Life-or-Death Choices on Staying or Fleeing

The phone woke Joe McLean shortly after 3 a.m. Sunday and outside he saw the red glow of flames in the hills surrounding his rural San Diego County home.

He woke his daughter and wife, then alerted a few neighbors. Up and down the winding canyon roads, residents were waking to the smell of smoke and the noise of barking dogs and honking horns.

With no help from fire crews and no instructions from authorities, families packed up cars, and others set out on foot. There was only one way out: Muth Valley Road.

Neighbors in this tight-knit community just south of the San Vicente Reservoir had only minutes to make choices. By dawn, four who lived on the street would be dead, and half the homes would be destroyed. On Monday, the survivors told their stories.

The McLeans had the best vantage point in the hilly neighborhood of 10 custom homes. They could see towering flames closing in and wasted no time collecting possessions.

In three separate cars, the McLeans were the first through the neighborhood’s security gate about 3:15 a.m.

Concerned the electricity would fail and the families would be trapped, Bob Daly, 75, had opened the gate when he got word of the fire from McLean. Then Daly headed back home.

Along the bending Muth Valley Road, fire rose as high as the neighborhood’s towering pine trees. Joe McLean, 46, trailed his wife and daughter, raising his hand as he drove to shield his eyes from the heat. He worried that heat would melt the plastic windows in the ragtop Jeep driven by his 18-year-old daughter Jennifer.

Rodney Weichelt, 35, and his father, Bob, 59, were close behind. They could see McLean ahead. Embers pelted Rodney Weichelt’s van, sounding to him like machinegun fire. He dripped with sweat.

At his home up the road, Stephen Shacklett, 55, corralled his four Irish wolfhounds, got them into his RV and drove toward the gate. His girlfriend, Cheryl Jennie, 59, was still at the house, planning to leave soon in her own car.

Natalie Corbett, 39, was in the neighborhood that night to housesit. She called 911, and the operator told her she was on her own. Corbett asked if she should leave. The operator said to go if she thought she could make it.

Corbett loaded her dog into her Bronco and fled past the gate, driving through a curtain of fire. A fallen cable was stretched tight across the road and flipped her truck, sending it skidding. Surrounded by flames, the Bronco resting on its side, Corbett wrapped herself and the dog in a sunshade and prepared to die, sucking on a wetted washcloth she had brought with her.

Other families were still at home.

The Hamiltons -- Steve, his pregnant wife, Jodi, and their toddler son -- had decided to take two cars. At first they could smell smoke but couldn’t see even a glow. Hurrying but not frantic, they began packing collectibles and photo albums. Steve Hamilton, 43, took their 2-year old son Alexander in his car. Jodi Hamilton, 38, put their boxer, Libby, in hers.

Larry Redden, 64, had awakened at 12:30 a.m. to the smell of smoke. Redden, who retired last year after three decades with the San Diego Fire Department, walked out on his deck to check on the fire, then went back to bed. He and his wife, Laureen, 44, woke again when McLean called. The Reddens roused her parents, who lived with them, and got ready to leave.

The Shohara family -- James, Solange and their grown son Randy -- were the newest family in the neighborhood. At their home near the gated entry, they too prepared to flee.

About the same time, Bob Daly and his wife, Barbara, 67, pulled out of their driveway.

By 3:30 a.m. the Hamiltons, Reddens, Shoharas, Dalys and Cheryl Jennie formed a six-car caravan through the entry gate. With Redden leading, they were stopped by wall of fire. The families turned around and headed home, wondering what to do next.

At their expansive Spanish-style home, Steve Hamilton, vice president of a construction company, began moving vehicles and equipment out of the garage as his wife and son waited. Jodi couldn’t understand why Steve was wasting time. Nearly hysterical, she woke up her mother in Connecticut to tell her the fire was close. Her mother, who had visited before, told Jodi to take her son and head for the nearby reservoir. Leave Steve behind if you have to, she advised.

The Dalys conferred with the Shoharas, who were walking toward a dirt road to the reservoir. I don’t think you should go down there, Bob Daly told them, it’s too rough a road.

Solange Shohara told him they were going anyway.

Minutes later, the Dalys considered following. They walked in the same direction as the Shoharas, but after taking a look down the access road, his vision blurred by smoke, Bob Daly made a decision.

No way, he told his wife. We’re going back to the house to jump in the pool.

Jennie cast her lot with the Reddens and followed them back to their tiled-roof home. You look like you know what you’re doing, she told the retired firefighter.

Larry Redden, drawing on his years of experience, decided defending the house was the best way to survive. While his in-laws, wife, neighbor and dogs huddled in the living room, he donned his old firefighting gear and poured water from the pool around the perimeter of the house.

The others held out hope that help was on the way. Larry Redden leveled with them: They’ve written us off. We’re on our own.

Jodi Hamilton decided to take her mother’s advice. She got into her husband’s car, planning to head to the reservoir. Her husband said they would never make it. He had another plan: They would drive to a dirt flat near their house and try to dodge the flames in their SUV.

He hosed down the SUV, and drove to the flat, racing the vehicle back and forth, trying to stay away from the fire. In the backseat, Alexander, shrieked: “Hot. Hot.”

“You couldn’t see -- the smoke, the ash,” Jodi Hamilton said. “It looked like hell or what I pictured hell to be.”

The Dalys had gotten back to their house to find it already in flames. Fully clothed, they plunged into the pool. Bob Daly urged his wife to keep bobbing underwater so embers wouldn’t ignite her hair.

As fire burned everywhere, they began a running dialogue about what they could hear exploding: the propane tank, the windows. The fire got too hot to bear. They jumped out of the pool and ran across the street to an area the fire had already passed through.

Up the street, the flames came too close for retired firefighter Redden to keep wetting down his house. He joined the others inside. The fire roared. They could hear it rushing over the roof.

“We just watched it come and prayed,” said Laureen Redden. To her mother, Judy Bloomfield, it was “just this horrible roaring wind. There is nothing like it.”

Jodi Hamilton was also surrounded by fire. From her car, she placed another call to her mother. I don’t think we’re going to make it out of here, she said. They said their goodbyes.

Then almost as suddenly as it had descended, the fire passed. The Hamiltons were alive. It was about an hour after they and the others had first turned back from the gate.

Bob Daly and his wife surveyed the destruction. At dawn he began to walk the street to check on the others. He had last seen the Shoharas, the newest neighbors, on foot, heading to the reservoir. But down the block, he saw their car, a melted shell, with two bodies inside. He dialed 911. They told him they would send paramedics. He told them to send the coroner.

About 100 yards away, Daly discovered another body, the Shoharas’ son Randy.

When Jodi Hamilton learned of the deaths, she thought her family would have died too if her husband hadn’t stopped her from going to the reservoir. After taking their chances dodging the fire in their car, the Hamiltons returned to find their home spared.

Outside the gate, along Muth Valley Road, Larry Redden found the burned-out shell of Stephen Shacklett’s RV and a body inside.

Natalie Corbett was on the road, too. She had been certain she would die after her car overturned. She had tried to doze to escape the pain. At dawn, she was finally able to see well enough to find her cellular phone. She dialed 911 again. This time paramedics came, smashing a window to free her and her dog.

On Monday, Joe McLean said he was grateful to be alive but tormented by a sense that he had not done enough to warn the others. A general contractor, he had helped build the Shoharas’ home last year. But in the frenzy, he had not called them.

“The thing that haunts you ... “ he said, standing outside his home, his eyes welling with tears. “Had I remembered, had they known five minutes earlier, maybe they would have gotten out.”