What to take during a fire? American Girl dolls for sure

Stevie and Skyler Knapp are sisters, and after midnight they watched from their bedroom window as flames advanced toward their house on Coast Oak Circle near the Los Serranos Golf and Country Club in Chino Hills.

"I was crying, I was hyperventilating, it was glowing right there," said Stevie, 14, who snapped some photos on her digital camera. She dozed off before 3 a.m., but Skyler, 9, stayed awake and grew increasingly nervous.

She woke her family up: "I was like, 'Mom, I'm not joking, there's a fire.' " Everyone got out of bed and got ready to go, rounding up important papers, a computer, American Girl doll clothing, cameras and stuffed animals.

Steve said she was sure to leave her backpack full of homework behind. Before they left for an unfurnished rental property they own nearby, they banged on the doors of about five neighbors and told them they should evacuate.

"They said, 'Is it a mandatory evacuation? Nobody's told me.' I said, 'Look at the hill, you choose,' " said Stevie and Skyler's mother, 46-year-old Cori Knapp. The stay-at-home mom, who helps out with the family's training of thoroughbreds, said, "We looked, all these hills were on fire. I said, 'OK, I'm going,' … It was pretty nasty last night," she said. "It was scary," Stevie added. The family has lived in Chino Hills for about 20 years, and Cori Knapp said "there's always been a fire here and there. It was just a matter of time."

Her neighborhood, Ridgegate, is filled with spacious, two-story stucco homes, many of which have stone accents. The neighborhood is vertical, with houses terraced, and the hillsides on both sides of the neighborhood were totally black and still smoldering. The Ridgegate subdivision is above a canyon area, and on Sunday morning, firefighters were gathered there with handtools, clearing out brush. It was already blackened, and there was smoke rising from the canyon and a couple of flare-ups with visible orange flames.

Ruben Garcia, 40, lives in the same cul de sac as the Knapp family and said his house sits right on the edge of the canyon. As the area was burning, he said, his children "were so nervous, really, really nervous." They also left about 3 a.m. and went to stay with nearby friends from a soccer team that Garcia coaches.

They began packing earlier and took pictures, computers and a couple extra pairs of underwear. Also to grab were the family pets: two parakeets named Rocky and Adrian, a dog named Candy, a chameleon, and the grasshoppers the chameleon feasts on each day.

"All the smoke, flames facing to us, it was kind of like, 'Let's get out of here,' " Garcia said. "When you see this at 3 o'clock in the morning, you really freak out. You think, man, everything I worked for is gonna be gone."

-- Susannah Rosenblatt

Samantha Small admires dolls at an American Girl Place store. Photo by Jennifer Szymaszek /  Associated Press

Comments

[Cynthia]

I have fitey and nickey and lisny