FIRES OF OCTOBER 2007
October 22 through 28, 2007 is a week that San Diego County will never forget! The wildfires raged as the Santa Ana winds furiously heaved flames, smoke and ash into the atmosphere. Men, women, children and their pets fled their homes in the middle of the night. Daytime looked like nighttime due to the pollution, flames and pitch black smoke. In the chaos and the media frenzy people thought of one another as quickly as they thought of themselves. They were concerned about friends and colleagues; they worried about pets, and they wondered how they’d ever get through the endless hours of waiting for answers, waiting to find out whose homes were still standing, waiting for their lives to return.
There were countless heroes this week, men and women who did truly extraordinary feats for total strangers. Like the volunteer, unofficial, untrained firefighters who went 48 hours without sleep as part of a 3-man bucket brigade (that means no water hoses, no power, etc..), and they fought the raging fires saving homes in the San Pasqual Valley where San Diego’s Wild animal Park is located.