Mendiola spends long hours carving tikis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I made is priceless,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
This San Diego Country Estates homeowner was home Wednesday afternoon, working on one of his tikis, when he noticed a plume of smoke rising from the mountain behind his backyard.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a few minutes later a helicopter flew over and the smoke got bigger,\u201d Mendiola said.<\/p>\n
He tried using the water hose to keep the fire from reaching his home, but he said it reached his backyard in a matter of seconds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t see. I couldn\u2019t breathe,\u201d Mendiola said.<\/p>\n
The fire came just feet away from his home.<\/p>\n
It quickly engulfed his little island paradise in smoke, scorching his patio deck and artwork and singed his neighbor\u2019s camper.<\/p>\n
On July 22, the Creelman Fire in Ramona quickly grew to over 340 acres, prompting evacuations.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cYou can see my tikis,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a place where we gather all our family and friends whether it\u2019s a celebration, graduation, party, and we just kick it out here. Just break out the Ukuleles and guitars and you know just feel that island vibe,\u201d Mendiola said.<\/p>\n
This is what the patio looked like before the fire.<\/p>\n
Although the fire came just feet away from his home, it didn\u2019t damage it.<\/p>\n
However, the fire quickly engulfed his little Island Paradise gazebo, destroying all his artwork and singing his neighbor\u2019s camper.<\/p>\n
He thanks the fire crews for saving their home and the homes all along the mountainside.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are just things. They can always be replaced. The most important thing is we could have tried to save this house and died. You know, but when we got kicked out we had no choice but to leave and just pray,\u201d Mendiola said.<\/p>\n
When he came back, he was happy to find the two tikis he was working on intact.<\/p>\n
\u201cCarving these two guys and seeing them when I came back, it was a joyful feeling,\u201d Mendiola said.<\/p>\n
He knows rebuilding his island paradise will take time, but he\u2019s planning to make it even better than before.<\/p>\n
Mendiola said something he learned from this experience is to have your neighbors’ contact information so you can reach them and look out for each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mendiola spends long hours carving tikis. \u201cWhat I made is priceless,\u201d he said. This San Diego Country Estates…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[15550,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-413480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-ramona","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413480","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=413480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}