Hi Pam and Loopers...
I don't know where to begin. I can't thank all of you Loopers enough who responded with donations towards helping both me and my sister out after we lost our home in the Sayre Fire in Sylmar. This goodness was so totally unexpected from the people I knew in school to those that I didn't know...... God Bless you all ! It was so very much appreciated and I can't tell you how this helped in our replacing some items that we lost.
We were ordered out by the police late Friday night of Nov.14th and what we could take with us... is all that was left after the fire swept through and destroyed everything in its path. It looked like a war zone in our community. Nothing left. We saved all our animals but one, we lost a bird..... we saved some clothes, saved the computers, saved the important papers.... but everything else is gone, All the photos from the time I was growing up, all my books, clothes.....well, just look around your house and imagine it all being destroyed by fire and thats what we lost and have to replace bit by bit. Fortunately I had insurance, but even that takes time to deal with. For 2 1/2 weeks after the fire, we were at the disaster center everyday filling out forms etc. from all the different companies setup in there to assist you. It was non-stop from 8am in the morning to sometimes 4 pm in the afternoon, day after day. I've never filled out so many forms or waiting for ages in lines for your turn to be called so you could fill out more forms.
Its times like this, you hear about it on the news when others have gone through something like this.... but to expenience it first hand is a nightmare. You can't believe it really happened.... its also during a time like this that you see how the good people that are still out there come to your aid... its unbelieveable. On that following Wed. when we were allowed to go back in and dig through the ashes to see if we could savage anything, all we retrieved is what you could put in one hand.... and that one hand of burned up and scared items is what once represented a house hold full of items.
I loved my house, from the garage to the wet bar and the gated community that we lived in was a wonderful place to live. To see it now is still to this day hard to take. It looked like a bomb was dropped on all of the 500 homes that were consumed by this fire. At one point the firemen thought they could save the community, but those 80 mile an hour gust of winds were to much for even them and they had to run for their lives. Even now you can see where they dropped their hoses, and where some melted into the pavement. The firemen called it a flash fire that rolled through, like an ocean wave rolling towards the shore. I've enclosed a photo of the destruction and you can see how this fire proceeded, where the tops of the trees in the background looked untouched and everything lower is burnt.
Again I just want to thank everyone... you were a God send..... may God Bless You All !!
Love,
Cher Dibble
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