RAMONA, Calif. (KGTV) – In a backyard along Oak Springs Drive in San Diego Country Estates, an art studio sits heavily damaged. Nearby, a shed was destroyed. A few houses down, a gazebo filled with wood carvings was reduced to pieces.<\/p>\n
Just past the gazebo, I stood with Harvey and Carolyn Mendiola. Harvey said the burn scar on the hill behind his yard traces the path of the Creelman Fire.<\/p>\n
“When the wind came, took seconds not minutes to come down the valley,” Mendiola said. “It felt like a fire torch coming, you could feel the heat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harvey and his wife, Carolyn, only had time to grab their cats before driving off.<\/p>\n
“I got in our car, in tears. I was thinking, \u2018our house is going to burn down. God help us,\u2019” Carolyn said.<\/p>\n
Down the street, Mary Beth Camarena had also evacuated right after phoning her husband, a longtime firefighter with the San Miguel Fire District. On duty, he raced back to the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
“There were spot fires. He helped trimming back some brush, making sure no stuff happening on the other side of the street,” Camarena said.<\/p>\n
In the end, his efforts and the work of all the fire crews saved the homes in the area.<\/p>\n
“Can’t believe it got to the retaining wall, but they saved the house. Amazing,\u201d Camarena said.<\/p>\n
The flames did claim Mendiola’s gazebo and some 12 tiki carvings he carved himself. Nearby, melted patio furniture and a burned bar were left behind.<\/p>\n
But the grateful couple will never forget returning to their home Wednesday and finding it standing.<\/p>\n
“She was in tears, I just looked up and said thank you god, and thank God for the fighters, thank you guys for saving the house,” Harvey Mendiola said.<\/p>\n
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RAMONA, Calif. (KGTV) – In a backyard along Oak Springs Drive in San Diego Country Estates, an art…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[163927,74,76,75,3000],"class_list":["post-411843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-creelman-fire","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-wildfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411843","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=411843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}