SAN DIEGO — This week marks 20 years since the Cedar Fire devastated San Diego County.
Longtime CBS 8 anchor Barbara-Lee Edwards shares her memories of the firestorm with Marcella Lee.
Barbara-Lee remembers getting the call early on a Sunday morning to come into work, leaving her husband, young daughter and two-month-old son at home.
She remembers driving into work through ash gray skies, and spending nearly ten hours on the anchor desk to bring vital news to San Diego.
As Barbara-Lee recalls, police, local leaders, hospitals and schools all relied on us to relay crucial information to our viewers, and our field crews were the eyes and ears for San Diegans.
Conversation between Marcella and Barbara-Lee
Marcella Lee: What are your memories from the first day of the fires?
Barbara-Lee: The first day of the fire I remember really vividly
Broadcast from March 26, 2003: These are pictures from the Scripps Ranch area and where at least 150 homes have been destroyed."
Barbara-Lee: You have the sense of Oh, my God, this is awful. We need to cover this we need to let people know we need to warn people need to leave the area immediately. We need to tell them what they need to do. We need to help. And when we started getting information that there were fatalities.
Broadcast from March 26, 2003: nine deaths are being blamed directly on the fires.
Barbara-Lee: It was devastating for everybody. And I couldn't even imagine what it was like for those families. You just did your best to keep carrying on with the job the task at hand because it was just such a vital service people need it.
Broadcast from March 26, 2003: That information includes Kaiser. They phoned us to say that they do want their employees to come in to work tomorrow. We're going to go down to Carlo Cecchetto.
Marcella: Can we just stop and react to this for a moment?
Barbara-Lee: Well, this was some new guy and we kept having trouble with his name. I may have called him Geppetto at one point ... I got to know him a little bit, though, over the years, though... so now I know that that is our Carlo Cecchetto, who, by the way, had been here for a matter of weeks when he was thrown out there to do this fire coverage. I like I'm saying it was a learning experience for everyone. It was all hands on deck, and everybody did an amazing job. And of course, Jeff Zevely solid as ever.
Broadcast from March 26, 2003: if you live in this area, your stuff is safe tonight.
Marcella: What was your main goal?
Barbara-Lee: To tie it all together. A lot of people were emailing and saying things like for animals that need to be evacuated. That you can bring them here. But then if anyone else hears about this, if you have food or anything that you can bring, we need more help in this area. So as we're covering the fire, we're also doing these incredibly important public service announcements, you just really felt the sense of how important it was that you were there for them. We actually stopped going to commercial break after a while. We just knew this was going to have to be wall-to-wall coverage. There was nothing simply, nothing more important than the information we were bringing people at that time.
And because there was a lack of social media, you really wanted to get graphics up on the screen, nearly 600 homes have been destroyed and keep reminding people this is what's happening. We couldn't refer them to anything, we had to be that source of information.
Marcella: It was a completely different time as far as technology is concerned.
Barbara-Lee: And we also had to go over to the radio station and they would pick up our signal because it's not like somebody could take their iPhone with them and then start streaming at once they got in the car. So we wanted to get the message out any way we possibly could. If you think about these people having to leave spur of the moment, but they don't know where to go once they're in their car. How are they going to know where to go? So they started picking up our broadcast signal on radio as well.
Marcella: And to see the images we're looking at now, watching homes burned down in real-time, how did you internalize that?
Barbara-Lee: It was a whole mix of emotions because a lot of people that were seeing their homes burned down really emphasized they're just glad everyone got out safely. But if you waited a second, you could see it was a little more than that, when they turned back toward the devastation and you realize that everything is lost; every emotional, valuable memento, baby pictures-- a lot of people lost things that simply couldn't be replaced.
Marcella: It took a while for the community to heal and recover.
Barbara-Lee: It was just a big scar across the landscape and it really drove home what a horrible beast fire is.
We started the phone banks the next day-- everyone wanted to help. It's the one positive thing that can come out of something so devastating; the incredible sense of community in San Diego County is just amazing.
Marcella: Is there anything else you want to reflect on?
Barbara-Lee: Well, for me, I can honestly say that sort of set the tone for the rest of my career. I was sitting on the desk for the majority of the day with the late great Michael Tuck who was the consummate professional and so good at covering breaking news, that I actually felt a sense of calm covering this crazy breaking tragedy with him because he was so in control. And I would like to think that after that day, I was able to take a bit of that with me, in stories and events that I covered in future years.
WATCH RELATED: Cedar Fire in San Diego 20 years later