An unexpected act of kindness was captured on home surveillance video during Kincade Fire evacuations in Windsor, leaving evacuees with a renewed sense of hope as they struggled to gather information on the status of their neighborhood.
The video shows two firefighters stop to replace a flag that had fallen from the home of a veteran after the neighborhood had evacuated.
Windsor resident Jason Frazee was monitoring activities on his Ring home security camera, doing his best to provide updates to neighbors who had evacuated to areas such as the South Bay and even Hawaii.
“None of us knew what was going on,” Frazee said.
That’s when he noticed a fire truck pull up in front of his neighbor’s home.
According to Frazee, he first wondered what they were doing as they picked something up off the ground. As they approached his neighbor’s house, he said it became “very clear that it was an American flag.”
“With everything going on, I’d heard of them feeding people’s animals, moving people’s cars,” Frazee said. “Just that extra level of care was really cool. I actually teared up a little.”
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When the homeowner, Mendocino County Sheriff’s Deputy Miguel Vazquez, saw the video, he had a similar reaction. Vazquez had been in an officer-involved shooting in which a suspect fired at officers with a Desert Eagle handgun just weeks before the Kincade Fire. Two weeks later, when evacuation orders came, he feared the worst.
“I honestly thought we were going to lose our home,” Vazquez said. “But when I saw that they stopped everything they were doing to give our flag the respect it deserves, it gave me hope. As a veteran, it was one of the most respectful things I have ever seen.”
Frazee posted the video to the Ring home video network, where he said it had been viewed more than 1,000 times.
