When the airport fire spread to Riverside County, Dean James and his friend, Jackie Hunter, tried to escape the flames as they closed in on their Lake Elsinore home. They had their car packed and ready to go. Then it wouldn’t start.
Hunter panicked and ran away, fearing for her life. James later saw her surrounded by smoke and flames in the massive wildfire, which has now burned more than 23,000 acres and 82 houses destroyed while firefighters work day and night.
“She was walking through hell and I was standing at the gate watching, but I couldn’t see her,” James said.
Video footage shows her walking just a few feet away from bright red, roaring flames, embers flying on the ground below her. A patrol car with flashing lights pulls up as several towering flames grow higher in the background, the wind blowing them upward.
OC Hawk via Cal Fire Riverside
Cal Fire Riverside Battalion Commander Mark Martinez tried to reassure her as she got in.
“She was screaming in pain and wanted help,” Martinez said. “And I told her I’m going to get her help. We’re going down the hill.”
James said he’s just thankful the firefighter was there. Hunter is one of 14 people injured in the Airport Fire, including a dozen firefighters, according to the latest count released Saturday by Cal Fire, or the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
“She’s alive,” James said. “God put an angel in the right place.”
Since then, Hunter has been hospitalized with burns and is being treated in the intensive care unit at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton.
“I was glad to see her alive because I didn’t know what had happened. Whether she had walked the wrong way and walked into the fire, or whether for some reason she had gone back into the house and gotten stuck,” said Reed Nichols, her friend and landlord.
It is not clear what her condition is on Saturday.
James was also rescued from the fire, along with his dog Zeus, but he now has “nowhere to go,” he said.
His home and three other homes owned by Nichols in the El Cariso neighborhood of Lake Elsinore were all completely destroyed by the wildfire. More than 80 homes there and in other areas, including nearby Lakeland Village, were lost in the fire.
It is one of three fires raging through the Southern California region, forcing thousands of residents to flee their homes as they grew in size over the past week. Another of the wildfires, the bridge fire In Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, this is currently the third largest fire in California so far this year, after the blaze burned more than 53,000 acres, or about 83 square miles.
All in all, the three forest fires have burned more than 100,000 hectares.
