. we re still trying to look at some options to get in on this things but it s going to be a while. i m not sure if we ll be able to get folks in tonight or not. the road structures were narrow, little nasty. a fire engine could barely get down them and a fire bus and
stuff, get your books, get out to the trucks, we have to go. i said take your pillow out of your pillow case and fill it up a with whatever it is you want to take with you in case the worst happens. i had a back pack and i had all our home memories in one spot for a moment like this. i remember when we were going out to the car our neighbor being hysterical. she was screaming and crying and that scared me more because she was another adult who was also hysterical and panicking. so that meant this really is serious and i need to be scared, too. my dad was honking the horn and i could see the fire. this thing s already all the way around us. it s heading for barona mesa. i told our command we can t
when he said i need to video our contents for the insurance company, i need to grab the camera and quickly take video, that s when i knew how worried he really was. i m going to get the fire pump out and leave it. at one point i decided to call my friend bob. i said, bob, there s a fire, you need to be aware of it but it s coming at us. can you come over and help us prepare? my mom s was a safe place to go. the fire was to our east. so there s no way the fire s going to get to my mom s, who is to the west. yeah, that s the way the fire is going but it s ten miles away. the thing we start noticing is the ash. it almost looks like snow. when the ash starts falling on you, then up knyou know the fir coming towards you. and then it s just like oh [ bleep ], that s the fire. i mean, that is like step up your game. you got to get going. with no fire fighting help
i had no idea. it absolutely took it it overwhelmed me in every way and the system. i knew there s no way we re going to get to everybody. one of the hardest things is i knew people were going to die that night. we had hoses going on the roof, we were wetting things down. it s kind of like pissing in the wind. you got this little hose and you got this fire that you can t even see the top of. the roar from the fire is just deafening. you re yelling let s springle that down, sprinkle this tree down and get water over here. and then suddenly there s this weird i want to say there was a sound but there s no sound. all the lights from all the neighbors, everything just went dark. everything shut off. and so with us on wells, we had no water pressure.