Cornette said the space, which is near a county park and which residents say was cleared by a homeowners\u2019 association, \u201cvery well helped us in the firefight.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Charred](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/SUT-L-Creelman-Fire-0724-008.jpg\")
The Creelman fire charred earth on the left, stopping just before the homes on the right near Oak Springs Drive. (Meg McLaughlin \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
The area is considered wildland-urban interface, a zone where development borders undeveloped vegetation. Fire officials say those areas present a high fire risk because brush is highly flammable and helps wildfires grow.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, even though the flames were so tall they could be seen from Mount Woodson, nearly 10 miles away, Cornette said the fuel break near Oak Springs Drive gave firefighters defensible space where they could set up and fight the approaching fire.<\/p>\n
The 10-foot-wide swath of vacant land winds its way behind the homes on the west side of San Diego Country Estates \u2014 a community of about 3,500 homes \u2014 and rests at the base of a handful of canyons. On Thursday, the formerly green hills and trees had transformed into charred sticks, wilted palm trees and what firefighters call \u201cmoonscape,\u201d an area of topsoil that is stripped bare and blackened.<\/p>\n
![\"Marc](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/SUT-L-Creelman-Fire-0724-011.jpg\")
Marc Ethington stands near his pool, with the Creelman fire’s destruction behind it along Oak Springs Drive on Thursday. (Meg McLaughlin \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
Though the fences and some of the backyards were damaged, the homes appeared largely defended by the fire break.<\/p>\n
Oak Springs Drive resident Harvey Mendiola, whose home butts up against the fire break, said he has spent the last 10 years building an island paradise in his backyard, complete with a gazebo, bar, hand-carved tiki sculptures he makes himself and multiple palapas, or open-sided structures with thatched roofs made of dried palm leaves.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the tropical paradise was razed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt came over the hill, and it felt like 100 guys were on the ridge blowing flamethrowers down,\u201d he said. \u201cYou didn\u2019t even have 15 minutes to grab your stuff. Not even 10.\u201d<\/p>\n
While grateful that his home was spared, and that some of his hand-carved artwork was left unscathed, Mendiola said he was most sad about the fire destroying a nest that a wild dove had built in his gazebo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Photos: Creelman fire aftermath<\/a><\/p>\n On Thursday, a lone dove was flying in circles, just over the wreckage.<\/p>\n Mendiola\u2019s next-door neighbors up the hill from him lost their art studio, the unit behind their home gutted by the fire, he said. And his neighbor on the other side, Marc Ethington, was evacuating as the flames began carving their way down the hill.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ethington then came home Thursday morning to find his trailer was burned black on one side and his fence licked by flames, but the vast majority of his property, which sits directly adjacent to the cleared dirt path behind the community, was largely fine.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really all just material stuff, you can buy,\u201d Ethington said, referencing the items the fire damaged. \u201cBut if I lose the house? That would\u2019ve been the one, because you work so hard for that, right?\u201d<\/p>\n Mendiola said he was trying to save his gazebo and palapas by wetting them with a garden hose when a firefighter walked up and told him he had to leave right then. Waiting any longer may have proved fatal.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said: \u2018You don\u2019t have time. You need to get into your car, just with what you got on, get your important things \u2026 It\u2019s your life or this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Residents say they were well aware of fire risks after having seen other blazes threaten their neighborhood.<\/p>\n Cornette said the Ramona community has a \u201creally active\u201d Fire Safe Council that is educating residents on defensive space and disaster preparedness. Another program can provide grants for brush clearing and other projects.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are very fortunate to have active volunteers and people dedicated to these programs. And it is proving its worth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Some ornamental vegetation near homes caught fire Wednesday, which could easily have spread to the homes by sending embers into eaves.<\/p>\n Cornette said there\u2019s a push for homeowners to provide a 5-foot barrier around their homes, clearing away vegetation and other combustible material, to lessen the fire danger. That effort is known as creating a non-combustible \u201cZone Zero\u201d buffer zone.<\/p>\n State law calls for existing home and property owners to meet Zone Zero guidelines<\/a> by February in many cities, including San Diego<\/a>, while new construction in areas deemed in very high fire severity zones is supposed to be following the new rules.<\/p>\n Cornette said homeowners can take many small steps\u00a0to try to prevent fires from spreading to their homes, including clearing\u00a0leaves from their roofs, cleaning gutters and removing combustible materials within that 5-foot barrier. Bigger projects include replacing wooden fences with metal ones, he said.<\/p>\n Mendiola said he plans to rebuild his backyard, but this time with less hand-carved wood and more metal.<\/p>\n He also sees lessons in Wednesday\u2019s near-miss.<\/p>\n He said that once he and his neighbors have had a chance to repair their properties and clear debris from their yards, he\u2019s going to ask them to come together to expand the 10-feet-wide lane behind their homes. When the time comes, he\u2019d also like to volunteer and see if his neighbors would join him for brush clearance in the small valleys behind their homes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As flames neared homes along Oak Springs Drive in the San Diego Country Estates on Wednesday, a cleared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,138,181,23,100,3054,15550,74,84,76,75,1696],"class_list":["post-410251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-north-county","tag-ramona","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Fire](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/SUT-L-Creelman-Fire-0724-018.jpg\")
Fire retardant seen on a hill after the Creelman fire near Oak Springs Drive on Thursday. (Meg McLaughlin \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n![\"Charred](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/SUT-L-Creelman-Fire-0724-013.jpg\")
Charred tiki sculptures are seen at Harvey Mendiola\u2019s home after the Creelman fire on Thursday. (Meg McLaughlin \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n