Bulldozers to the Rescue!
by Johnny McDonald

Bulldozers were used extensively by CDF and individuals throughout the Cedar Fire. Photo by Jim Evans

The Cedar Fire was almost 10 hours old when two ranchers took off on bulldozers in the early morning to save a Witch Creek community.

Jimmy Wood, a third- generation Ramonan, and neighbor Glen Drown were underway at 3 a.m. with the earth-movers to carve a fire break around the area. They covered two and one-half miles and managed to keep 10 homes from going up in smoke.

"I first noticed fires from the southwest of Ramona." Wood said. "It was bad. I could remember the trouble we had with the Inaja Cosmit Reservation fire in 1956. The winds would come from the west and unpredictably reversed from the east.

"We began clearing off the area and with the humidity, we had a chance. Everyone had been advised by sheriffs to leave but they all stayed."

Wood owns two ranches located one-half-mile off Highway 78, a little more than
two miles west of Santa Ysabel.

With his land-moving equipment he built a good-sized reservoir (five acre feet) on the property in 1949 and invites close friends to fish, hunt and picnic. With the sudden need for water, fire-fighting helicopters made several runs on the lake.

When he had an earth moving business, he built stock ponds, established erosion controls and cleared a lot of land in Ramona and Julian.

"I used to work with firefighters," he said. "So I figured this would eventually happen. People must clear off their property. Fire will not burn if it has no fuel."