California

We were awakened at 7:00 am and had five minutes to grab what we could and get in the car. There are only three two lane roads leading out of the area and they all ran through heavily wooded areas. For all I knew two of them could have been closed, so we did not hesitate.

You learn what is important to you when you have five minutes to grab what you can. I grabbed dog food for the dogs and left jewelery behind. Which was stupid because I could just go buy dog food. We were fortunate in that we had someplace to go because a relative lived about ten miles away. We got back to our house two days later. We went through one solid day not knowing if our house was still there.

We went to the refugee center at the high school because my wife was a certified Red Cross disaster worker and helped out there. I helped with the area where they were letting people keep all ther dogs. I helped walk dogs for elderly people who couldn't. It was kind of fun doing that.