Sigh of Relief: Families Count Blessings After Cowles Mountain Fire

As the flames rolled down Cowles Mountain toward her home, it became obvious time was fleeting. So Ingvor Inancsi and her husband, Wayne, gathered up the mementos and the cats, jumped in the car and high-tailed it to safe ground.

Inancsi, a native of Sweden, figured it would be the last time she would see her home of 11 years, a tidy single-story house on the edge of Mission Trails Park in the San Carlos area of San Diego.

And with good reason. The wildfire that rolled across the park Saturday seemed destined for a head-on collision with the quiet residential neighborhood nestled at the foot of Cowles Mountain.

But when Inancsi and her husband returned about four hours later, the house was still standing, with nary a scorch mark to be seen. A phalanx of firefighters armed with water hoses and fire axes managed to beat back the flames as they rushed toward the neighborhood.

On Sunday, the couple decided to show their thanks. They mounted a large plywood sign near the door of their Golfcrest Drive house. Scrawled in black felt-tip pen, it read: “Thank you, firefighters!”

In the neighborhoods fanning out from Cowles Mountain, it was a common refrain. As residents swept up the ash and hosed down driveways, they breathed a sigh of relief and voiced thanks to the fire crews that saved their houses from the flames.

Though the fire raced to within yards of houses on the southwestern side of the park, only about two dozen were damaged. Most of the problems were limited to burned shingles and scorched fences, and fire officials estimated no single structure suffered more than $2,000 damage.

“I’m very thankful,” said Diane Pearson, a 15-year resident of the area who was among hundreds of homeowners evacuated during the blaze. “It was just a damn miracle--and I’m sure the firefighters had a lot to do with that miracle.”

Authorities, too, credited the hard work of fire crews, and a bit of luck, with helping to keep the Cowles Mountain blaze from turning into the sort of devastating conflagration that struck the Normal Heights area three years ago, when 84 homes were damaged or burned to the ground.

“When we first got here, that’s what we thought--you see another Normal Heights happening,” said George E. Tockstein Jr., Santee fire chief and one of the two commanders who mapped out the battle against the blaze, which charred more than 600 acres on both the San Diego and Santee sides of the park.

Tockstein said firefighters had a distinct advantage Saturday because the blaze started high on Cowles Mountain then burned downhill, a far slower process than the Normal Heights fire, in which the flames roared upward, reaching homes at the tops of canyons.

While he acknowledged that “people on those engines worked their butts off” to save the San Carlos neighborhood and a Santee mobile home park that was also threatened by the flames, Tockstein said “a little bit of luck” also played into the picture.

“The key factor was that nothing else was going on at the time,” Tockstein said. “Because of that, we were able to get the resources we

needed--firefighters, air tankers, a bulldozer. Usually, it seems there’s other fires going at the same time and the resources get stretched thin.”

At the height of the blaze Saturday, more than 300 firefighters--drawn from departments throughout the county--were swarming over the mountain. Four air tankers dropped fire retardant on the fire and a bulldozer was also on the scene to help crews cut fire breaks.

Many of the crews fought the flames for more than 20 hours, arriving shortly after the fire broke out at about 1 p.m. when a pair of high-voltage lines crossed in the wind and sparked, sending flaming debris to the ground. Replacement crews did not arrive, in many cases, until 8 a.m. Sunday.

By Saturday evening, the bulk of the fire had been contained, but a finger continued to burn Sunday in a narrow canyon on the Santee side of the park. Officials said high winds and hot temperatures were making mop-up operations tricky on Sunday.

In some spots, the fire cut a swath up the weed-strewn fingers of canyons between homes. Elsewhere, burning debris spread spot fires to undeveloped ravines separated by paved streets and several rows of houses.

Clouds of Ash

On Sunday, a smoky haze continued to hang over the mountain. Winds that gusted up to 30 m.p.h. picked up huge clouds of ash as they swept down the mountain, giving some streets the look of a scene from nuclear winter.

Despite the high temperatures that drove many San Diegans to the beach, most residents around Cowles Mountain seemed to be home, with windows and doors shut against the ash clouds.

David Horn, 19, helped battle the flames with his brother, Kenneth, by hosing down the wood-shingle roof of his family’s house until the flames got too close and he was ordered to leave by fire personnel. The pair were so busy they didn’t bother calling their parents, who were in Las Vegas for the weekend.

“I was kind of shaky,” said Horn. “It was questionable what we were going to return to. There was a lot of stuff burning.”

The flames charred the back fence, Horn said, but were extinguished before they could do more damage. When Horn returned to find the house was intact, he telephoned his parents to let them know what had happened.

Double Whammy

For Sam Porter, the blaze was a little bit like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

The San Carlos resident was in the Los Angeles area on business when he returned to his hotel room early Saturday morning to find the facility had been evacuated because of a toxic cloud released from a smoldering chemical plant, an emergency that rousted more than 10,000 in the region from their beds.

Porter, a television repairman, managed to find a hotel room for the night in another part of town, but received a call from his wife, Ann, the next day alerting him to the Cowles Mountain fire. Porter hurried home to find his wife and daughter evacuated from the house.

When the family returned to their home, they found a 5-foot-wide hole in the roof. After smoldering debris from the fire blew onto the structure, “either a good samaritan or a fireman” jumped on the roof and ripped the burning shingles off before the entire house went up in flames, Porter said.

“We came away lucky, I’d say,” Porter commented. “It’s miraculous none of the homes around here burned down.”

His wife agreed.

“It was God’s will,” she said. “I can’t thank the firefighters, the police and the volunteers, the whole gang, I can’t thank them enough. They couldn’t have done more.”