UCSD Employees Sift Through Rubble of Burned Homes Looking for Fresh Start

Ioana Patringenaru | December 3, 2007

On a chilly Saturday afternoon, Judy Davis surveyed the wreckage that was once her home, high in the hills of southeast San Diego County, near Jamul. She was looking for any of her belongings that might have survived the Harris Fire last month. She and her husband were out of town when the blaze started.

“We’ve lost everything,” said Davis, an administrative assistant at the UCSD Medical Center.

When the Davises were finally able to see what was left of their home, they found a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, standing in the rubble. It used to stand by the door. It now looks eerily untouched.

“He’s going with me for the rest of my life, wherever I go,” Davis says. “Believe me.”

Judy Davis with a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, which survived the fire.

Click here to view a slideshow of the fire victims.

Davis is one of 15 UCSD employees who lost their homes in the fires that raged through San Diego County in October. A month after finding out their homes were destroyed, they are taking stock. Some were able to evacuate with their pets and personal belongings. Others have lost everything. Some had lived in their residences for decades. Others were renting or had barely moved in. Some already have plans to rebuild, while others are not sure where to begin. But all of them said they were doing well, in spite of their losses. They also all praised the UCSD community for its support in the aftermath of the fires.

“I have just been so moved by the care and love and generosity shown by people right here at work,” said Grant Deane, a scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who lost his house in the Witch Fire.

The campus is offering fire victims loans, an emergency leave donation program and counseling, among other things. The goal is to help as much as possible, said Tom Leet, assistant vice chancellor of Human Resources.

“We’re here to support them, so they can put the pieces back together and go forward,” Leet said.

Davis and her husband were perhaps among the hardest hit. They had lived in their home for 23 years. They were at a family reunion in Arizona, when the Harris fire reached Deerhorn Valley, near Jamul. They watched as TV stations covered the Malibu fire, before mentioning that a blaze had ignited in Potrero, near the U.S.-Mexico border, east of San Diego. They called friends who lived near their home and were told there was no danger. But later, these friends called back to say they were evacuating. Around 1 a.m., the Davises decided to drive home.

By the time they got there, around 9:30 a.m., law enforcement refused to let them through. Finally, Davis’ husband talked his way past the officers, but she had to stay behind. She waited for him and worried about their five dogs and two cats. Ken Davis came back a few hours later but never was able to reach their home. He had to turn around when thick clouds of smoke blocked the road ahead, he explained. So the Davises only made it back to their nine-acre property days later, once the fire danger passed. They found a jumble of metal, stone and ashes.

“Everything was so devastated, everything was melted,” Davis said. “You couldn’t even know what stood there before.”

They were finally able find three of their dogs, but there was no sign of their two cats or of the other two canines. Davis misses them. She also misses her home. “I feel like it’s a really terrible thing to happen to us at this stage in our life,” she said.

Davis and a ceramic jack-o-lantern she found.

She has gone through the rubble and gathered some remnants of her past that survived the fires. She found an elephant-shaped pitcher — a memento of her childhood. Then there’s a cast-iron, rabbit-shaped door stop. On a recent Saturday afternoon, Davis spotted a ceramic jack-o-lantern she had made. She walked over debris, struggling to keep her balance, to retrieve it. Before the fires, she planned to bring it to work and fill it with candy for her co-workers, she explained.

“It survived Halloween,” she said, half-jokingly.

Davis found some comfort in these objects. But the support she received from the university, her colleagues and nonprofit organizations was key, she said. The Red Cross and Salvation Army provided debit cards, gift cards, vouchers, water and other supplies. Her colleagues gave her moral support, a cash gift and household goods, she said. A doctor at the UCSD Medical Center, where she works, bought her an electric skillet. “Everyone has been just wonderful,” Davis said. Vice Chancellor Steve Relyea called her to make sure she knew about all the services UCSD offers to fire victims. “I was so impressed,” she said.

Davis, her husband and their three dogs are now crowded in a furnished one-room bungalow a few miles from their former residence. They plan to move to a trailer on their property within the next six months. The house will probably take about two years to rebuild, Davis said. Her husband owns a roofing company, so his contacts in the building and contracting industry will help, she added. She also said she hopes the ordeal with bring them even closer together. “We like to look at it as a new beginning,” she said.

Tes Nebrida and her daughter look at their house's ruins.

About 40 miles north of the Davises’ house, Tes Nebrida, her husband, Ron, and their two children had just experienced a new beginning, when it went up in flames on Oct. 22. Unlike the Davises, who had lived in their home for 23 years, the Nebridas had just finished moving into their new house in Rancho Bernardo Saturday, Oct. 20. They evacuated early Monday morning. Tuesday morning, the remnants of their smoldering home appeared in a photograph on the front page of the San Diego Union-Tribune.

“There are moments when I am really, really sad,” said Nebrida, assistant director for administration at the UCSD Alumni Association. “But you have to look forward, whether you like it or not.”

