North County Times - North San Diego and Southwest Riverside County News

Garcia and Ortega and their families escaped with their lives and their vehicles, the clothes they were wearing and nothing else.

Nothing.

Of survivors and destruction

Today, Garcia and Ortega are neighbors and are among some 40 people who continue to reside in government-issued trailers at Rancho Corrido Campground, a grassy flat spread out beneath Highway 76 in Pauma Valley.

For months after the firestorms of last fall, the campground was home to 37 families displaced by San Diego County's wildfires of October 2003.

Many families have moved, but others find themselves stuck, with nowhere else to call home.

"What helped us a lot is when the (Federal Emergency Management Agency) gave us a trailer," said Ortega, a mother of nine.

At the campground, survivors help one another heal with the help of professional counselors who make weekly visits.

These survivors represent a portion of the hundreds who suffered total losses during the most destructive wildfires ever recorded in California.

The Paradise fire, which displaced and nearly killed the Garcia and Ortega families, did kill two people, and the Cedar fire killed 14.

For some survivors, the material and emotional damages make the rebuilding of lives every bit as arduous as the rebuilding of homes.

Of lives changed

"I've had lots of problems," Garcia said in Spanish, her face filled with introspection, her black hair tied tightly in a bun.

Garcia recently welcomed a reporter and photographer into her trailer.

Two bunk beds filled a living space and Garcia sat on a bunk with one of her seven children, Ivan, 12.

The water wasn't working, she said, lamenting the condition of the lavatory and a kitchen sink piled high with unwashed dishes.

Tops on Garcia's long list of worries is the depression her children have suffered, especially one of her teenage daughters. She said the girl has become withdrawn and she worries that she might be suicidal.

A teardrop forms and falls and soon come many more of them.

"My daughter," Garcia said, wiping an eye with her finger, "I don't see her as she was before."

So traumatizing was the firestorm ---- the screaming, the crying, the coughing, the nosebleeds ---- that Garcia herself did not eat for two weeks afterward, she said.

Financial problems soon piled up atop the emotional ones.

The federal agency issued a $9,000 check to the family, and the family bought a used trailer with it. The trailer was in such disrepair, however, that the family could not live in it, Garcia said. The woman who sold the trailer to the family made a fast exit to Hemet with their money, Garcia said.

Garcia wiped another tear. Ivan sat quietly behind her. He had come home from school the day before with a 104-degree fever.

"My life," Garcia said, "isn't as it was before."

Needs are "as strong as ever"

Cases such as Garcia's are never 100 percent closed, said Craig Jones, special projects director for Interfaith Community Services.

Since the wildfires, the Escondido-based nonprofit has allied itself with other groups specifically to provide housing for wildfire survivors in the greater Valley Center area. The coalition of resource groups and community leaders calls itself the Paradise Fire Community Collaborative for Emergency Transitional Housing.

"We concentrated on poor people living in trailers," Jones said.

The group soon raised more than $500,000, which Jones said is a modest sum for the heavy capital demands of housing. By December 2003, however, the group had secured 33 trailers for displaced families to live in.

The coalition remains active, Jones said, and he estimated an additional $250,000 remains available to families in need.

More help has poured in from ElderHelp, a San Diego-based nonprofit serving people over 55. The group's executive director, Leane Marchese, said estimates have placed the number of displaced seniors seeking assistance at 1,200.

Of those, only 20, percent, or 240, have started to rebuild, she said.

"The demand is as strong as ever," Marchese said. "What that really tells us is there's a lot of work left to be done. When you're older, it hits you harder. When you look at yourself at 75, starting over looks very different than it does at 40."

Still other groups, some national and some community-based, continue to offer relief.

Paradise Fire Relief is a go-between group connecting clients with resources offered by the Salvation Army, Red Cross, the federal emergency agency, ElderHelp, Habitat for Humanity and local churches. Assistance from those groups remains available, officials say.

The Church at Rancho Bernardo has coordinated adopt-a-family programs as well as giveaways of goods and services at Rancho Corrido Campground, and a final distribution is scheduled for 1:30 to 3 p.m. today, said Howard Cooper, a pastor at the church.

Slowly healing

For Ortega's family, the assistance has been invaluable, she said. Interfaith continues to pay a portion of the monthly rent at Rancho Corrido.

There, the family is slowly regaining its spirits. A new pet, a Chihuahua named Shadow, has brought welcome smiles to Ortega and her children.

Ortega's and other families at the campground have a special solidarity.

"We can talk with all the other people whose houses have burned," she said.

The emotional reconstruction may take longer than the physical rebuilding, authorities said.

"It's well known the recovery from a disaster takes two to three years," said Terry Van Koughnett, a project manager for Interfaith. "Part of it is the grieving process. I still find, when I talk to people, a lady started crying when talking about it."

"There's still a tremendous amount of emotion," he continued. "The ones who don't have a house rebuilt yet, who actually lost a house, that's tough. They have nothing to fall back on."

How to help