A quick getaway
Antonio Gates heard the knock on his door in the middle of the night a week ago. When he answered it, he saw the orange glow in the sky outside his Poway area home, and he knew what he had to do.
“The power was out,” he said. “I put my clothes on and got out.”
As it turned out, there was some smoke damage, he said, “but most of the house was good. It was nothing compared to some of the stuff people dealt with the last couple of days.”
Teammate LaDainian Tomlinson recalled that the fire “came as close as it could come without burning my house. It burned some of my trees, and I have smoke and ash throughout my house.”
But, as Gates put it: “We play football, and we’re able to bounce back. I’m quite sure everybody on this team is in a fortunate enough situation that they’d be all right if something were to happen to their homes. My heart goes out to the ones who weren’t able to bounce back, and who invested the majority of their lives in their homes.”
Added Philip Rivers: "It's been a tough week, really, though, not for us. I know that's what gets reported a lot because that's what people are interested in, how we are. But it wasn't that tough for us ... For the community, what people went through, that was tough. The people who lost their homes and were injured, hopefully this 3 1/2 hours of enjoyment could help continue to spark the rebuilding of a lot of places. Hopefully this win gives some ease to some people's pain."
Rivers donated the seats in his luxury box to the family of some injured firefighters.
"I buy a box for the year just for the family, just for the little ones and all," he said. "But because of the fire they stayed back in Alabama and nobody was coming out. I sure didn't want it to be empty up there, so I talked to the Community Relations department of the Chartgers and told them to find a family that would fit this best and let them enjoy the game. Hopefully it went to a group of people that could use it and enjoy it."