Diamond Bar blazes are 85 percent contained

it was Diamond RANCH High School not Diamond Bar....

Although most of the media reports seem to paint a positive picture of Diamond Ranch's response to this incident, our family's experience showed the gaps in communication. My son, a freshman, was originally told by school staff, to "carpool" down the hill from campus with a senior who had a car. Then the police stopped cars and told non-drivers the had to return to the school to follow lock-down procedures. The phone system for the school was shut down, so we could not call for information or instructions. We finally reached someone at the PUSD district office who told m husband they were letting parents up to the school in small groups to pick up students. However, when he tried to drive to the school he was repeatedly turned away over a period of about 90 minutes. Finally they let parents up -at about the same time the school would have let out anyway. When everyone got home, there were 3 messages on our phone explaining that students would be kept on campus until a parent could sign them out. Those messages were time stamped starting at 3:08pm- more than 3 hours after the fire broke out. Thank god this wasn't actually a more dangerous situation, because the communication channels were totally garbled.