ASSOCIATED PRESS
A wall of flames from the Simi Fire roared up Pico Canyon and into the historic Mentryville area of Santa Clarita, Calif., yesterday. Firefighters were able to save all the historic structures in the old oil drilling area.
‘Total disaster’
Former Hawaii residents and
their families experience close calls
with the monstrous blazes
With winds driving a wall of fire closer to their San Diego home and police calling for residents to evacuate, Kamala Evora put her two children in the car, scoped the house and called her husband, who was at work.
"We're evacuating. Which surfboards do I save?" she asked.
"I told her: Forget the surfboards!" said Darryl Evora, laughing at his wife's call now that the fire has veered away from their home in Scripps Ranch, a San Diego subdivision where more than 300 homes were consumed by one of several sprawling wildfires that began Saturday in Southern California.
Darryl Evora, 43, who grew up surfing in Hawaii Kai, graduated from St. Louis School and got his medical degree from the University of Hawaii, said: "I told her that I can buy new surfboards. And that she should get the kids and insurance papers."
The Evoras were among several former Hawaii residents with homes in the path of what's being called the Cedar Fire, the largest of the blazes.
Evora said he got up early Sunday and noticed that the Santa Ana winds were gusting to speeds he had never seen before, which fanned the fire.
He got in his car to drive to the Children's Hospital where he works as a pediatric radiologist. As he drove, he watched the fire in his rear-view mirror.
"This fire was to the north and east of us in Ramona, about 20 miles away. It came so fast. I called my wife and said 'this is bigger and nastier and closer than we think,'" said Evora.
He said the sky was bright orange and black smoke enveloped everything.
"It was like the end of the world, like a nuclear holocaust when I looked (in the rear-view mirror) towards Scripps. It was pitch black, the smoke was so thick and huge orange flames were raging like nothing I have ever seen."
When Kamala evacuated with the children and family dog, she took photo albums, insurance papers, important documents like wills and a video they had taken of the house for insurance purposes.
"It was like the movie "Pearl Harbor," said the Evoras' 11-year-old son, Sean, referring to the billowing black clouds and angry orange sky.
"I just grabbed my money and my clothes," said Sean, adding in the same numb matter-of-fact tone, "It's still really smoky here and there's no school today."
Evora said the fire began burning toward the hospital late Sunday morning. The hospital began planning for evacuation, but never needed to act on those plans.
About 11 a.m., a small plane, unable to see through the thick smoke, crashed directly into Highway 15, making it impossible for Darryl to drive home. By 6 p.m. Sunday, he reached home, pulling into his driveway next to his wife's car. The wind had switched direction and they were safe, at least for a while.
Michael Hutchinson, 39, a Punahou School graduate who grew up in Kailua, said the flames came within 100 yards of his family's home in the same San Diego subdivision.
Hutchinson said the flames burned in an L-shape around their home and that Sunday morning the police came knocking on doors to evacuate them.
"I wanted to leave right away. It took us 10 minutes to get out," said Hutchinson.
Hutchinson said his family reached Highway 15 just as it was being closed. Not wanting to go to a shelter, the family headed for a Holiday Inn in downtown San Diego and bunkered in for movies and takeout pizza.
"The air is so bad and still so thick and it's just settling over everything," said Hutchinson. "It's dark from the ash the way it is dark when there is an eclipse of the sun in the middle of the day."
On Monday, Hutchinson said his family drove around their neighborhood so that their sons, ages 9 and 11, could see the devastation.
"The wind has switched and we are safe for now," said Hutchinson. "I'm just happy we have a home to come home to."
