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Good afternoon. My name is Anna Beth and I am interviewing Pepperdine student Tron Allison on April 9/18 2019 for Pepperdine Library's Wolsey Fire Malibu Community Memory Project. So, um my experience which was kind of combined with a several others. My roommates um started um this was

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the day after the shooting. I can't remember the exact date but um we had had the weirdest day possible at school. Um We had went to each class, um um each class realizing that it was canceled as soon as we were getting there until our very

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last class of the day which mine had started at. Um it's called that night. Um We were fixing to um we were getting ready for it at about like 530. Um I was doing some homework that was due that day and the professor emailed us saying

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that his house was uh near a wildfire that we had no idea about and everything. And so he was gonna cancel class and go to that, which is crazy. Our only class available uh that day ended up being canceled because of a fire which is a

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prelude to what was fixing to happen. Um, later that night we get an email from our landlord and he's saying, um, that there might be a pre evacuation just in case, um, the fire gets like within a certain mileage away from us, which would be close

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to, um, the uh 101 at this point. Yes, we were at, um, at Kos and we actually had a house over there at the time. It was at the corner of Mulholland in Canaan. And, um, he said that if it gets close to the one on

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one, they're gonna evacuate all the students just as a precautionary evacuation or anything. Nothing's gonna be serious about it. And, um, so we're like, ok, that's all right. And so we just, you know, like pack something, uh, pack an emergency bag or something like that just

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to be careful. And, um, of course we didn't pack anything. Um, and two of my roommates were out on a cross country trip. Um, me, I was rooming with another cross country runner, so there was four cross country runners total in this house. Um, with another

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guy named Nick Mason who was not on the team, two were at this specific meet. They were, um, they were like top seven on the team. So they were competing and then we, we didn't make the top seven, so we didn't go. Um, so we were

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staying, um, staying home for the weekend and so we get this email and our two teammates were like, oh what's going on, what's going on? Like, no, it's not a big deal. Like it's just a precautionary evacuation. It's something to have excitement. And so, um, so

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no big deal. Um Then at uh 3 a.m. that morning I wake up to um RR a sort of person. Parker Keane and he's over me and to me it's just a black figure and he wakes me up in the middle of the night and he's

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like, we gotta go treat, we gotta go like it's uh, evacuation time and he's like, grab your bag that you packed. And I was like, I didn't grab, I didn't pack anything. I'm not ready. And so then he didn't even see my roommate. I went over

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there and woke my roommate up and, um, and the third guy in our house was already gone. He was gone before we even woke up or anything like that. So we're like, ok, we'll just grab a blanket pillow and then the clothes we, um, put on

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some clothes and everything and then we'll rendezvous at Firestone Field house and that's where we're supposed to be at. And so we went ahead and packed up just, uh, what we need for the night and then drove down there and they asked if we need a

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room with anybody on campus, we said no. So we just slept in the truck after we checked in, at Firestone field house at about 3:30 a.m. that morning. Um, at 7 a.m. me and him both sleep in the same truck. I'm in the passenger seat, he's

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in the driver's seat of his truck and, um, uh, just in case we need a notification or something like that, um, of what's going on, but this time we still think it's just, we're waiting to go back home. Um, someone knocks on the window of the

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car and it turns out to be another teammate, didn't go on the trip. And, um, he was, he was, uh, trying to find my roommate that was with me. They had plans to go to San Diego later, um, that for that weekend. And so he knocks

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on the window saying he's been looking all over the place for us and everything and that the fire has jumped the 101, which was supposed to be impossible. And so we were like, wait, what? And that's when we see the massive cloud in the sky. And

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so like, oh, we didn't grab anything from the house. We didn't grab anything from our roommates either that were across the, uh, uh, up further north in the state and across country. Me, so this is whenever we decided to be very intelligent and I went and

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jumped in my truck, he got in his truck and our other teammate jumped in the other, um, in my roommate's truck and we drove down the highway going 90 MPH back home, which was easy because there was nobody on the right side of the highway going

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towards the fire. Everybody was on the other side leaving. And so we went super fast. We got on Canyon, flew up the mountain and then that's when we hit the, the massive wall cloud. And, um, it like immediately changed, like, um, uh I would say changed

