The memories are still burned in their minds. A fire plowed through town and stole their homes.
20 years ago, the Cedar Fire burned more than 273,000 acres in San Diego County, destroyed 2,232 homes, and killed 15 people.
“This community was really decimated by the Cedar Fire,” sighed Anne Malinoski while standing outside her parent’s new home in the Crest neighborhood of San Diego.
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Malinoski was only 14 when her dad told her and her two brothers to grab one thing and head to the car. She grabbed her tap shoes because she had a rehearsal the next day.
“And now they’re mine forever. This is all I have from the time before the fire,” she said while holding the worn shoes.
She recalled her dad stopping the family van. “As we were leaving, I remember he said, ‘Say goodbye to your house,’ and that was when I knew.”
A few miles away in Lakeside, David and Kathy Kassel were rushing home from a camping trip after hearing the Cedar Fire tore through their neighborhood.
“We realized that this was not a fire at our house, but a fire at everybody’s house,” said David. “The first thing we saw was our house and there was nothing there but a chimney.”
“Once we realized how huge it was, I think it was more shocked than scared,” added Kathy.
Malinoski remembered driving back to their home in the dark the next day.
“At that moment when my dad’s headlights swept across the rubble is burnt in my memory because I really thought it might still be there, but it wasn’t,” she said through tears.
The Cedar Fire changed thousands of lives beginning October 25, 2003. Many people like Malinoski’s family and the Kassels stayed and built new homes where the old ones once stood.
“We knew that it was going to be a long road, a lot of insurance issues,” said David.
“Even though what we went through was hard, I had never to that point experienced community the way I experienced it after the fire,” Anne said.
“For me, it’s how resilient our community is,” said Kathy.
Malinoski said community members regularly donated clothes and supplies to her family. A few years later, while in college, Malinoski got a message from an old classmate who found their kindergarten class picture.
“He said, ‘I bet you don’t have a lot of pictures from your childhood because of the fire. I want you to have this,’” she smiled. “And that’s how we started talking, started dating, and we’ve been married 12 years.”
They now have two sons.
“I never want to forget that our loss is so much less than those that lost family,” said Kathy.
“We just said, 'Whatever it is, we won’t look back. We’ll just look forward,” concluded David.
The Kassels would later help create the Cedar Fire Rebuilding Resource Group. They both say the Cedar Fire shaped who they are today.
