Our house is on the ridge on the right, just out of the picture.

The ‘Boy Scout Fire’. I thought I’d seen and had my share of fires. This one was big; we could see the smoke from it, from the 14 freeway in Agua Dulce, a good 45 or so miles away.

We had gone to the San Fernando Valley for Grandma Daisy’s birthday. Brian and I had gone down to Salton Sea the day before and picked up Uncle Hank for the event. He stayed with us the night before so we could all go to the valley together. We had a great time visiting with him, he told some really great stories. As soon as we arrived at Grandma Pat’s for the party, she told us that my mom, Granma Doris, had called several times while we were on the drive there. She told Pat that she could see smoke behind the mountains behind our place. At that time, she was living down the street from us about a mile away, on Hollister. When Randy called her back, she said that there was so much smoke that the sun was gone and there was a weird orange color over everything, and that she could see fire behind the ‘white house’, the house across the street from us. We headed right back. We’d only gone about 25 miles of the 70 miles back home when we saw the smoke, the next 45 miles just kept getting more and more terrifying. Each mile closer brought us to the reality that our place was in serious danger of being right in the middle of the fire. We hadn’t finished building the house and we were still living in the trailer then. The house was in the shear wall (plywood) phase. We were all thinking we were probably going to lose everything “again” to fire.

We drove to my mom’s, there were fire and CDF trucks all up and down Green Road. Randy made me stay with my mom and he and Brian went on up to our “house”. Getting through was no easy task; the firemen didn’t want to let them through. Randy told them we had pets and needed to get them out, the firemen finally relented, but said they would and/or could not be responsible for their safety. Randy and Brian told us days later that the wall of flames was two stories high at our property line. At that time we had Sadie our city dog, Old Dan our son’s dog, a few kittens, and Bird, our cockatiel. They got all of the pets, except Sadie, she was gone and nowhere to be found. The Chevy Dually was parked on the water line road (the same road we use to drive up to our house). As Randy got Bird, he looked around the small trailer with our few things, left from our first fire, and just kissed it all goodbye, there was no time to get anything, the fire was at the property line, barely 50 feet away. Brian, he was 15 at the time, drove the Dually and Randy was still driving the van. As they drove away, they realized that everything we had been doing for the last 3 years, all the work, all the building we had done, what little we had gathered since the first fire, was going to be gone, and because we didn’t have a construction loan, just doing it out of pocket, we didn’t have fire insurance, so all would be totally lost.

When they came back to moms with the animals, we got ready to wait for the firemen to put out the fire. An hour or so later, they were driving up and down mom’s street, using loud speakers to say they were ordering voluntary evacuations, and an hour after that it was mandatory. As soon as the first order came, we started gathering all mom’s irreplaceable things; pictures, guns, important papers, small memorabilia, and when the mandatory evacuation was ordered, we were driving away. Randy driving the van with Old Dan and the kittens, me in the dually with Bird, Brian driving Granma Doris’ car with her, her two dogs Bud and Spike and her parakeet, Willie. Of course all the vehicles were stuffed to the gills with all mom’s stuff.

The first hotel we went to wouldn’t let us stay because of all the animals. The next one did and we found out later why, the fleas were horrible. They were not very ‘picky’ at that hotel, they let anybody stay there, and let them do just about anything they want. We had two rooms to separate the animals, one for Randy and Brian with Old Dan and the kittens, Mom and I in another with her dogs and the birds. There was a party above us and I think there were several guests that only stayed for an hour or so. None of us got much sleep. We couldn’t get any news about the fire, on television or radio; we could only see the smoke, which to us looked like all the mountains were on fire.

Very early the next morning, Randy and Brian ditched me and mom, they just got up and drove to our place to see what the damage was. They knocked on our door about 7:00 am. When mom opened the door, in ran Sadie! Brian came in hugging grandma and me; mom’s dogs were jumping around with Sadie. Then Randy, standing in the door said, “it’s a miracle, all of it is still there”. We were crying and hugging and laughing, what a great feeling that was! When we all drove back, coming up Green Road, looking at all the blackened faces of the CDF and firemen, I just wanted to hug them all. Then as we surveyed our property, we came to see that all of our 2+ acres was completely ringed by where the fire had been. All around us as far as we could see, was black and smoldering, the beautiful Pinon Pine forest was gone, 2,500 acres. God had put His hand over our whole property and saved it all. All of our closest neighbor’s homes were saved, there were 10-12 homes lost further up Green Road from us, but God had saved not just our trailer and the house we were building, but all the Pinon pines on our whole property!