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uh planets at that time, it was um earth and everything was cool. And then all of a sudden we go into just straight Hades and we go and there's like ash falling over the place, it's just super dark and um we don't see any fire, we

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just didn't smoke. And so we still under the assumption that we're, our house is gonna burn down or anything like that. Like there's gonna be like, um uh like safety precautions or anything that it's not even gonna hit can in. And so we're just going there

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to grab stuff for the weekend basically and to be extra safe. And so we go ahead and make it to our house. We pull in, everything's ok. Uh You can barely see the um in one of our pictures, you can barely see the sun. It's just

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like it's just straight red to the clouds pointing through. And so we run in, we start grabbing things and I grab uh just my essentials first and they grab some important things and then we call our teammates that are just now woken up really like or

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they just now warmed up and they're ready to race the race and we call them on the line saying if you were to grab one thing out of a fire, what would it be? Because this is a real case scenario. And, um, so they told us

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to go grab some things out of the rooms. I went and grabbed one of my roommates. He had like 3 $1200 bikes in his room. And so I went and grabbed one of those and threw it in the back of my truck. And then, uh, we

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went to his, uh, other roommate's room and he had a box of gold coins and some and more ail from his family and everything that we grabbed. And then, um, we grabbed what we could. Um, and then, um, there was three of us, which was great

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because my, uh, roommate had his, uh, 1965 mustang there that we were trying to grab and get out of there. And so, um, but one of my roommates that was off on a cross country trip also had his car there. So we had to make the

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decision and we made the decision that since we were there, we were gonna save our cars since we're obviously there. And I would have liked to have towed his truck. I even pulled up my towing cable to figure out if I could tow it or not

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and it was, there was just no way you can tow it down a mountain. And so, um, unfortunately, uh, since there's only three of us, we can only get the two trucks and the mustang out. And, um, so we were thinking about that as we're still

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grabbing things out of the room whenever the sheriff, uh, pulls up into our driveway and starts screaming bloody merry over his um uh microphone telling us like get out of there like we gotta get out of this mandatory evacuation. Like we're in a danger zone like

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this. We're not supposed to be here and everything like that. And so, um we kind of blew him off and he realized that we're blowing him off. So he gets out of the truck out of his car and starts just yelling at us, maybe a cuss

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word here and there. I don't remember, but he was just trying to get us out of there. And so we go, ok, so we grab what we can get into the cars. He has trouble with his mustang. It's not backing up. So we go over there

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and we push it and um the smoke is getting a lot thicker but we don't see any fire. So we're still ok. And then uh we push it out and then we all get out of there safely and um, I start recording just so we can

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have a um cool visual when we get out of our driveway and driving down just this crazy smoke and we get out of our driveway and the mountains on fire right outside, which was not on fire about 20 minutes before whenever we came in. And so

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it was a crazy video and like, oh my goodness. And so we're driving down um this empty road with uh several just randomly spotted um emergency vehicles along the way. And so we go all the way down to Canaan, get out of the wall cloud and

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there's the insane traffic on, uh PC H. It takes us three hours to get from the end of Canaan to Pepperdine, which, uh, usually takes us about like a six or seven minute drive. And so, uh, three hours from that and everybody's freaking out, there's horses

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running on the side of the road, people just release their animals. Pe people were driving like crazy on the outside of the road because the, the wind was pretty strong. So it was blowing all over the place. And so they thought the fire was gonna come

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down here and just hit us while we're just sitting ducks on the highway. And so, um, that was pretty sketchy just sitting in there for three hours and we're by ourselves because each of us was in a different car. And, um, so we're watching all this

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happen. We finally get to Pepperdine try to get some answers. Everybody is in the gym and, um, I realized let's just go to San Diego. My teammate has a house there and we'll just wait this all out. And so we make the trip down to San

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Diego. We keep our, uh, the mustang in my truck on campus and take my roommate's truck to San Diego to my teammate's house. And while we're there, we can still see the cloud all the way from San Diego across the entire ocean and everything. And um

