‘Sharon our Angel’ credited with saving Lakesider’s life at mobile home park fire

Neighbors at Lakeside’s Monterey Mobile Lodge community say Sharon Edwards cares for everyone around her.

On Monday, Evaleen Buhl called her “Sharon our angel” as Edwards played the role of guardian angel even as a fire from a street below burned down her own shed and flames licked at her mobile home.

Buhl, who turns 90 next month, is blind and can’t walk.

“I didn’t smell anything … until my neighbor came banging on my house and got me out of here, but that’s the only way,” Buhl said. “I would still have been in there.”

A corner of Buhl’s home was damaged (and contents of a shed were destroyed), but Edwards was one of at least four owners whose homes were gutted by the brush fire southwest of Lake Jennings. Two people were reportedly taken to the hospital — one with burns and another suffering smoke inhalation.

By 10 p.m., firefighters had halted the spread at roughly 5 1/2 acres, said Mike Cornette, a fire captain with Cal Fire. It was 100% contained by late evening.

Buhl’s daughter, Evaleen Hickman, praised Edwards.

“If we didn’t have her.… She helps everybody. In this park, she is amazing,” Hickman said. “She was always there to help my mom because we don’t live with her.”

“We need to all pull together and help Sharon now,” Hickman said.

Buhl, Evaleen Hickman and son-in-law Dwayne Hickman know much about losing it all. In 2003 they lost their home in the Cedar Fire.

Recalling that time, Evaleen Hickman said, “It was so devastating to lose everything you’ve worked for, you owned. All your life is gone. We didn’t get to save anything. My heart was in that house.”

Surveying the damage to her mother’s mobile home, Hickman said, “Compared to losing everything in the Cedar Fire, this is OK.”

For neighbor Bob Hayne, Monday was a sad day.

“I feel badly, badly because these are our friends like right here that lost their houses and stuff.”

Hayne pointed at the rubble of a home a few doors down on the other side of the street.

Nothing in the pile was recognizable.

“He was at work,” he said of his neighbor. “He lost his two cats in there.”

Hayne said his neighbor contacted a relative to retrieve the cats, but by the time the brother-in-law arrived, the roof had collapsed, and it was too late.

Hayne, 87, who has lived in his home for 39 years, thinks he knows the culprit of the home fires — a tall eucalyptus tree off Highway 8 Business, just below the hill behind his house.

“We have a large eucalyptus tree behind us that the county would never take care of,” Hayne said. “It’s on county property across the fence line, next to Old 8.”

He said that tree has worried neighbors for 30 years.

“When the fire came up old (Highway) 8,” he said, “it caught that eucalyptus tree on fire, and it exploded. And that’s what got us, and it hit the back of our house,” melting the house skirts and buckling the front side of his home.

On Tuesday, Fire Marshal Jeremy Davis of the Lakeside Fire Protection District addressed the tree issue.

“I can not speak to any of the county responses,” he said, “but Lakeside Fire has received no complaints about the tree. Before the fire, there may have been a fire code issue that I was not aware of.”

Davis said the county Department of Public Works is the agency responsible for maintaining tres and brush along county roads.

“Trees are allowed within 100 feet of a structure,” he said. “To determine a fire hazard, we look to see if a tree is dead, dying or diseased. We also look to see if the tree limbs are 6 feet or more from the ground. Tree limbs should not be touching a roof or be within 10 feet of a chimney.”

On Wednesday, spokeswoman Donna Durckel of the county’s Land Use and Environment Group said the eucalyptus tree in question within the unincorporated area’s public right of way along Old 8 Road is one of many maintained by the county.

“The tree was most recently trimmed on 1/5/2024 for height and roadway clearance as part of our routine maintenance,” she said via email.

Durckel confirmed that the county Department of Public Works has no record of any complaints or requests for trimming or removal of the tree.

“Our field crews are very responsive to service requests along our county roadways,” she added. “County departments are working with CAL FIRE and local agencies to support the recovery of those impacted by the fire in Lakeside, and our sympathy goes out to those who were affected.”

Embers from the tree flew over his house and ignited the home across the road and up a hill.

Before engines arrived, Hayne was in his back yard. Calling the blaze “intense,” he said, “I was back there with the hose, trying did do something, which was not much.”

Asked if he felt the need to evacuate with his wife, Pattie, 80, he said: “Yeah, right away.”

“Cops chased me off three times,” he said, but stayed in an effort to save his home of 39 years. “Then I tripped and fell over the fire hoses.”

He had moved his car away and gotten computers out of the house.

The Coches 2 Fire broke out shortly before 3 p.m. off the 13300 block of Los Coches Road East in the Glenview area, just north of El Cajon, according to Cal Fire.

For a time, 17,300 residents were under evacuation orders, county Supervisor Joel Anderson said in an email listing resources.

As ground personnel and crews aboard air tankers and water-dropping helicopters worked to extinguish the fire, authorities cleared people out of an area bounded by Interstate 8 to the south and west, Los Coches Road to the east and Business Route 8 to the north.

A temporary shelter for the displaced was at Viejas Casino in nearby Alpine.

Dan Lauridsen, 72, stayed put on another hill, trying to save his home of 42 years. He said he felt “extremely lucky.”

Workers next door and a neighbor spotted him in his garage as the fire spread.

Lauridsen stood outside his mobile home as helicopters repeatedly dropped water near his house. Before firefighters arrived, he ran, got his hose and began watering the hillside behind his house.

Asked how he thought the firefighters were handling the blaze, he said: “really, really, really, really, really well.”

It was not immediately clear how many people were injured by the fire, though none were firefighters, said Mike Cornette, a fire captain with the state agency.

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

A moment of levity came amid the devastation as Dwayne Hickman jokingly told a fireman, “Don’t let that house burn. I don’t want my mother-in-law living with me.”

Hickman said the fireman replied, “OK, I understand,” and turned the hose on the home. The family laughed at his story.

Evaleen Hickman assured her mother that there would be a place for her with them in the future if needed.

“We already have a room you,” she told her mother.

“I hope that they find out who did it,” she said. “It better not be a cigarette or intentional.”

Updated at 5:22 p.m. Sept. 10, 2025

City News Service contributed to this report.