That Saturday, she and her husband stood in their brand-new living room and looked at their new house and their new furniture. They felt like newlyweds, Nebrida said. They had wanted a house with more space for their teenage son and daughter for a long time. “We were just excited for our family,” she said.

The following day, the Nebridas spent time with family and waited for furniture to be delivered. They went to bed sometime around 4 a.m. Monday. Then their dog, Nikki, started barking. The wind was howling. Suddenly, Nebrida saw her daughter, Christina, wide awake and talking on her cell phone. One of her friends, who also lived in Rancho Bernardo, got a reverse-911 call and was evacuating. Ron Nebrida went upstairs and looked out the window. He yelled: “There’s fire in the back.” You could see the flames rushing toward the house, Tes Nebrida recalls. She yelled to her children to grab their jackets and get out. Just like the Davis family, the Nebridas weren’t able to take anything out of their home. “It was just so fast, so fast,” Nebrida said.

Nebrida's house, before and after the fire.

The family spent Monday night at Ron’s sister’s house in Mission Hills. They found themselves at Target that evening, in their pajamas, shopping for clothes. Then they spent Tuesday and Wednesday at Tes’ brother’s in Poway. Thursday, they stood in line with other Rancho Bernardo residents to get back into their neighborhood.

They first went to their old house, which they were planning to rent out. It had been spared, but the roof would need to be checked. Then police officers took Nebrida and her daughter to the site of the home they had just bought. When they heard what street the Nebridas lived on, the officers told the two women to be prepared. “It was like a war zone,” Nebrida recalls. They saw the devastation, lot after lot after lot. She and Christina started crying.

The Nebridas now live with Ron’s parents and plan to move back to their old home within the next few weeks. A search of their new home’s ruins didn’t yield much. Nebrida said her family is now trying to figure out what it takes to rebuild. But they still have a lot to be thankful for, she added. Their old home has been spared, even though they will need to refurnish it. “We’re still trying to make it day by day, to start the healing process,” she said.

Grant Deane, a researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, lives on campus after losing his home.

Grant Deane, the Scripps researcher, and his wife, were renters, so they won’t have to struggle with rebuilding a house. But they too are working to rebuild their life. They are victims of the Witch Fire and lost quite a few of their cherished possessions. Deane moved into his wife’s house two years ago after they were married. The couple had worked hard to make it their home. They redecorated; they repainted; they bought furniture and original artwork.

“We had just finished and it was really nice,” Deane said, his voice slightly overcome by emotion. “We put a lot of ourselves into it. You can’t pack that into a car.”

The reverse-911 call came to the Deanes’ house late Sunday. They immediately started packing. They took their three cats first. Grant Deane also took with him a box made of wood from his native New Zealand. It houses family heirlooms, such as a ring his father gave him. He also took a scrapbook that documents his life, made by his parents. “They put a tremendous amount of love and effort in that scrapbook,” Deane said. “I grabbed that. I had to.”

He also grabbed his laptop, work papers and tax returns. Then he headed back to his study. “I just stopped,” he recalls. “I thought: if all of this really burned down, what would I miss?” So he took a pin – a family gift -- and a slide rule he’s owned since age 16.

Deane also has a daughter from a first marriage, who lives in New York, but had a room in the San Pasqual Valley house as well. He went through that room, gathering photographs, childhood toys and heirlooms from her grandmother. “Then that was it,” he said. “As far as the rest of my possessions, I didn’t really care.”

Deane said he believes his wife suffered more from their losses. She really thought about the things she wanted in her life, from clothes to furniture, he explained. “All that is gone,” he said.

A scrapbook of Deane's life made by his parents.

While they evacuated, his wife found she couldn’t bring herself to take one of the couple’s artworks, a colorful ceramic that sat atop the fireplace. She would get too emotional, she told her husband. So the Deanes left the ceramic behind.

A few days later, they found out they had lost their home and that ceramic became the symbol of everything they had lost, Deane said. But when he and his wife finally were able to go back and sift through the rubble, they started finding pieces of the artwork, scattered everywhere. They dotted the otherwise white, gray and black landscape with specks of color, red, green and blue. The Deanes finally found all the ceramic’s pieces. They plan to put it together again. It now has become a symbol of their ability to pull their lives back together, Deane said.

The Deanes live in a two-bedroom apartment in the One Miramar Street graduate student housing complex on campus. They’ve purchased some furniture, as well as towels, pots and pans. Their colleagues wanted to give them money and gifts. Deane said they are reluctant to accept, but have learned to be gracious. Their insurance and employers are taking good care of them, he said. Still, he often finds notes and gift cards in his mailbox at Scripps. He has worked here for 17 years, but still saw himself as an outsider from New Zealand. His co-workers’ generosity in the aftermath of the fires is changing that, he said.

“I feel more like it’s a place I can call home,” he said.