KOGO’s Lee Hamilton in Harm’s Way

From LARadio.com.

Lee “Hacksaw” Hamilton was in the eye of the firestorm in San Diego this week. The sports talk host has been on a number of Clear Channel stations the last couple of days recounting a harrowing experience. (He was also a guest on Coast To Coast AM earlier this week. Lee can be heard on KOGO, 101.5 KGB and is slated to kick off the sports station at 1360 AM next week.)

Monday afternoon he told his story to the Loose Cannons midday show on KLAC: “This fire started Sunday afternoon, died down overnight, flared up about 2 o’clock in the morning. Winds changed and drove it into the heavily populated area of Rancho Bernardo, and Poway. They sealed off Interstate 15 from Escondido because of the fast moving fire. It is intolerable. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was a holocaust.”

Hamilton provided these details for LARadio.com: “We got a reverse 911 phone call at 4:15 a.m. Monday morning,” Lee told me by phone yesterday afternoon. He lives in Rancho Bernardo with his wife and 93-year-old mother who has dementia. Lee continued: “When I picked up the phone there was nobody on the line. The wind was really howling. I popped up and put my hand on the window and the window felt warm. I looked and couldn’t see any fire but I was hearing sirens and people next door honking horns and slamming doors. I went downstairs, opened the front door and I felt a huge blast of hot air and that’s when I shouted to my wife, ‘we’ve got to get out of here right now.’”

They grabbed a couple of suitcases and threw in minimal clothes along with some documents. “In the rush I left my all my mother’s medications in the house so I spent all day Monday trying to deal with medical people on the east coast to get her medications and get them out here. All of the medical people were very helpful.”

Lee had 15 minutes to get out of his house in Rancho Bernardo. “It was like the firestorm jumped a mountain, came across the highway and landed on our street. At 4:30 Monday morning I virtually abandoned my home with no possessions. I had to move my 93-year-old mother and get her in the car. When I pulled out of my driveway, I thought I was saying goodbye to all my memories. I did not think that any of those houses were going to survive. It was like a wind tunnel. It was like napalm bombing. It was the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen. I was able to go back in the house twice but not a third time because I was afraid the burning trees were going to fall on the car and my wife and mother would be trapped.”

Lee locked the front door and pulled out of his driveway. “I couldn’t see five feet in front of me there was so much smoke, wind and debris. I have all kinds of burns on my arms and legs from the embers. It was like taking bullets.”

Was Lee scared? “No, I was very intense that I had to do this and do this very quickly. I tripped once and went face first down on the cement. I just looked up to the sky and said, ‘God, help me through this.’ And He did.”

Yesterday morning Lee appeared on the Today Show with Matt Lauer. “I went with one of the NBC people and got into my neighborhood because the whole place is in lockdown but they knew who I was. I turned the corner and there was so much destruction on the hills where I lived. I turned the corner onto my street and my house was still standing and I just started to cry. Only three of the twelve houses made it.”

For the past two days Lee has been working on pure adrenalin, knowing what needed to be done. “Monday at midnight I just crashed. On the enormity of what was happening you start thinking about all the things that were in that house and I really sincerely felt I was saying goodbye to everything I owned when I pulled out of my driveway.”

Across the highway from Lee is KNSD-TV 39/TV broadcaster Jim Stone. “He lost everything. This is terrible. It is like four years to the day of the Cedar Fire. I’ve never seen anything move this quick. The 2003 Cedar Fire had been burning for two days. We could look out our window at the mountains burning and flames going up and down the ridges. This was different because when we went to bed Sunday night this thing was 35 miles to the northeast and the wind had stopped. In the middle of the night the wind picked up and took it in a whole different direction and that sucker moved. That thing must have made 30 miles in a half hour. I looked out and saw no flame. Two minutes later I looked out the window and everything on the other side of the 15 was red. And then I knew it was coming. Within minutes everything on our street was ablaze. We had fifteen minutes. If I had gone back in the house a third time to try and get some papers we set aside, I don’t know if I would have gotten out. The trees were burning and falling on cars right around me.”

“We’re staying in a hotel down in Mission Valley. I think every hotel room in San Diego is taken right now.” Lee’s mom isn’t sure what is happening. “She can tell you want happened in 1936 but she can’t tell you what happened 15 minutes ago. Maybe that’s the best case scenario because she wasn’t terrified. You do what you can to make them comfortable.”

Lee is working with a friend who owns a condominium for temporary housing. There’s no power in Rancho Bernardo. “I went up to the edge of Lake Hodges and I counted 15 big, big power lines were blown over. The force of the winds must have been near-Hurricane force. I don’t know when anybody is going to get back in. I think it is going to be a long road back,” said Lee.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 7:59 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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