After fears of new Hemet fire dangers, Tropical Storm Kay aids huge increase in containment
Hemet, CA — Local authorities received a call from a mother who received a phone call from her elderly father and he simply said he was leaving and had his car.
It was about 10:30 p.m. on Jan. 26 when a woman called her father at his home in Hemet, just north of Santa Barbara County. Her father had been calling her for at least a month, and her mother and the children of her family had said the same thing.
They said, “I just want you to know that I love you and I don’t want to see you in a wheelchair with a face like a mask.”
The call was the first to be made to the family from the fire station north of San Marcos.
The firefighter said, “Your father is in his chair and he has smoke coming out of his side and he has got his lungs on fire. He is on his way up to the hospital right now with your mother and two of your children. I am going to stay with him until he gets there.”
There is really not a lot of dialogue that occurs in family emergencies.
“My dad is a Vietnam veteran and an Air Force pilot,” the woman explained. “We never know exactly what would happen.”
Her father’s friends said he had to be at a hospital in San Marcos about a half hour before it could be determined whether he would be moved from the burning car or taken for a ride to the emergency room.
“We had to wait there for him to make it,” said his girlfriend, who was visiting the home with the family.
In the meantime, this woman and her mother got in their car and drove to San Marcos, arriving at the hospital in San Marcos about one hour after her father, who is 84 years old, was in the back of their car being loaded into an ambulance.
The woman called her neighbor, who said he could