Dark Smoke on Cowles Mountain Sends Neighborhood Residents a Signal to Flee

When Joan Harris and her children looked out the window of their home on Jennite Drive and saw that Cowles Mountain was dark with smoke, they scooped up their dog, two pet rabbits, some photograph albums and their new home computer.

“You don’t have much time to think about what to take,” Harris said. “When they say evacuate, they mean immediately.”

Outside, San Diego firefighters had begun shooing hundreds of people from the hot and smoky residential area on the southwestern side of Mission Trails Park.

Directly in the path of the flames were homes on Jennite, Volclay and Golfcrest drives, residential streets on the edge of Cowles Mountain.

Embers Everywhere

Embers swirled from burning brush in the park, skipping over some houses and settling on the roofs of others.

“They were catching (fire) one right after another; we almost lost a dozen homes,” said Capt. Mike Stephenson of the San Diego Fire Department. Six fire engines were brought to the area between Hillcrest Drive and the park, he said.

In all, nine homes in that area caught fire, and most of those suffered roof damage, Stephenson said.

“It was very, very lucky. We could have lost a lot of homes.”

Harris’ rented home in the 7500 block of Jennite Drive suffered about $2,000 in damage to the roof.

Several blocks away on Golfcrest Drive, two friends using a fire hose may have saved a condominium complex on the edge of the park.

Grabbed Fire Hose

Jim Stevenson, 24, and Matt Barney, 31, who live in the Golfcrest Pines development, said that when they saw the smoke rising from the nearby brush and no firefighters in sight, they took a length of fire hose from Barney’s garage, where he stored it for use in his grading business.

“The flames were getting too close,” Stevenson said. “Flames were coming at us, they were coming down the hill.”

Stevenson said he and Barney took turns spraying the trees and the nearby brush and kept the fire at bay for about an hour until firefighters arrived. Stevenson and Barney continued to man the hose under the firefighters’ direction throughout the afternoon, they said.

“The whole mountain was on fire,” Stevenson said. “It was very hot, and every time I looked up, it was right there. I could hear it popping, and flames were shooting up.”

Others Took Off

Others fled the complex with their possessions, Barney said. “I decided it was a lot easier to put the fire out than move out all our belongings.”

On Birchcreek Road, Norman Mendes saw flames come within 100 feet of his house.

“I didn’t need anybody to tell me to get out of here,” Mendes said. “My house was caught between an inferno of orange flames that were shooting 15, 30, 40, 50 feet in to the air. We were the baloney in the sandwich.

“I got my kids out of the swimming pool, grabbed some important documents and got out of here.” Mendes has four children ranging in age from 3 to 10.

Soot, Ash in Pool

When he returned to his house shortly before 5 p.m., Mendes said, he found his pool coated with soot and ashes.

Richard Camacho, 44, who also lives on Birchcreek Road, took his family to South Mission Beach to kick off the Labor Day weekend. But his holiday plans went awry when he noticed smoke in the sky.

“My wife called the neighbors, and then we heard that Birchcreek Road was being evacuated,” Camacho said. “That’s when we raced home.”

But when he arrived in his neighborhood, Camacho ran into a police roadblock.

More Frustration

“They wouldn’t let anybody in. I couldn’t see my house. As you can imagine, that added to our frustration. I couldn’t tell whether my house was being consumed by flames.

“Some of the neighbors were getting pretty upset. You develop a tremendous amount of emotional attachment to your home. . . . In times of stress, you have to exercise all your options, so I went around and got to my house.”

He found his house was still standing and later learned that his brother had rescued the family’s golden retriever.

Times staff writer Jane Fritsch contributed to this report.