RSF residents/officials share their fire experiences

Duncan Hadden, Owner of The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe

The Rancho Santa Fe Fire Dept. saved this town of Rancho Santa Fe. It was on Monday night at 3 a.m. I was the only one in town, in the living room of The Inn keeping an eye on the hotel. They’d evacuated everybody. At 12 o’clock the Santa Ana winds picked up and drove that fire up from Las Colinas and Via De La Valle toward Camino Selva. I was sitting in the living room of The Inn, seeing these flames coming over the tops of the eucalyptus tress in the park— they were that tall — and all the hot embers coming into town. The Fire Department was unbelievably good at putting fire hoses straight in the air to cool the embers down before they came back down and landed all over the front lawn of The Inn and the village. And I would’ve bet every penny in my pocket book that we would’ve lost the town and in The Inn if they hadn’t been down there.

It was just unbelievable watching that. I could not even walk down there, it was too hot and too smoky. I was wearing ski goggles here on the front lawn of The Inn just so I could see. I didn’t dare get closer than here, but you could hear propane tanks exploding from down there, eucalyptus trees exploding from the sap — it was just unbelievable. And it’s hard to get a depth perception at night but then when I found out the next morning it was Camino Selva — that’s incredibly close to the post office and Stump’s. If they hadn’t have stopped it there it would’ve just gone right over into the town.

Irwin Willis, Former RSF Fire Chief

The firefighters did an absolutely phenomenal job of stopping that fire. I went out and looked at places that they stopped the fire and I don’t know how they did it. I was in the fire service for 33 years and I have no idea how they were able to stop the fire like they did. My predictions were that the fire wouldn’t get stopped and that it would just continue basically to Solana Beach and the pacific.

What I was never able to really get people to believe is that it can happen here, it can happen to them. I really think it’s a human defense mechanism that we have this built-in belief — ‘It won’t happen to me. I’m not going to be the person to get into a car accident. I’m not going to get hit by a drunk driver. My house isn’t going to burn down.’ So [people] don’t take the precautions [they] could take to save their homes. But if people would replace their shake roofs, look at the vegetation around their homes and get rid of the highly flammable stuff, they could make their homes 10 times more fire safe than they are today.


Rev. Jack Baca, Pastor, RSF Village Presbyterian Church

We were checking out the church and saw that the fire crews were parking in the lot of the church, which was great. There’s not that many places to park in Rancho Santa Fe. The crews were kind of laying around on the grass trying to get some rest and all, so at that point we said hey, this is crazy. So we got out and stopped and invited the guys to come into our fellowship center. We’ve got restrooms and showers. They were extremely appreciative of the showers especially. That really got them excited. Some of the crews had been up for 48 hours at that point.

We started cooking in the kitchen and bringing in sodas and Visine and Advil and hamburgers as well as cots — 40 cots and air mattresses. And the fire crews just started coming through. If they had a few hours off they’d come in and we’d feed them and give them a place to sleep and a shower and just a place to be. That basically just kind of escalated. We had a supply chain going, and the guys at the Rancho fire department and the Patrol and the Sheriff’s department were all extremely helpful in helping us arrange to get the stuff in here and have a few people here. So we just kind of kept that going.


Jim Ashcraft, RSF Fire District Director

There were some extraordinary efforts. The firefighters of Rancho Santa Fe — and I mean out entire district — they worked 60 straight hours. It’s beyond anything that I’ve ever witnessed as a personal commitment to an area, and I don’t mean just the Covenant. I’ve talked to neighbors at the Summit, at Fairbanks, 4S Ranch —it’s just unbelievable what’s occurred.

Every home in the Covenant was in danger, particularly Tuesday morning at 3 o’clock. At that point I thought that probably my house was gone. I figured that there was a good chance it would go through the Covenant and through Solana Beach.

Probably the one where our odds were the worst — and I don’t know which fire group was involved — was the battle of Fairbanks Ranch. Monday night the feeling was we’d lost 15 houses at Fairbanks because the Lazardi creek area and San Dieguito river – those two were filled with fire and they were coming at high velocity, and we figured we’d lost 15 houses. We lost [two]. Four were damaged. It was extraordinary. I don’t know how many groups were there – probably 3,4,5 trucks at the most. We needed 15. But they did it.


John Rikkers, Rancho Santa Fe Covenant Resident (Via Monalex)

We then got a call from the previous owners who’re on the East Coast right now, who had heard from someone that one house had burned on the cul de sac, but that it wasn’t ours. But then within a couple of hours my wife gets the call on her cell phone and she knew the moment she saw his name on the ID that they only reason he would’ve been calling was to say no, in fact it was.

Then we began calling the fire department, the RSF Patrol, the whole thing and we obviously weren’t getting through. But we did get a call back from someone at the Patrol who just left a nice message on my cell phone just saying, ‘Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but your house has been destroyed. But that’s all he said. He didn’t say ‘Call me back if you have any further questions,’ or anything like that. So there was just this sense of HUH?


Nick Pavone, RSF Fire District Chief

The fire moved so quickly through [drainages] that it burned the lower portions of the vegetation, right along the surface. It didn’t even get into some of the trees. If you go along Del Dios Highway and you look in the river bottom there, you’ll see where some of those trees are still green at the top. The fire moved so fast, with such a rapid spread because of the wind, that it basically burned everything at the surface and hardly got into the tree areas.

We definitely had the potential [to lose the village]. There’s no doubt about that. But we were able to prevent it from getting into that core area of the village and the Ranch. If you look at El Vuelo, Las Colinas, El Mirador, we took some pretty substantial hits there. If we would not have been able to keep it confined to that area and it would’ve started to move a little bit north and west, then that would’ve probably created a situation where it would have probably run through the rest of the Ranch.

