Live Oak students send letters to firefighters

As a way for the students to deal with the recent fire Live Oak School third grade teacher Janet McGurk brainstormed with her students and they came up with several ideas that would help foster a positive attitude.

One of those ideas was to write letters to the firefighters who worked so hard to save much of Fallbrook.

None of the students in McGurk’s class lost homes in the fire, but they were concerned about friends, relatives, neighbors and firefighters.

Listed are some of the students’ thoughts.

Jonathon Paddila: Class idea to write the letters to the firemen so they won’t be sad because they rescued people and houses.

“How did it make you feel to write the letters?”

Sadie Dumbeck: It made me feel good because I like making people happy.

Alexis Velazquez: I felt great for writing those letters to the fireman because our class feels bad for them.

Jennifer Gonda: I felt great inside because the firefighters did a wonderful job and I feel sad for the people who lost their homes.

Victoria Vasquez: I felt really, really sad for the people who lost their homes.

Mary Fellios: I felt happy about writing the letters because they did such a wonderful job saving many houses in Fallbrook and risking their lives fighting them and trying to focus on the positive things and not the bad things that happened about the fire.

David Moran: I felt shy when I was writing the letters because people are going to read the letters that I don’t know.

“How did you feel when you had to leave town?”

Victoria Vasquez: I felt very scared about leaving because I could see the flames from my house and I thought my house was going to burn down.

Alexa Perez: I didn’t want anyone’s house to burn down and I wanted everyone to be safe and no one to be injured. I felt scared because it was getting close to our house.

Jonathon Paddila: I was scared because I had to leave my pet [cat] because and I was hoping that she wouldn’t get hurt.

[Good news: the cat was fine.]

Mary Fellios: I felt very scared when we left town because I saw the fire from my house and I was very afraid because my dog, Maxie, was in the smoke and it was bad for him. I didn’t want our house to burn down because I left a few of my valuable things from my childhood in the house and I didn’t want anything to get burnt, nobody wants that to happen.

Sadie Dumbeck: It was probably the scariest thing in my life and my cat was climbing all over the car when we were driving.

What are some other ideas that the class had to help out?

Alexa Perez: We collected money and canned foods for all the people who had lost their homes. And I took clothes to some of the people that we knew who had lost their homes.

Victoria Vasquez: My whole family decided to donate clothes to people who had lost their homes. I donated my clothes to my cousin who lost her home and when she came over to my house she gave me a big hug.

Mary Fellios: School had an assembly and a crew of firefighters and Alexa and I read our letters in front of the firefighters.

Charles Rockett: “I know a family that had their house burn down and we bought gift cards for them. It made me feel good to be able to help them.”