News - Week old restart story old news

Editor: Found this interesting story describing a week old re-burn near Placerville.

Story appeared in Folsom - Rancho Cordova News - Homes survive 30-acre grass fire - sacbee.com:

Homes survive 30-acre grass fire
The Placerville-area blaze traps residents in their homes.

By Stan Oklobdzija - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Thursday, July 26, 2007

While the hills around her burned, Cindy Isdahl, 59, baked a peach pie.

Trapped inside her home by a grass fire that started south of Placerville on July 17, she said there really wasn't much else she could do.

Isdahl had just arrived home when she started seeing smoke from a fire that charred about 30 acres and prompted mandatory evacuations of more than a dozen homes a week ago.

About 2 p.m., the flames quickly spread from Coon Hollow Road, near Highway 49, and up the picturesque bluff next to Via Montanosa Road, where her home of the past two years sits, trapping her inside.

"Once (the fire) jumped the road, none of us could leave," she said, referring to other residents trapped on Via Montanosa Road by the blaze. "So I figured I'd better get dinner going."

The fire was put out about 5:30 p.m., said Chris Anthony, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Though the flames came close, no homes were damaged.

About 5 p.m., firefighters were still mopping up the blaze. The gated street was awash in a tangle of hoses coming from fire-trucks parked in the driveways of the expansive upscale homes.

Down at the bottom of the hill, Isdahl's son Brad spent the duration of the fire on the phone with his mother.

"I don't think she was too scared," he said, adding his mother is a tough woman. "I think I was more concerned than she was."

But Isdahl said she did get frightened once, when the flames came about 10 feet from her back patio, charring sections of her lawn. She said she could feel the heat and noticed smoke had started filling her home.

"I didn't really have a plan to escape," she said. "I figured if the house caught fire, I'd run outside and sit in one of the firetrucks."

Isdahl took a break from her pie to take in the once-spectacular view from her home atop a bluff. The trees that once speckled the valley below were now mere blackened stalks awash in a blanket of smoke.

"It really changed the view a lot," she said.