Witch Creek blaze hits RB hardest

For more than two days, Rancho Bernardo residents saw their community under siege on television, its destruction at the hands of the Witch Creek fire forming the dramatic backdrop for round-the-clock newscasts that reached across the country.

Except for a few instances, access to homes in the path of the fire was limited during those harrowing hours, in which evacuees depended on fragmented and sometimes contradicting information to determine whether their homes had burned or were left intact.

Even while a large swath of San Diego County remained threatened or in flames, it became evident Rancho Bernardo would be one of the communities most heavily hit by the fire storms.

As of press time Wednesday night, a preliminary count suggests 295 homes — not including a condominium complex — were lost to the Witch Creek fire in Rancho Bernardo.

Most impacted was the Westwood community, where entire culs-de-sac were turned into crumbled piles of smoldering debris. The fast-moving fire razed more than 134 homes in that community, which remained off-limits to residents as of press time.

Wednesday, Oct. 24, officials announced that residents of the least affected areas of Rancho Bernardo — including sections of Oaks North, High Country West, Gatewood, Greens North, Eastview and the Knolls — would be let back into their homes.

Slowly — in some cases with frustration — residents began to trickle into their neighborhoods, anxious to see what damage the fire had wrought, and to confirm what they’d seen or heard about their neighborhoods on Web sites or television reports.

One thing that became clear immediately was the capricious course of the Santa Ana wind-swept blaze, which took some homes but not others — even as they stood side-by-side.

Virginia Price, a Cedilla Place resident, marveled at the randomness of the fire’s path, which charred a line of hedges on her backyard, a tree in front of her home but did not touch the house.

The fire came so close to her home, it melted a plastic flower pot dangling from her back patio.

“I’m very lucky my house is OK and my dog’s OK and it looks like my neighbors’ homes are also OK,” she said. “The bushes can be replaced.”

Up and across the street from Price’s backyard, on the Corte de Aceitunos cul-de-sac, many residents weren’t so fortunate.

At least three homes lay in ruins, a collapsed garage on one of the houses revealing a fire-ravaged car and what was left of a patio jutting awkwardly into the air.

Ruby Asbury, whose lives directly across the cul-de-sac and whose house was spared, said she was not home when the fire that devastated her neighborhood arrived.

She left her Oaks North home and went to Carmel Mountain Ranch early Sunday at the urging of her daughter.

“These were the houses of my neighbors,” she said, as she stood in front of her home after stopping in to pick up a few things. “It’s terrible.”

Charles Davis, a resident of the Montelena neighborhood, was one of the Rancho Bernardo residents who was not able to return to his home on Wednesday.

“It’s very frustrating,” he said. “I want to go into my house to feed my two cats, but I can’t get in.”

As of press time, residents from other parts of Rancho Bernardo — Westwood, Montelena, the Trails, Bernardo Vista del Lago — remained cut off from their homes.

Officials said the re-opening of neighborhoods closed during the fire-fighting effort depended on the safety of the houses, and whether the fires had been put out.

In addition to lifting the mandatory evacuation order for parts of Rancho Bernardo, city officials allowed residents of Rancho Penasquitos, Del Sur, Santaluz and Torrey Highlands back into their homes.

There were no reports of burned buildings in those areas of the city.

On Wednesday, a lack of personnel led city officials to scrap a service offered a day before that let Westwood residents return to their homes escorted to pick up medications, making their way through snaky roads where homes lay in ruins.

As he waited in line, Tuesday Bob Kresky said he woke up Sunday morning to see a “ball of fire” across from his home on the 17700 block of Creciente Way. Several homes across the street were up in flames.

“We had no notice,” he said. “We had no time and we had to evacuate, leaving behind my wallet, cell phone and medications I need.”

Kresky said he knew his home had not burned because he saw a news report, in which the camera operator switched back and forth between shots of his house and of the homes of his neighbors which had been destroyed.

Angel Astorgano said he was roused from his sleep by a neighbor knocking on the door of his home of Lancashire Way, a Montelena street that appears to have lost six homes to the fire.

He and his family stayed at a hotel, and as he waited for his short return, he said he was bracing himself for what he would see.

“I’m saddened,” he said. “I’m preparing for the reality that I’m going back to see my neighborhood.”

Though his home was spared, he wondered about the long-term effects of the displacement — such as air quality— and wondered how long it would be before he would feel safe moving his family back home.

As of press time, the county was reporting six fire-related deaths, included those of two Rancho Bernardo residents.

Suzanne Elizabeth Casey, 62, who had been evacuated from her home, died after falling at a restaurant on Monday, Oct. 22.

June E. Brewer, 95, died of what appear to be natural causes at a hotel in Old Town the next day.