10 people died during those fires. Seven of them were undocumented workers from Mexico. Some victims and their pleas could be heard on 911 calls.Do you have an emergency?[ Inaudible ]Laura is a professor at San Diego city College. She produced devils breath which documents their stories. Welcome to program.Thank you for having me.Maria is a person that you profile. She went back to Mexico to attend her father's funeral. What happened that she was trying to cross back into the United States?Her partner did not want her to go for obvious reasons. They were both undocumented. He knew what she was going to face no matter fire or not. He kept telling her we have no money. This is just not a good situation. She really pleaded with him to go. She made the journey with her brother. He also lived in Vista. They went not knowing when they came back that they walked right into the fires. So, her brother survived. He was able to tell the tale about what happened to them and how she hurt her foot. She fell and could not walk anymore. He tried to carry her and could not. The wind totally whipped up and he had to hide behind a rock and some brush and try to get away from it. He ended up with third-degree burns all over his body. She ended up not surviving. She was transported to the hospital. What is really eerie about this story is that he could not identify -- her partner could not identify her because she was so badly -- badly burned. She had white nail polish on her fingers that she had painted before she left. That is how he identified her.There were other groups of migrants caught in the fire. We played a bit of the 911 call made by man who was traveling there with Six other migrants. Even though they called for help, getting help was very difficult.It was extremely difficult. I tried to put myself in the place of the 911 dispatchers. They were answering hundreds of phone calls not just from this group but everybody who was calling. My heart breaks for them. I can only imagine how many pleas for help there were out there.Let's hear another clip from your film.911.[ Inaudible ]Can you speak English?No.Are you lost?[ Inaudible ]Hold on.I know Momento. -- One minute.Do you speak Spanish?No I do not, serve.Spanish please?In just a minute.Do you speak Spanish?Know. I Do not.[ Inaudible ]Your phone is really bad.Yes. I know.Hold on.What you here about the special dilemma that 91 was a -- 911 was up against.I heard the tone clearly. There's a problem. If there are not enough Spanish speakers or Korean speakers or Vietnamese speakers, that system needs to change quickly. We all know that we face wildfires and the dangers of the tsunami, earthquake and so many more situations that would be needed to have bilingual speakers. If they could not help, why couldn't they have the sound in the voice like they wanted to try. What I heard was horrible. It was the tone alone that was so disturbing to me when I heard these calls for the first time. I could not imagine putting myself in the victims shoes. I think his only mistake here, if you could say there was one, I can't imagine. Maybe they saw that as derogatory because he said hey. I can't understand why they did not want to help.Are you making a case that the migrants are the forgotten victims of the 2007 firestorm?I would say absolutely. When I think about when I heard about how many were victims, will it go down that there were four victims? Yes. There were four American his desk victims. Many times I wonder how many more people died that we don't know about. To me, a victim is a victim. It doesn't matter where they come from and why they got in the fire's path took a victim is a victim. I really look at it from a humanitarian standpoint. They should not be forgotten. They broke the law coming here and they all had reasons, good or bad why they were coming back. When I ended up finding out was they were not first time border crossers. They were coming home in their minds. Their families were here.I have been talking with a film professor at San Diego city College. The document best documentary is called devils breath. Thank you very much.Thank You.
On Oct. 21, 2007, a group of immigrants from Mexico made the dangerous trek across the border into the U.S. By the time they reached Tecate Peak in east San Diego County, the Harris fire was raging.
The migrants were lost, trapped and injured. Eventually, help arrived. But it was too late for one of the men in the group.
Among the 10 people killed in the Witch Creek and Harris fires were seven immigrants who were in the country illegally according to documentary filmmaker, Laura Castañeda. More than a dozen migrants were treated for injuries at UC San Diego Medical Center’s burn unit.
Castañeda, a professor in the Radio and Television Department at San Diego City College and producer of the 2008 documentary, “The Devil’s Breath,” discussed what she calls the “forgotten” victims of the 2007 wildfires.
