I drove down to San Diego County on Sunday night to be with my family, who had to evacuate our house due to the fire. They live in the northeastern area of the city of Poway and around 10 p.m. they were notified of the “voluntary evacuation.”
To hear that my family was going to be evacuated was devastating. Because I travel between Poway and Cal State Long Beach quite often, I have many personal items in my room. I wanted to get down to my house and try to pack up all my important items, such as pictures and scrapbooks, as well as help my family pack the important things that they wanted to take with them.
I arrived at my house at 11:30 p.m. and noticed that the wind and smoke were stronger there than in other areas. Tree branches had fallen on my house and the ash made it impossible to breathe normally. Soon after, we left my house and headed to Sun City (which is between Riverside and Temecula, near Lake Elsinore) to stay at my grandma’s house.
I planned on driving back up to CSULB on Monday, but all the freeways were blocked and it just wasn’t worth it to leave my family.
Because we were in Sun City (aka the middle of nowhere), we only received Los Angeles TV channels, which have touched minimally on the fires in San Diego. Thank God for KUSI because they seem to be one of the only San Diego news channels that we had found that had been streaming live video on a website.
On Monday night, my family was watching KUSI, which said that the fire had reached Mountain Road, the street that I live on. Luckily, my neighbor had snuck into our neighborhood to check out the situation and confirmed that no houses had burnt down on my street but that many were burnt down on the streets next to mine. The fire is still burning and the fire department is still in my neighborhood trying to contain it.
Two-thirds of Poway had to be evacuated. Poway has approximately 60 to 70 destroyed homes and the numbers keeps increasing.
Poway had a large amount of area that was destroyed in the 2003 Cedar Fire, and it is unbelievable and devastating that this city is hit so hard again.
The Poway Fire Department has said that the area that is threatened now is “fresh” because it wasn’t burnt from the 2003 fire, so it is ready and willing to catch fire.
Many of my friends’ houses have been destroyed, along with the houses of my brother’s and sister’s friends. Most people I know have checked into hotels or have driven to the home of family members who live far away from the fires.
The problem is that new fires keep sparking up all over the place, so it is hard to find a place where you think you are safe. It seems as though every five minutes, a new city or area is being told to evacuate.
Fortunately, on Tuesday morning the freeways surrounding Sun City were clear and I was able to return to CSULB to attend classes.
It is amazing how “notified” the world is about this fire. I have had people contacting me from Spain and all around the country to express their worries because of the coverage they have seen.
I am praying for all of the families whose homes are threatened and have been destroyed by this fire.
Lauren Darmody is a junior journalism major and the calendar editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
