A house that still stands

The following report is taken from an interview that a Sun reporter conducted Wednesday with a couple whose Grass Valley Lake home survived Monday's fire. Theis part of the story wasn't included here in the newspaper, and is instead presented as part of The Sun's online coverage of Grass Valley and Slide fires.

Two people whose home survived Monday’s firestorm are Elliott Gotfredson, 33, and Kimberly Trzcinski, 38, who share a house on Black Oaks Drive that stands next a house that was destroyed.

Gotfredson and Trzcinski didn’t know the house that they rent was spared until Tuesday morning, they said. Monday morning, when the power went out, they got ready for work by the glow of candle and flashlight and saw fire trucks rolling towards Grass Valley Lake as they headed down the mountain on their morning commute but didn’t realize there was a fire burning until they drove down to their jobs with the San Bernardino Unified School District.

The pair returned home around 8;15 a.m. Monday, Gotfredson said, just before the roads leading to their home were closed off. He said they had about five minutes to grab photo albums and other belongings
before California Highway Patrol officers required them to evacuate.

By that time, Gotfredson said, the air was so choked with ashes that he could barely see 25 feet in front of his face.

“It (visibility), was next to nothing. We could barely see the car and the wind was howling,” he said.

The couple spent the Monday night watching the fire burn on television, not able to discern from TV news if their home was among the lost.

Tuesday, they drove home past house after burned house, not expecting to find their home still standing.

“We thought ours was down too, but all of a sudden, we saw our house here,” Trzcinski said.

-Andrew Edwards