Rebuilding Their Lives
Staff and Faculty Reflect on Losing Their Homes
as San Diego Marks One-Year Anniversary of Devastating Wildfires
Ioana Patringenaru | Oct. 27, 2008
On a warm Tuesday afternoon, Judy Davis, a UCSD staff member, and her husband, Ken, stood on an overhang, looking down on the busy construction site that surrounds their new home. It had been exactly one year to the day since the Harris fire came through Deerhorn Valley, near Jamul, turning the home the couple had shared for 23 years into a jumble of rubble and twisted iron. Now, a new wooden frame topped by a plywood roof rises where the home’s ruins stood. Davis smiled and hugged her husband. They kissed.
On the one-year anniversary of the wildfires that destroyed more than 1,600 homes in San Diego County and led to massive evacuations, Davis and about a dozen other UCSD staff members and faculty who lost their homes are rebuilding both their residences and their lives. Davis and her husband were away when the fires broke out, and they lost everything. But like several other UCSD staff members and faculty, they’ve come to see the ordeal as a blessing in disguise that strengthened their marriage and connections to their family. “What we’ve lost, we’ve lost together,” said Davis.
Some fire victims have bought new homes. Others are drawing up plans or, like Davis, have started building. All said they were thankful for the support they received from their colleagues and the campus as a whole. Davis, an administrative assistant in the reproductive medicine department of the UCSD Medical Center, remembers she received calls from the offices of Vice Chancellors Steven Relyea and David Brenner. Medical students who had raised funds for fire victims also wanted to help her. “I was so touched,” Davis said.
Ken Davis works with the construction crew.
Several fire victims, like Davis, decided to rebuild on the very spot where the fires raged last year. Tes Nebrida, the business officer at the UCSD Alumni Association, said she and her husband wanted to stay in Rancho Bernardo, where they had raised their family. Grant Deane, a professor at UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said he and his wife considered the possibility of losing everything again. They decided they didn’t want to gear up with more sprinklers and other firefighting tools and bought a good fire insurance policy instead. “We’re ready in the sense that we’re ready to do what we need to do to carry on with our lives,” Deane said.
For Deane and his wife, the fire turned into an opportunity to become homeowners. The couple’s rental home in the San Pasqual Valley burned down. They used the money they received from their insurance company for a down payment on a house with a nice backyard in Poway, also a fire-prone area. For the Nebridas and the Davises, the blazes provided a chance to rebuild homes that would be a better fit for their family’s lifestyle. In their telling, the words “blessing in disguise” keeping coming back.
Overcoming tragedy
Tes Nebrida looks at the pool in the backyard of her lost home. She said she often wonders when she will be able to swim in it.
Tes Nebrida, the Alumni Association business manager, didn’t always feel that way. The Nebridas had just moved to their new home in Rancho Bernardo from a smaller house in the same neighborhood. They were forced to evacuate in the wee hours of the morning as the Witch Creek fire overtook the area. Nebrida said she found herself emotionally paralyzed after her family’s house burned down. “It’s a different kind of loss,” she said. “I didn’t get emotional about the house, but about what it stood for. It was our dream home.”
The loss of the house was overshadowed by family tragedies that Nebrida faced in the past year. Her father was diagnosed with cancer. Her mother passed away. “We were just stunned, just stunned,” she said.
“Our parents raised us to be strong and resilient,” she added later. So, Nebrida and her husband focused on rebuilding their home. She dealt with the insurance company. He researched designs and features for the house. Their daughter, Christina, pushed them to get it done. They worked with an architect to design a house that would better accommodate their lifestyle. They always have family over, so the house will include a big family room. Their children’s rooms will be larger. “How many people get to rebuild their house from scratch?” Nebrida asked. “You’ve got to just deal with what life gives you,” she added later.
Building a home
Nebrida's house last year, before and after the fire.
Davis, the UCSD Medical Center employee, also went through ups and downs in dealing with the aftermath of the fires. “I had some real down moments,” she said. In the first four or five months after the fires, she said she often thought about the two dogs, two cats and family heirlooms she lost. Her husband felt angry, she recalls. They talked to each other. Davis also talked to her best friends. “I would just put it in God’s hands,” she said.
Little by little, things started falling into place. San Diego County finally approved plans for the Davises’ new home. Construction started in June. The new 3,000-square-foot residence is built roughly on the same footprint as their old house but is 1,000 square feet larger. “We sat down and put together a house that we liked,” Davis said.
When she looks at the house’s frame, Davis said she already envisions what the rooms will look like. A Mission-style dining set will stand in the dining room. A bathtub has already been delivered for the master bath and stands on wooden flooring, wrapped in plastic sheets. For the bedroom, the Davises received a free sleigh bed made from solid cherry wood from a Ramona furniture maker. Walking through the construction site, Judy Davis points to a space that will become her office and sewing room. She then makes her way to the basement, where her husband will have his “man cave” as she jokingly calls it, with a bar and a pool table.
Every night, when she comes home from Hillcrest, Davis stops by her future home and her husband tells her about the day’s work. He co-owns a roofing business and spends half the day on site with three other workers. The contractors, Tim Hollis and Mark McAdams, are family friends. Davis said she hopes the house will be ready by New Year’s. “It finally is coming together,” she said.
Becoming a homeowner
Grant Deane, a professor at UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, was able to buy a home after the fires.
Deane, the Scripps professor, echoed Davis’ feeling. But he too said he had a hard time coping with his ordeal, roughly four or five months after the blazes. Until June, he and his wife lived in a two-bedroom apartment at the Miramar One graduate housing complex. Deane recalled wondering whether they would ever find a new home. It sometimes seemed like he couldn’t possibly visit yet another house for sale. By his own account, he and his wife saw about 100 properties before finding their 1,400-square-foot home in Poway.
But even before buying the house, Deane’s spirits had started to lift, he recalled. He passed his black-belt karate test, the result of four years of hard work. He and post-doc Helen Czerski solved a difficult research problem at Scripps. His daughter from his first marriage came to visit. When he got the keys to the three-bedroom two-bath Poway home, Deane carried his wife over the threshold.
Some of the items the Deanes salvaged from the San Pasqual Valley have now found a place in Poway. A walking stick Deane’s father carved out of New Zealand wood stands next to the door. He and his wife put together a cozy area in the backyard with deck chairs, a little fountain and a barbeque. Sometimes, small frogs that live in a nearby stream join them in the evening. The couple has been talking about decorating.
“Now we’re in our home,” Deane said. “Now we can move forward.”
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