“Flames were 50 feet up top that ridge which is about 100 feet away. Very scary,” said Bob Ilko, President Of The Scripps Ranch Civic Association.
Hundreds of thousands of acres burned, and more than 2,000 homes lost.
Bob Ilko’s home was almost one of them.
2003 changed Ilko’s perspective- The Cedar Fire basically knocked at his front door.
He had pine trees in his front yard that went up in flames, and you can even still see the scorched cracks on the street sign that was never replaced.
“They want us to replace these signs, and I don't want to because it's a good memory of where it came and how close it came,” said Ilko.
That memory became a reason.
Ilko now holds informational meetings about navigating insurance and AB 3074- or the law soon to enforce five feet of nonflammable material within your home, if you live in a Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone.
That means no wooden fences, bushes, or RV’s next to the house.
“Even to the point where the front doormat needs to be non-combustible, so we found mud and snow doormats from the east coast they're made out of metal,” said Ilko.
Ilko is even working with a manufacturer in Texas to make fiberglass fencing available to residential areas.
With the homes lost in the Cedar Fire still in the back of his mind…
“In my development, 32 out of 135 burned down. It did not catch my house on fire, but it came pretty close,” said Ilko.
He’s doing everything he can to make entire neighborhoods defensible against fires.
