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Banner image above: Dianne Shepard
Recovery In Ramona
People in fire-prone areas get jittery when furnace-like gusts of wind tangle with a climbing thermometer. It’s a blazing mid-April day in Ramona, and Dianne Shepard looks a little nervous as the warm air stirs up and rustles nearby trees. She has good reason to feel this way. She lost her home off Highway 78 in last October’s Witch Creek Fire.
It’s her 67th birthday on this particular afternoon, and although some would say Shepard doesn’t have much to be happy about — until recently, she and her longtime boyfriend, Angel Orozco, were sleeping in a horse trailer — she smiles constantly and spins delightful yarns as she gives a tour of the rubble that still remains after months of cleanup.
At the center of her property sits the hollowed-out remains of a massive old tree. This oak, which was planted more than a century ago at what was then a stagecoach stop on the route to Julian, used to provide much-needed shade for Shepard and her flock of dogs and goats. It’s an especially heartbreaking sight. But, says Shepard as she points out a few tendrils of green growing from the charred trunk, the tree is beginning to show signs of life.
That pervasive sense of optimism has kept Shepard strong through her post-fire ordeal. The native San Diegan and former beauty queen — she was crowned Miss North Park in 1957, beating out co-contestant Raquel Welch — bought her 12-acre piece of rural paradise 35 years ago. The house itself was built in 1860, and during her time there Shepard had filled it to the rafters with beautiful antiques and family memories. It took the Santa Ana-fueled flames just hours to destroy all that history.
Shepard was visiting her elderly mother in San Diego when it burned, but her son, who lives on the property, called to tell her after he high-tailed it out of there on an ATV. "I was worried about my goats," Shepard recalls. "I called the Humane Society, who made sure they had enough water. Then we snuck back to fix the gate. We thought the tree was okay, but when we looked in a knothole we saw it was burning inside. It burned for days."
Within a week, a wave of volunteers showed up to help do some initial clearing. "They found an angel," Shepard says. "And it was just beautiful. I asked if they’d washed it and they said they’d found it like that in the ashes. It had a cracked wing but it survived.
A few days later, a gust of wind knocked the angel — which Shepard had treasured for the 28 years she’d been with her own Angel — off a table and onto the ground, shattering it. It was a painful reminder of the wind’s random cruelty. Heartbreak and confusion set in.
"We call it the ‘dazed gaze,’" says Bonnie Frede, who heads up the grant-funded Ramona Fire Recovery Center. Her organization provided assistance for affected area residents after the Cedar Fire and more recently, the Witch Creek Fire. Frede and her family were also evacuated in October, but as soon as they returned, the Recovery Center swung into action.
At a weekly Tuesday meeting, Frede and other volunteers make things less confusing for victims, even months after the fires. On a case-by-case basis, they guide them through all the necessary steps to recovery.
"We’re just a huge resource center," explains Frede. "We gather all the information we can and post it on a huge bulletin board and also on our Web site. We find out who’s going to help this family the most and then we connect them to that person, be it an agency or a caseworker."
Frede helped Shepard, whose home was uninsured, fill out the paperwork for FEMA and state supplemental grants. She got her a cell phone and loaded her up with gift cards. Frede has also been helping Shepard — who found and has her heart set on a used modular home with lots of windows — navigate county building codes. For the time being, though, Shepard is thrilled to have moved into a comfy trailer that a friend sent her way.
"Dianne came in and showed me the pictures of her trailer," says Frede. "You see the hope, the look of ‘We’ll be able to get through this.’ That’s what really helps." — AnnaMaria Stephens, photo by Kristy Ann Mann
Ramona Fire Recovery Center (RFRC)
Year Founded: November 2007 (Active in 2003-2006 as the Cedar Fire Recovery Center)
Overall Mission: To provide support and resources to assist fire families in rebuilding their homes and lives from San Diego County wildfires. The RFRC identifies unmet needs for fire families, matches families with caseworkers from agencies, and coordinates volunteer labor groups to assist rebuilding efforts.
Current Funding Objectives: RFRC is a nonprofit organization with agencies acting as its fiscal agents.
Donation Administration Cost Ratio: RFRC operates on a grant funded by the San Diego Foundation.
Organization’s Biggest Challenge: Coordinating resource agencies and ongoing efforts to meet the families’ unmet needs, and recruiting volunteer labor groups to assist in clearing and rebuilding homes for the next three years.
Contact Information: Bonnie Fry, director, 760/788-1013
Ramona Fire Recovery Center
1710 Montecito Rd.
Ramona, CA 92065
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