October 2003
The Pet Whisperer October 2003
The Angel of Grainwood Way
Dear Friends and clients of Dr. Blake,
As you all are probably aware of the fact that our home and office were consumed by the fire storm on the 26th of October. My wife Charene and I were able to escape with no loss of lives. The following is a story about what my wife and I have gone through these past two weeks.
It all began early Sunday morning on October 26th. I had been working on a new office space for Charene and getting caught up on cases on my computer. I stayed up until 1 AM and then finally decided I needed to get to bed because of an early morning commitment we had.
I woke at 3:30 AM and was very restless even though I had only been asleep for a little over 2 hours. I couldn't get back to sleep so I got on the Internet and started catching up on some email. After about a half hour I began to smell smoke in the air but when I looked out to the East it was pitch dark and no sign of fire. I figured it was smoke blowing from fires north of us and finally went back to bed.
We both woke up at 7:30AM to smell of a great deal of smoke. I ran down stairs and looked to the East. Black clouds of smoke were just over the hill from us and I could see a red hue through the mountains of smoke. Being the proverbial optimist I thought it was smoke the Ramona fire and the sun showing through the smoke. When Charene came down she felt much differently about it.
We went into our front yard and looked at a wall of smoke less than a mile from our house. We turned on the TV and there was no mention of the fire being near us and no signs of fire engines or police. The wind was blowing in gusts of 30 to 40 miles and hour directly at our home.
We called our son Sean to warn him because he was only 5 minutes from us. After warning him Charene told me we needed to get out right away because she felt the fire was very close. I told her I would grab the computers and get the cars out while she could get some pictures and person belongings.
She looked at me and headed for the front door. I asked where she was going and her reply "To warn our neighbors!" She had noticed that none of our neighbors were out of their homes and by this time we could see the fire on the ridge above our homes and ash was falling.
Charene ran from door to door knocking and yelling for them to evacuate. Only after making sure every one was up and moving did she return to our home. I had only gotten the computers and closed up the house by this time. She then said "leave every thing and please get us out of here."
We left with the clothes on our backs and our two cars. As we drove away I felt a great sadness and thought about turning around. I had slowed and Charene saw what I was thinking and honked her horn at me. Her words to me were, " I do not want to loose you and our home, do not go back!" As we moved out of our street we saw all of the frighten faces of our neighbors looking back at us as they prepared to follow us out of Grainwood Way.
My son Sean and I had to go back toward the fires because a dog named Dakota was all alone at his home and needed to be rescued before the fires came any closer and they closed the roads down. We drove up to his house and rushed into the back yard to get him safely away from the smoke and fire which by this time was all along the ridge. He was so happy to see us but he was very frightened. I felt him saying get me out of here, I am very frightened. We lifted him into the truck and sped away from the fires.
It wasn't until 24 hours later we learned that our home and all of our neighbors homes had been burned down. The smoke and ash was terrifying all over the city and we had to ware masks to breath. We were with our son Sean, his wife Jenn and two of our beautiful grandchildren Tanner and Skylar. We had all escaped the fire and were safely away from the force of the fires.
When we heard our home and business had been consumed by fire all of us cried and hugged each other. Tanner our 5 year old grandson began to cry for the first time since the terror began. Charene and I hugged him and told him it was OK to be sad. He looked up at both of us with tearful eyes and said "I am so sad because now I don't have a place to play with Granny and RoRo." It broke our hearts to see our beautiful grandson so sad and heart broken.
We held each other for a time and then Charene said to him "Don't worry Tanner we will get a new house for you to come and play with us just like we used to," and we will be sleeping with you for the next 4 days because we have to home of our own." He began to smile and said we could have a sleep over for as long as we wanted :O)
Our other son Scott was in Texas at the time and felt helpless to assist us. He drove non stop from Dallas to San Diego as soon as he could get released by American Airlines to help out.
When Charene and I were allowed to return to our home several days later, it was a very sad time for both of us. The police would not let us drive into our neighborhood, so we walked in one by one. At first we saw the burned out trees in the canyons but no homes burned unit we turned on to our street. 20 out of 22 homes were gone, only chimneys and burned out shells of what was a beautiful street we called home. The sky was black with smoke and the air was still hard to breath. It looked like a war zone. We held each other tightly and walked slowly toward our home. Seeing it burned to the ground was so sad and we both began to cry.
The news media was there and were very kind to us. They filmed us both in our time of sorrow and let us share our feelings with them. Finally after spending some quiet time with our son Sean in the home he had grown up in, we said good by to our old friend 12436 Grainwood Way. It was with heavy hearts we all took one last look and started to walk back to our cars.
As we were about to leave we saw our neighbors at the end of the our street and went over to see how they were doing. Linda came up to Charene and gave her wonderful long hug. Her first words were, " You saved our lives." She explained that they were still asleep at the time and had heard nothing. Had Charene not taken the time to awaken them she was convinced they would have been caught in the fire. She then looked Charene in the eyes and said "You are the Angel of Grainwood Way and gave her a kiss." Tears came to both of their eyes and they held each other for the longest time. We then started the long walk back our cars and said our good-byes.
Our sons, our daughter in laws Alison, Jenn and all of our friends and family have been so helpful in assisting us in this great loss. We have a house to rent in Penasquitos that our son Scott and Alison own. The address is 13060 Via Caballo Rojo San Diego, Ca 92129 . This will be our home and office until our home is rebuilt hopefully by the end of next year.
Our new phone numbers will be home 858-484-7344 and my new office number will be 858-7342. These numbers will not be operational until the November 17th. At that time you can call us and we are going to start setting up appointments so we can again start caring for our animal buddies.
We want to thank all of you for being so caring and understanding in our hour of need. We both feel that we will be stronger from our loss and that we can rebuild our home and office better than ever :O)
If you wish to help in any way you can go to our website www.thepetwhisperer.com to keep up on how we are doing and what you can do to help. Your prayers, cards, kind words, phone calls and donations mean more to us than words can express. We love you all and want you know we are doing much better with the passing of each day.
Make today a great day and thank you all for paying it forward.
OAO,
Dr Blake and his lovely wife Charene |
