"It's gonna take two days," explains Jill Knipp. "Probably about 20 hours to get out."
On Saturday, she hired movers to help pack up and move out of the house she's lived in for 19 years. Everything is going into storage, and if all goes well, she'll be moving back in very soon.
She's hoping the 16 -foot high fire-proof wall built this week will protect her home when her next door neighbors house is intentionally burned down. Still, she says she's moving everything out, just in case.
"I know there's a point of time very early in the burn where you can't fight the fire." she said. "They've warned me about that."
San Marcos Fire Chief Todd Newman says firefighters stay a few hundred feet away at the beginning of the fire, operating remote control hoses. They're planning the burn for someday next week depending on wind conditions. Part of Interstate 15 north of state route 78 will have to be shut down during the fire.
Knipp says she never saw her 54-year-old neighbor George Jakubec. And she never imagined what investigators would later find inside his house. A federal indictment released earlier in the week stated 13 grenades, nine detonators, and a huge stockpile of at least three types of explosives was found in the house Jakubec was renting. He is also accused of robbing three banks over the past year.
"I have no idea what the motivation is to do anything like that, to put other people at risk." says Knipp, "It's just so encompassing what could've happened here."
"We can't afford a moving truck, or any of that stuff right now," says Alan Haghighi, who owns the house on the other side of Jakubec.
Haghighi operates a small winery out of his house and says he's not sure how he'll pay the mortgage next month. He says he'll likely watch the burn from a safe distance.
"If it catches on my house, just pray like the dickens and make sure someone puts it out or something." he says.
Jill Knipp is confident her house will be ok, but if it's not, she says, she will be ok.
"It just is what it is. I deal with it, and hopefully when we come out the other side, we will back to normal," she says, "And if the house is still standing, then that's great."