Dave Abrams, Fairbanks Ranch General Manager

There were two Fairbanks homes lost — anybody can figure more or less what that would be. The rest of the problems in the community were basically wind-damaged trees uprooted themselves and snapped off, created a fair amount of damage. Most of the severe fire damage occurred Monday night. [Residents] would certainly call [with questions] and we’d answer as best as we could, although we didn’t know that much either — it was just whatever the public authorities would tell us and what we learned ourselves off the TV, radio, etc. It was very frustrating because people were anxious to get home, and they couldn’t, and so that created some raw nerves. But they’re back in now, trying to pick up the pieces.

Al Frowiss, Hacienda Santa Fe

Just before I left on Monday, I took a quick tour through the neighborhood. One of the palm trees was on fire in our neighborhood and I turned around and got on my cell phone to call 9-1-1 and couldn’t get through to the fire dept. But about a half a block away was a fire truck coming my way, so I flagged him down and told him about the tree that was on fire. Other than that I’m seeing fires across the street over on the Sahm property as I was leaving. Everybody went different places — some people were in Orange County and so on. I basically kept our neighborhood up to date through group e-mails. Ninety percent of all residents are on my e-mail list, and I was able to keep people informed. We lucked out — it looks like so far, anyway. We never saw [Hacienda Santa Fe] mentioned and thank goodness.

Robert Barron, City of Del Mar firefighter.

“It was amazing. We started at the Wild Animal Park area. We got diverted to Coronado Hills fire, in San Marcos, a spot fire from Witch fire, a 300-acre fire. We got it out fast. Then we were diverted to the Witch fire, to the south end, we started in Del Dios. Power lines were down, so we went around to Cielo, started fighting the fire in Cielo, working down Del Dios through Rancho Santa Fe, to Fairbanks Ranch. I went out Sunday afternoon and got back Thursday. It was constant. The longest rest we had was six hours of sleep, before that we got two hours. We were exhausted. We were on a type-one engine, focused on structure protection. We had to move. Pull up to a structure, if we can save it, put out the fire and brush around it, pick up our hoses, find a fire hydrant, fill up our tank, and go to next house. That’s what we did, over and over. Five of us in a strike team. Most of the time we were in the midst of flame. We actually saved all of the houses we protected and we only lost one outbuilding in Rancho Santa Fe. We saved about 20, a little over 20, in Rancho Santa Fe, the yards are so big, it takes a lot more time. It definitely feels pretty good, at least 20 homes, probably more. It was like standing on top of a chimney, with firebrands and embers flying past your face. You really don’t have time to think about (being in danger). You know what your job is... you really don’t think about your health or safety. There is so much you need to do. Your mind is constantly racing on what you have to do in that particular moment and where you’re going next. (There are) tons of adrenaline. You’re basically relying on your training. You don’t have time to think. You just act.”

Bruce Pollett, San Diego firefighter, based at Station 24 on Del Mar Heights Road.

“We wanted to say thank you to our community for thinking of us and taking care of us. It’s just awesome. We haven’t been able to cook for ourselves. They brought food. We have more cookies than we could eat in two lifetimes. They thank us as we’re out and about. The community, the outpouring of support, there are people that lost everything and they’re still saying thanks for everything we’ve done. I’ve been to the Guejita fire in Escondido, I was on the Cedar fire. This was a bigger one. This was huge. It was so fast-moving… We’ve given some stuff to people. One guy today showed up, they drove from Austin, Texas. They had collected stuff, their car was packed up with toiletries and bags of dog food. They were trying to give it to us, we sent them to the fairgrounds. We gave them a bunch of cookies and cakes to bring to people. We want to say thanks to everyone. Little girls came with a nice sign and music CDs, Queen and AC-DC. They had obviously taken a lot of time and effort to make us something to say thank you. We just wanted to say thanks to the community. We see this as the job we are paid to do. We’re not jumping over tall buildings in a single bound, we’re just trying to do the best we can. There were times when we couldn’t stop the fire, buildings burned to the ground, we wish we could have done more.”

Mark Conley, horse trainer and owner of Concord Equestrian Center at the Del Mar Horsepark.

“I helped, volunteered at the race track Monday morning, about 7 a.m., I helped unload horses. The animals were freaked, and the owners were on edge, from the smoke, and it was so early in morning. It was extremely busy. It went fairly well, 2,000 horses were evacuated to the race track. My house was being evacuated, I live in Del Mar Heights. Several horse trainers stayed at the horse park all night long. We were concerned Monday afternoon. The horse park had 700 horses, it would be tough to move them. There are a lot of eucalyptus and palm trees, our worry was if those started catching fire and there was a high wind, it would just run down the river bed. (If the fire came) we figured we would let (the horses) out to the reserve. It was our last resort. We would calmly lead them out to the open area and have people be with them, in the dirt. We had set out drums of water and hay for them. That was the fallback plan. To move 700 horses under a panic situation, where are you going to put them? I was giving it a 15 percent chance we were going to have to do this. We were up, cat-napping in vehicles.

I kept driving back as far as possible, at 3:30 a.m., at the backside of Fairbanks, I could see the fire, and I was talking to police. The wind was calm near the horse park, but at the fire it was blowing hard. We just kept checking on it and kept a cool head… by early Tuesday, the firefighters had done such a great job beating the fire back in Rancho Santa Fe and Fairbanks, we were 100 percent confident we were not going to have to evacuate. I’ve been in tornadoes, I’ve been in hurricanes, I’ve been in floods…. All I have to do now is be in an earthquake and a tsunami, neither one do I want to be in. I don’t want any more natural disasters, thank you. As far as I know, no horses have lost their lives, that I know.”

—Compiled by Ian S. Port and Joe Tash