The Fiery End to a Favorite Car

On one of the ridges that bookends El Cajon, the neat community of Crest was rather typical of San Diego's East County. An assemblage of old canyon neighborhoods and ridge-top fantasy homes, Crest suffered the same misfortune as countless others. Smallish, twisted access roads kept outside fire crews at arm's length, and local firemen were outclassed, despite their valor, by walls of flames feeding on brush, scrub and trees too long without a maintenance burn.


The Miata's fate loses its roots in time at this point, as while San Diego burned, more important things than a fun little runabout were attended to. The owner of the Miata, unaware of Crest's perilous position, spent Sunday and Monday rigging rooftops with garden sprinklers, and helping friends and family move cats, kids, CDs and TVs out of harm's looming clutches. Traffic laws went out the window, as San Diego's understaffed police department had more to worry about than people speeding by with their life's possessions aboard. Huddled in the contractor's garage in Crest, the Miata wished for rescue but found none—the Cedar Fire found it first. Having marched out of Julian like Hell on the hoof, the Cedar Fire raged west through Crest, Harbison Canyon and a handful of other hamlets on its way to the doors of El Cajon.


To be perfectly square, the Miata wasn't so much burnt as cremated. Everything not steel turned to ash—even the aluminum cylinder head burned, rather than just melt. The gorgeous house in Crest, almost all of the contractor's tools, his trucks, it all went the way of the dodo. Of course, in keeping with the bizarre nature of fire, while the stone and stucco house burned, a backyard tree fort in a stand of eucalyptuses was un-singed. When the house was done burning, it fell on the Miata. What hadn't been torched was crushed flat, at which point this story became truly sad. Tears might have been shed, had they not already been used to put out a hot spot.

Shameful Outcome, Little Miata, Too
Many things went wrong that week, perhaps the least of which was the immolation of a 7-year old Mazda. Sixteen people died. Thousands of homes burned. An under-equipped fire department was outgunned by Mother Nature. Tens of thousands of San Diegans had to camp out at Qualcomm/Jack Murphy Stadium, having lost all. The California State Department of Forestry and the National Forest Service fought with each other instead of assigning aircraft to the fires. They did agree on banning the military from helping—some placeholder concluded that military pilots might have been fine for war, but weren't qualified to fly around with buckets of water, so the Marines put out the fires on Mirimar but had to sit and watch the town of Santee burn. It also became clear while things still smoldered that the initial fires had been reported on Saturday afternoon, well before nightfall, but the calls to emergency services had been deemed in error.


Some things went right. Members of San Diego's law enforcement and emergency community worked tirelessly to save life and limb. The Santee Vigilantes staved off certain doom for more than 100 homes in a wild attack of shoveling and garden hosing. A father and son saved a whole Tierrasanta neighborhood by breaking into homes one at a time, putting out each fire as it started. Pat & Oscars got past a food-poisoning incident by donating thousands of meals to the folks camped at old Jack Murphy, and dozens of other eateries in San Diego chipped in too. Local horse owners risked life and limb to drive their trailers into the hills to rescue wandering beasts. Millions of dollars were donated to help people who'd lost everything. Neighbors bonded, and San Diego found itself. Sadly, no one will ever drive that little red Miata again, but fire is ruthless and we survived.