STATELINE " Patty Stetak is on edge as she and her family await word on the fate of their Mount Diablo Circle home in the Mountain View Estates. The Stetak's are in the Bay Area holding their breaths.
"I heard that only seven homes on my street were OK, and 22 others were burned. I don't think our house made it," she said. "But we're hopeful."
For Hec Hernandez not knowing is not an option. After visiting the Lake Tahoe Community College on Monday morning, he is fairly certain his 1463 Mount Olympia Circle home is gone. Officials were posting the addresses of homes damaged, OK, and lost there.
" The college is doing updates every half hour and they said if your address is not on there you're house has been destroyed," he said.
He's also had people telling him they watched his home burn on television.
Hernadez, owner of South Shore Bike on Ski Run Boulevard, was home when the fire first began on Sunday about 2:10 p.m.
He said he was getting ready to take his dogs for a walk when he noticed smoke on the ridge.
Hernandez rode his mountain bike toward the smoke as he saw people running out of the forest. Then he saw the flames.
He said he thought to himself, "Oh my God, this is real."
Sunday's nightmare seemed to pass in five minute increments for Hernandez. Five minutes after noticing the smoke, he saw flames. Five minutes after returning to his street, he watched the flames growing nearer a neighbor's house.
Five minutes after that, he was putting out spot fires near his own home. Five minutes later, a firefighter told him to leave and Hernandez said he wanted to try to save his home. The firefighter tried to help, but five minutes later, "we realized there was nothing we could do."
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