It was another warm and sunny Sunday in San Diego when the news about a wild fire near Malibu started flashing on the TV screens, we had visited Santa Barbara on the famed Pacific Coastal Highway that weekend and on our way back had seen Pepperdine university campus intact along I-5 freeway exit, but now this wild fire was threatening to bring down the campus into ashes. Not that it was a disturbing news for us here, we thought that the country which clams to have the sophistication to take them anywhere should be able to contain this fire and it was just a matter of time, well all of us were proved wrong as the Santa Ana winds that weekend were turning out to be at their worst and firefighters had to give up any hopes of containing the fires easily this time.
Far from all this we were getting ready for another Monday at office but later in the evening we started seeing a lot of smoke and ash falling all over the place forced by the strong winds which were flowing all across. Malibu is 80miles from our place and this cannot be Malibu fire smoke later in the day we came to know that the fire has stared moving West, matter of time when we would also be close to grasp of this fire. We followed the news till 12:30 pm and went to bed not thinking much of the approaching fire.
It was 5am in the morning when we started getting calls from friends that they were asked to evacuate and they asked us also to pack up all our valuables and be ready to evacuate, living out of a suitcase it was not a difficult task we packed up all we could and loaded it into the cars, 4 cars starting from our home; 1 BMW, 1 Audi and 2 Civics. Till around 9 we were watching TV waiting for that final call for us to evacuate and everyone around us were evacuating and we were told that the traffic is going to get bad so it is better to start now than be late.
So finally we grabbed some breakfast and hit the road when Jay told me that KJ has asked him to let him know when we evacuate. KJ asked us to go to his home so that we could start together, we drove to his place and happily settled down for another round of breakfast with all my friends feasting on eggs as though there would not be another day to come back and finish them. Finally after another few calls from friends to move out we hit the road. Jay was driving with me and other in their cars to our destination Mira Mesa evacuation center. Meanwhile my fellow mates Ankit, Arijit, Nishant and Pankaj had already started moving towards the Del Mar evacuation center.
Traffic was getting worse and we had moved couple of meters when the guy in the next car pulled down his windows and asked me if my friend knew how to drive, instantly my response was yes, and he asked me if Jay can drive his car as he has another car which needs to be taken care of. We couldn’t say no to this guy; Jay got his number and got into his car and we started driving. I called up jay and asked him if he was okay and he said what if this guy does not return, reality struck us that we might end up in a soup if this guy was a fraud, we started making backup plan to dump the car if this guy does not call or let us know where he is, luckily he called jay and somehow managed to drive the other car close to us, we parked his car near Mira Mesa and headed to Del Mar evacuation camps as the Mira mesa evacuation camp was full and couldn’t accommodate more people.
As we drove close to the Del mar evacuation camp seemed like we were entering cloud of smoke rather than moving away to safety, fire had moved close to Del mar evacuation camp smoke filled in the entire surrounding. First time in an evacuation camp and that too in the US, we wanted to get there just to see how an evacuation camp works. There we were provided with face masks, water and food for all the evacuees. All in all the facilities were good for an evacuation center.
We spent the day in the evacuation center happily munching on all the food (courtesy red cross foundation) and trying to volunteer and help people, may be as a compensation for all the food we had been gorging on, later the tower where we were put up was converted into a medical center for patients and old people from old age home, we were moved to a different tower; without any TV or AC. There were so many sick and old people who were poring in from Palomar hospital and old age homes around Rancho Bernardo; gradually the environment becoming grimmer with each passing seconds. We helped the rescue team move the sick and the old into the medical center where every individual behaved strange, I helped 2 old ladies one of them did not want to enter the tower she was rebelling and the other lady got so attached she was asking me to stay and not leave her.
Twilight was approaching San Diego soon hastened by the thick cloud of smokes and we started getting worried about how to spend the night in the evacuation camp so we moved out of the camp drove to Santa Ana near Los Angeles (about 100 miles away from home) booked a hotel and stayed there for 2 days till the fire warning was cleared and we could drive back home.
Luckily none of our houses were burnt however there were many homes around Rancho Bernardo close to our house that were burnt down। Later reports confirmed that approximately 350 homes have been razed by the devastating fires in our beloved Rancho Bernardo area making it as one of the most affected communities. All in all about 1800 homes were lost in San Diego County alone. Few people were not as lucky as the others I would say.
Never the less everything ended well and our adventure of driving around Santa Ana/Irvine in the night hoping to spot the wild fires mostly went in vain with major intersections leading to the fires all closed. Driving back home from LA we did spot few mountains that were still burning and fire fighting helicopters trying to control the fire. It took another week to bring the 14 fires under control. A disaster that was thankfully prevented from taking a toll on the precious human live but not before a billion dollars worth of property mostly belonging to hapless southern Californian residents was brought down to the earth by the mighty fire.
A first hand account by Pradeep Malleshappa (my office colleague at Sony Electronics, San Diego) on the infamous southern California wildfires during the third week of October 2007 which became a major disaster with the largest number of evacuees ever in US history.
Edited by – Arijit Ghosh
