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Sunday, October 28, 2007

California’s Wildfires - A Dressage Barn Flees the Inferno
By Kathy Beal for DressageDaily.com

Editor's note: DressageDaily's newest California reporter, Kathy Beal had plenty to report, and from her own personal perspective. Here is her moving account of the last week, and how the blazing inferno which affected Southern California affected her, her horses, and her family. MPH

For 27 years, my family has lived with our dressage horses on our Fallbrook ranch. Throughout the years, we’ve raised our family and brought along some wonderful dressage horses. We’ve also seen our share of fires rage through this northern part of San Diego County, as the powerful Santa Ana winds predictably bring fires to our paradise in the fall.

The unincorporated area of Fallbrook covers at least 450 square miles. It’s an area full of privately-owned horse ranches, many of which were evacuated during the Cedar Fire in 2003. It seems that most years there are fires or threats in outlying areas near us. But, until this past Monday, our family has never personally had to evacuate our home, which lies fairly close to the village center and the high school. On Monday, the winds blew at up to seventy-miles-per-hour and we were hearing of the Witch Fire, which began on Sunday and was raging through the central county. I wondered if the fires would actually threaten to take homes near the center of town.

I teach English at Fallbrook High School, the only high school in the county that was open on Monday morning, October 22. Students and teachers were amazed that we were in school and most were anxious about family at home. By the end of second period, our school was already receiving evacuees from the Rice Canyon Fire into the gymnasium. All students were dismissed at 10 a.m. and teachers and staff whose homes were not endangered stayed to help. Most of the evacuees at this point lived in the Valley Oaks Mobile Home Park on Reche Road, about five miles from the village.

Others lived just across the I-15 Freeway from the new, and now raging, Rice Fire. After speaking with several of the park’s residents in the gym, I realized that this Rice Fire posed an enormous threat to several of my friends, and their horses, especially those friends who live in the Los Alisos community that parallels the ancient oak forest road called Live Oak Park Road. Due to the extreme winds, the fire was moving erratically and quickly closer to town.