Dennis Duran is a local handyman who lived in a mobile home on the property of his sister and brother-in-law, Margaret and George Hauptman, for over 20 years. (Their house also burned down, and their fire story is told separately.)
Dennis says that the night before the fire, “I had my phone on all night in case the City issued an alert, but I didn’t get anything. Margaret called me the next morning at 7:00 and told me to ‘get out of there.’ I said, ‘No, we have awhile, don’t worry, I’ll manage.’ So I stayed until I saw the fire come over the hill at 11:00, and then it was time to start thinking about leaving.
“All the times in the past when fires have come up the hill, we stayed because the fire department was there and helicopters were coming around dropping stuff. But none of that was happening this time,” he observed.
A neighbor’s wife had walked down to Dennis’s house trying to see where the fire was. Once she saw how bad (and how close) it was, she ran immediately ran back home. “Her husband wanted to stay and protect their home, and had his fire hose out and a tankful of water,” Dennis said. “So they stayed and she was freaking out.
“My sister kept calling to say, ‘Get out, get out;’ then, I saw the fire at the house just above ours. I thought, ‘Okay, if it’s there, then everything is going to go.’ I stayed until about 1:00 pm, and then went down to PCH. We hung out at the bottom of the hill and stuff was raining down on us, but I didn’t want to leave. Then I did go to George and Margaret’s on Point Dume, but it started burning there for the first time ever, so I came back to PCH.”
“Since 1995, my ‘mobile mansion’ was my little slice of heaven – that was my retreat. When you came out from the traffic and all the tribulations of the day, it was my escape. All the pine trees made it a little hideaway. It was nice to sit there with the wind blowing through the pine trees. I miss it up there,” he said.
“The neighbors that lost their houses had all been around here forever. And most of my clients were also burned out, so there went my income,” Dennis said – but looking to end things on a positive note, he added, “At least the things I had to fix I don’t have to fix anymore, liked a cracked slab.”