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but everybody is still living life. Normally there nothing's happening. You know, we just drove away from the insanity of it all and um we're still trying to figure out as much information as we can, but all we can figure out is our house was in the

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middle of the red zone and in all the pictures, it's like this was where the uh this is like the, the, the circumference of everything that got hit like this is the red area the and ours was in the very middle of that circle. It was

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where our house was and like, you know what, maybe like there were still people on um at Cal Migos whenever we left. So maybe the house and everything is ok because hopefully they are ok. Um Our landlord was trying to keep us up to date, he

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was trying to get back to the house and everything like that. We were watching all the news stations and stuff like that and then, um, the next day, um, we wake up to, um, my teammate's dad and he's watching the news and he wakes us all

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up. He says, hey, tell me who is on, tell me who is on like, they're flying over. And so we're like, yes, like we'll finally be able to get, see what the house is like and everything. See it's safe and they're like, K Megos was like,

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saved like someone put in a massive sprinkler system like, like 40 ft up in the air. I was shooting this massive radius and save the um ranch. Like that's awesome. And this helicopter pilot was flying over and um was zooming in on the damage outside of

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the ranch and zoomed in on a house that was just completely destroyed everything. And they're like, this is an example of the damage that the fire did and everything around the house. And like, that's our house and like, oh man, and like, there's our roommate's car

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just completely incinerated and it didn't really hit us immediately because we're like, like that, we didn't actually think it was gonna happen. We were like, this is kind of just a little, a fairy tale. So our house gets burned down in the middle of college. And

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sure enough, there was that thing was toasted. There's two walls, I think standing and his car was just, it was a white car and you can't even tell it was there anymore. And Um So we're like, wow, that's insane. Um So we kind of stayed there

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for a little bit till we got the information from the school about, um, uh, school being canceled until Thanksgiving, which we were all very happy about. Um, and we were still not figuring out what our house being burned down was gonna mean. Um, but we were

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soon gonna figure out that buying new housing and everything and buying new things for the next several months was gonna be a little bit challenging. And so then we decided to, um, uh, all of our stuff was left in those trucks and things on campus and

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no one could fly home. So they needed their I DS and stuff like that to fly back. And a lot of the guys on the team left their I DS and stuff like that in their rooms that were, uh, because our whole team was in, um,

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Northern California. So we rendezvoused, uh, back with our, um, team close to or, or our team was able to take the bus around the fire zone and into Santa Monica and they took the train to, uh San San Diego to meet us there. And then we

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made a plan to, um, leave without our, uh, teammate's mother knowing because she was totally against that. And we drove up to, um, Hawthorne and from Hawthorne that night, we decided to sneak back onto campus since everything was closed down by, um, uh, highway patrol in

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the sheriff's department. And so we try that entire night to try to sneak in some way and we're all cross country owners. We just not got off the season. So we're still in shape. So we were like, if we can get within like six or seven

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miles of it, then we'll just run, we'll park and just run. And so we tried doing that and we couldn't get close. We kept on getting uh caught by the highway patrol and we sent all the way back to the blockade and stuff like that. And

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then, um, one time we, um, got close to the blockade. We were about five miles away. We were uh close to Dukes and we decided to, um, have somebody stay in the truck and then drive through the blockade and be at the end of the blockade

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in case we get caught. And so he goes, disappears. We don't hear from him and we sneak past the blockade. Um, we do go run through some people's yards which I guess it's technically trespassing, which is not good. Um, but we eventually get to the beach

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where we uh just run straight along the beach all the way into the lagoon, ran through the lagoon, ran down oel the road up through the bluffs. And, um, that's where there was like tons. We had to sneak past a lot of highway patrol, um, just

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to get back to our stuff because there's no way those guys could have went home and eventually cross BC H um ran up um alumni and hit a fire Firestone parking lot and we were able to get into our uh vehicles and stuff like that. Drive

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up, break into the freshman dorms to grab our teammates identification and then we drove past the blockades because they allow us to leave and not come back and um went home after that. It was the craziest story ever. But that's my, my, that's my account of

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the uh Wolseley fire incident. Yeah. Um Great. Thank you so much. That was uh.