After more than 20 years of living in Chula Vista, Dean Tropp, an Eastlake High School wrestling coach and teacher in San Ysidro, decided to buy a home in Lawson Valley in East County. Celebrating one month in their home and getting to know their new neighbors, the family decided to beat the 110 degree weather and head down to the beach Saturday.
In the early afternoon they looked to the east and saw smoke billowing in the sky. It was somewhat smaller at the time, said Tropp, but as they watched he decided to get on his phone and find out where it was. He looked at the map and it was just a few miles east of where he was living.
It was the Valley Fire that began on Sept. 5 that so far has destroyed 20 habitable structures, 17 minor structures and injured two people. The blaze has burned an estimate 17,565 acres and was 11 percent contained by Wednesday.
After his wife talked to a friend in Jamul who told her authorities were calling for evacuations, they drove from the beach to their home.
“By the time we got there the fire had broken the ridge and was basically in my back yard,” he said. “We were quickly getting things, we have three dogs, pet tortoises. We grabbed a couple of important paperwork containers and threw them in the truck.”
Tropp said while leaving he saw his nextdoor neighbor’s corral of about 10 horses and he and anther neighbor opened the gates so the horses could at least escape the fires, then they quickly got out of there.
“It was surreal to say the least,” he said. “It was one of the things you see in the movies, see on TV and it always happens to everyone else, but I was very scared. It was beyond crazy.”
Little did Tropp know, that there was a CalFire truck at his neighbor on the other side fighting the blaze, but he could not see it from where his house is. “So, I thought, oh my gosh, there is nobody back there,” he said.
“When I left, it is about a 15-minute drive from my house to get on the Skyline Truck Trail, that was a long drive. I figured that we had lost our house for sure. There was no way that our house was going to survive.”
The next day he was able to get down there and he was amazed that everything around his house was charred.
“The vegetation was charred, the vegetation behind my house was like grey sand,” he said. “My brother said it best, that this is what he would imagine the moon looks like. It was reduced to grey sand with a few twigs sticking out. It was simply surreal. It was just strange.”
Returning on Sunday, he noticed two houses to the east of his had burned, but his was still intact. He said it had some minor damage, but there was no damage to the structure of the house for the most part.
“CalFire was to the east of me. My neighbor Dan were fighting on the other side of his house, but I didn’t know because I couldn’t see anybody,” he said. “We have a lot of people that have horses in that area and on my street and Animal Control or the Humane Society were trying to corral as many horses as possible, and livestock.”
Tropp lives on a dirt road about 3/4 of a mile to his house and it was out on the pavement that he saw CalFire, like they were staging to fight it from the pavement.
“I guess there were crews out there and they were fighting it,” he said. “When I went back, I could see that they had dropped fire retardant to the east of my house and my neighbor’s house and I think that was one of the saving graces to both of our houses. It was just amazing. I still can’t believe that my house survived. I am still in shock.”
Tropp said they were able to go back on Sunday, but the roads closures were sporadic, and he has not been able to get back since leaving his house on Monday.
“We left Monday and tried to get back and they had coned it off not letting anybody down there,” he said. “There still were fires. We saw it firsthand Sunday night and Monday morning. They are still battling fires, especially at night you can see them all lit up. We wanted to leave on Monday because the air quality was so bad. The smoke on the ground was still smoldering, the hot spots.”
He said he saw CalFire bulldozers going down his street heading east from where he lives, probably to make fire breaks in case Santa Ana winds blew the fire back in their direction.
“I feel comfortable now,” he said. “I don’t believe that there is anything around my house left to burn. That’s a good thing for my house. I just hope that they can keep it away from other houses. I don’t want to see anybody lose their house.”
Fire was Tropp’s biggest fear and he was skeptical when looking at where his property lies as it butts up against a preserve and surrounded by heavy brush.
“It kind of freaked me out with just the idea of fires because we saw in 2003, 2007 in its devastation. That was my reservation before moving there,” he said.
Tropp is in Eastlake right now at his sister-in-law’s house home until they can return.
