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that unforgettable october night, Katherine phillips was home alone. Her husband Lloyd was away fishing the fire came and she found herself unable to leave her property. She was trapped. She sat in her car for hours with the air conditioning on her son in Tennessee called a

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friend a deputy sheriff and asked him if he would go check on his mother. The deputy pulled up and saw her car and expected the worst. I was up at our truckee cabin. I've been fishing that weekend and on that morning at three o'clock in the

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morning our oldest son called from las Vegas celebrating his birthday there and he was called and said that uh gee dad have you heard about the fires in santa rosa? And I said no I hadn't heard a thing because I watched the baseball playoffs and I

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went to bed he said john I can't get a hold them on. So I started calling I called about half a dozen times and nothing because I didn't know at that time and everything was down but it was all down and I decided well I better

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head for home. So about 4:00 I was driving and I got to Vacaville and my other son who lives in Tennessee called and said you know I called my buddy Sheriff Dave Thompson and he's gonna go up there and check on mom. And so when when

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Todd called and said his mom is up here, I was really I'm like that is not good Todd. I told him that I said Todd that's not good, that's that area is decimated and I didn't know what to expect when I got up here what I

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was gonna find. But driving down linda lane and seeing everything completely gone and just thinking that she's not has no one at home to help her. They can't get a hold of her. Those aren't good signs. Lloyd's gone. These signs are adding up to be bad

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news. At 11:00 I had a telephone call but I never bothered getting up to I would have to run around the bed to pick it up and I wasn't feeling that well. So I just let the phone ring and I didn't pick it up in retrospect

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it was probably somebody telling me that there was a fire coming over the hill and uh I wasn't prepared for that and I don't know to this day who it was but I laid back in bed, I was around 11 o'clock and about one o'clock I

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heard this horrible wind so that doesn't sound good. So I went to the shutters and I opened them and I saw the fires in the backyard. The fires were splotchy all over the place and in the hills behind the house and I knew that that was

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not safe. So I ran out of the bedroom tried to put the light on in the kitchen to see where my purse was and the keys to my car and the lights were off. So I ran to the the cupboard door where I knew a second

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set of keys were. And I actually was in such a rush and panic that I pulled the keys off that rack where all the keys were. And I said to myself, oh I'm gonna have to fix that tomorrow. I must have wrecked it. So I got

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in my car and drove down to the gate and the gate was shut and the gate would not open, which it usually does when you press the sensors on the driveway. But I could see where the fire was burning and burning and the trees had fallen

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over the gate and the gate was mangled and the wrought iron railings on the side were mangled. And so I was angry. And I took the car and I ran the car into the gate and then the branches went right through my windshield and I said,

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that does not look like that is a good idea. And so I put my eyeglass cases which were very, very thick. I put them in the hole because I didn't want any smoke, but I didn't see any smoke too much. So I thought to myself, you

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know that if you got out your your feather robe would catch fire, your hair would catch fire and you don't like to burn yourself. You don't, it feels painful to be burned. So you were not going anywhere. And then I thought maybe I could do an

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Evel Knievel over the creek and I thought no then a tow truck would have to take my car and pull me out of the creek and then I have a bad neck so it might hurt. And I said I can't do that. And so I saw

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the fire on the right of me and I saw Alois shed on the left of me, it was an inferno. And I said uh you're not getting anywhere, you're gonna have to sit in the car. And I sat in the car for 5.5 hours from one

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day to seven o'clock when I was rescued. Remember 7 23 he called me and I know he's in Tennessee, he's a good friend of mine and uh and I was like debating should I take this call because there was a lot going on and I just

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wanted to say hi and I'm okay and and uh I knew he would be concerned and he says Dave can can you uh go check on my mom? Um she's up at the property, we can't get a hold of her. And uh Lloyd's out of town

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on a fishing trip. And I said um I'll try todd. But I had this was now it was starting to get daylight. Um I had already tried to come up Mark West um Springs Road, I didn't even make it to reliably and there were power lines

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that were down and across the road and there was cars crashed in the middle of the road and everything was still smoldering and smoking. Um I said I've been up that way a little ways and I had to turn around so I'll try again though, so

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I was in a position at that time to be able to come up and see and I was concerned that she may still be here. Um and I didn't know, so I just jumped back in my car um came up mark west and again I was

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dodging uh power lines that were down power poles on the road and trees and other things that were on fire and just kind of zigzagging my way up, it was pretty much a ghost town up here. Um And again everything still smoldering and uh got to

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linda Lane, um came down the road, everything was burned here and I even in fact had a hard time finding the right address. I've been here several times, helped move some things here and do things with Todd but um I knew there's a bridge and it

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just looks so different because everything was gone and none of the landmarks are here to kind of give you an idea. As I pulled up I saw a van right at the entrance um on the inside of where the gate used to be. Um and it

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wasn't burned, Everything else around here was completely burned, all the cars were on fire or had burned. Um and this was just so out of the plate out of the out of the norm that it wasn't on fire or hadn't burned to a crisp and the

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door of the van opens up and um kg gets out, her hair is just going every which direction and she looked like she'd been through a war she really had and I said K. G. Is that you it's me, it's me and I was like oh

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my goodness I can't believe it. First of all everything had burned and Todd had just asked me to come up and check on her mom and I'm thinking what's the chances that she would still be there, certainly she got out um and lo and behold there

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she was getting out of the van, she had a robe on and um just had been through a terrible night um so I got out of my car, made my way through the creek and onto her onto this side of the property and uh took hold

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of her and helped her get down to my car and as we were going down, you know she was just her you know kind of herself uh you know I said where's Lloyd? And she said he's on a fishing trip in Tahoe, he wanted me to

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clean the garage, I remember her saying I kept the air conditioning on and when I was rescued by Dave Thompson, the sheriff, I looked at the mileage on my guest tank and it was nine miles to go. So I had nine miles to go and the

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air conditioner was on all night and I moved from the driver's side to the passenger side because it was more comfortable there. But nothing was really comfortable. And I said to myself, oh my goodness you know when I found out everything was gone I said the

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only thing I have is the stuff in my car and I've been meaning to clean it out. But if I didn't have this stuff in my car I wouldn't have had anything. So now I have everything in my car and it's the reason why I never

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cleaned it out but I didn't want my garage to be burned up. But it's also a possibility to tell my husband I don't have to clean the garage anymore, it's gone. So I don't have that thought anymore.