School douses fire funds

An effort to raise funds for the families of fallen firefighters turned into an imbroglio Oct. 27 during Halloween festivities at El Morro Elementary School.

On a smoky day exactly 13 years after the 1993 Laguna Beach wildfires, Laguna resident Annee Della Donna and five children lugged a pair of fireman’s boots and a helmet to the Boo Blast, an annual fundraiser for the school.

They carried a handmade sign soliciting donations for the families of firefighters killed by the Esperanza fire in Riverside County the day before.

Della Donna’s ad-hoc attempt to raise funds did not sit well with El Morro Principal Chris Duddy, who asked her to stop the solicitation.

Duddy said he could not allow the fundraising, since Della Donna hadn’t obtained permission prior to the event from him and the district.

“It’s a great cause,” Duddy said later, but the school’s rules were not followed. “Any solicitation of funds on school grounds needs to be pre-approved by the district and the school’s principal, and that was not the case here.”

The boot had been filled with $40 in the 15 minutes prior to its removal, Della Donna said.

Della Donna thought she was providing a service to the local firefighters, who are normally present at the Boo Blast event, but with two strike forces having been sent to help fight the Esperanza fire, the department had no personnel to spare.

When she heard about the fatalities, Della Donna said she was compelled to act, so she contacted the Laguna Beach fire department.

“I said, ‘You should do something for these families,’ ” Della Donna said. “They said, ‘Yeah, we wanted to, but we can’t.’”

She asked whether she could take fundraising supplies to the event, and was later given two boots and a helmet.

When Della Donna arrived at the school event, she said she saw several Orange County firefighters clustered on a picnic table. She got their permission to put her display on the table.

“I left because I had five kids to watch,” she said. “All of a sudden, one of my kids came up to me and said, ‘You have to take that sign down.’”She said that she met with Duddy, who told her to take the sign down because it was competing with the Boo Blast’s goals to raise money for the school. She removed the sign at his request, but was not happy about it.

“A lot of people were affected by the ’93 fires, and this is not how our community acts,” she said. “He [Duddy] could have turned this into a really positive thing.” Della Donna’s children attend a private school in Irvine.