Despite Fire And Mud, SoCal VAR Feels Fortunate

Joe Kadlec, vice president and senior partner at Consiliant Technologies, an Irvine, Calif.-based storage solution provider, said he feels fortunate despite being forced to evacuate with his family and Yorba Linda, Calif., neighbors on Tuesday due to the torrential rains that followed last month's huge wildfires.

The mudslide risk came as a result of the mid-November fires that raged throughout Southern California. The fires were driven by high winds from the desert, and destroyed several hundred homes throughout the area, including about 118 in the city of Yorba Linda.

Kadlec said that he was one of the lucky ones in that his home, and that of one of his neighbors, barely escaped the burning that destroyed all the other homes in his neighborhood.

"Our place backs into a canyon," he said. "Our house and our neighbor's house should have gone up in flames, but they didn't. The flames shot across both our houses."

Those flames, however, destroyed his swing set and everything else on his property.

Two lucky circumstances saved his home, Kadlec said.

The first was having a neighbor with a swimming pool. Kadlec said that his neighbor is a pool contractor with a big gas-driven pump and a fire hose. The neighbor used the pump to spray water from his swimming pool over both his and Kadlec's houses, including inside open vents, until the flames got too close and he had to leave. Fortunately, Kadlec said, the spray was enough to wet the houses to help resist the flames.

The second was a bit of garden work, Kadlec said. Two weeks before the fire, he trimmed his trees, which removed combustible material from near the house. Firemen who camped out on his property for two days during the fire said the tree trimming was a big factor in saving the house, he said.

Because of the fire, police on Monday issued a mandatory evacuation order for many people living near the burned areas because of the possibility of mudslides. Kadlec and his wife got both phone and e-mail notifications about the evacuation. He and his family plan to stay with relatives until the danger of mudslide is over.

"We were prepared," he said. "Since the fire, I've been carrying a travel bag in my car."

Despite the fire and flood, Kadlec considers himself and his family quite fortunate because he still has a house.

Even so, he said, it will take some time to get back to normal. "When the winds blow, it takes ash and dust off the hills and into the house," he said. "It's like camping. Everything gets dirty."