The Fire Outside My Window : A Survivor Tells The True Story Of California's Epic Cedar Fire

__The Fire Outside My Window__ reveals the story of the Cedar Fire, the largest fire in California’s recorded history, which ravaged the San Diego area in late 2003, burning nearly 280,000 acres, destroying more than 2,200 homes and hundreds of other buildings, and killing 15 people. Leaving her doomed home the night of the catastrophe, the author, Sandra Millers Younger, drove through flames and, along with her husband, was saved by a bobcat that showed her the road she couldn’t see through dense smoke. With this revealing narrative, she takes readers into the heart of an epic firefight, telling the stories of fire managers and air tanker pilots trying to combat a catastrophe bigger than they had ever imagined, and recounting both survivors’ and victims’ desperate efforts to escape flames moving faster than fire engines could drive. And she tells the story of the hapless hunter who got lost in the backcountry, with little water and no cell phone or GPS device, and started a signal fire that caused the calamity. The Fire Outside My Window: A Survivor Tells the True Story of California's Epic Cedar Fire is both a poignant memoir and a veteran journalist's narrative nonfiction account of a catastrophic event that crippled postcard-perfect San Diego and dominated international headlines in October 2003.Author Sandra Millers Younger's miraculous saga of escape, ruin and renewal unifies a tapestry of experiences woven from more than 100 interviews with firefighters, survivors and the families of those who died. The fire itself, one of the biggest and most destructive in California history, is the main character in this epic story--a rampaging monster, framed within historical context, battled by understaffed, under-equipped firefighters, and confronted from the rare perspective of terrified civilians caught in its path.Timing, location and weather conspired against air tankers, fire engines and bulldozers, enabling a lost hunter's signal fire to gather strength in the mountains east of San Diego. Overnight, a swelling wind sent flames galloping toward the Pacific, killing 15 people, 12 of them the author's neighbors; incinerating more than 2,200 homes, including hers; and creating a lunarscape 20 times the size of ManhattanIn this revealing narrative, Younger takes readers into the heart of an epic firefight, telling the stories of fire chiefs and air tanker pilots trying to combat a catastrophe bigger than they had ever imagined, and recounting both survivors'and victims'desperate efforts to escape flames moving faster than fire engines could drive. The Fire Outside My Window is a riveting and nuanced tale that captures the intensity of a runaway wildfire, honors those lost to its fury, and celebrates the human spirit's innate capacity to triumph over adversity. "The Cedar Fire--the largest wildfire in California's recorded history--ravaged the San Diego area in late 2003, burning 280,000 acres, destroying more than 2,200 homes, and killing 15 people. Leaving her doomed home the night of the fire with her husband, two Newfoundland dogs, and cockatiel, Sandra Millers Younger drove through flames and was saved by a bobcat that showed her the road she couldn't find in the dense smoke. In this revealing narrative, she takes readers into the heart of the epic firefight, telling the stories of firefighters scrambling to combat a catastrophe bigger than they'd ever imagined and recounting both survivors' and victims' desperate efforts to escape flames."--Page 4 of cover