Red Cross volunteer helps out close to home
By Kyle Jorrey kjorrey@theacorn.com

MICHAEL COONS/Special to the Acorn ROVER RESCUE- Ventura County Firefighter James Craig carries Leo from a burning house on Celia Court in Simi Valley. The residents lost one dog to the fire, three others were saved.

For the past 23 years, Mike Jawitz has volunteered as a Disaster Action Team member for the American Red Cross, agreeing to be on-call on nights and weekends to respond to crisis situations and aid victims of trauma.

This past Monday, Jawitz's poise under pressure was required very close to home when a house on Celia Court, directly behind his own property, caught fire around 1 p.m., according to Capt. Barry Parker of the Ventura County Fire Department.

The blaze, which reportedly began in the kitchen and moved to the garage, displaced a family of five- no one was injured- and took the life of a family pet, a year-old Maltese named Casey. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Parker said that when firefighters arrived, flames were intense, and smoke was billowing from the garage.

"When you have a fire that burns like that with such magnitude, it ruins everything throughout the house," Parker explained. "What isn't consumed by the fire is badly damaged by the smoke."

MICHAEL COONS/Special to the Acorn UNDER CONTROL- Foam is used by the Ventura County Fire Department to put out hot spots on a home that burned Monday in the 3900 block of Celia Court in Simi Valley.

An engineer for Boeing, Jawitz was alerted to the fire by his wife, Sherri, and sped home from his job near LAX to lend a hand despite the fact that he wasn't on call that day.

Upon arriving, the longtime Simi resident found the entire street blocked off and half a dozen fire engines sitting outside the burned home. "The fire battalion chief was just dialing Red Cross when I showed up," Jawitz said. "He said he'd never seen a response that quick."

Finding his neighbors on their front lawn, Jawitz invited the family with whom he'd often shared pleasantries into his home to escape the cold. The move was not standard Red Cross protocol.

"Normally we don't do that . . . but there was lousy weather and they have kids and I felt like I wanted to get them away from everybody else around there and into someplace warm," Jawitz said. "So we just went to my house and did the paperwork there."

In a service offered by the Red Cross in such circumstances, Jawitz arranged for the family to stay a few nights in a local hotel until their insurance company took the reins.

"I've learned doing this job that a disaster, no matter how big or small, is still traumatic to someone, whether it's a whole neighborhood hit by an earthquake like we were in '94, or a single-family fire," Jawitz said. "Everybody in that situation can use a little assistance, even if it's just someone to talk to."