October 26, 2003 was a bad day. Who would have known that by the time I got up at 8:00 a.m. that morning sixteen people would die, hundreds of people would lose their homes and that thousands were already evacuated and scared. I could smell smoke, but on that October morning, after many Saturday Halloween parties in the neighborhood, things seemed fine.

I was taking my time pulling myself out of bed, when my mom came running into my room in a panic, yelling that an extremely large, threatening fire was heading right toward us. The first thing I thought of was all of the old brush surrounding our home and our entire neighborhood. It hadn't rained significantly in months. We were dry. I pulled on my dirty clothes from the day before and ran out front to talk to the neighbors. You could see the clouds of black smoke...