Fires in San Diego and nearby

Fortunately, my family and home are fine though we were not sure on
Sunday and early Monday that that would continue to be the case. We
were packed and ready to evacuate by midday Sunday, thanks to a
neighbor who is a fire chief and whose wife keeps us all apprised.
My community in eastern Encinitas (about 3 miles from the coast)
narrowly escaped a disastrous fire in 1996 (only four homes were
lost) so we keep a close eye when fires threaten us.

Early Sunday morning, there were banks of smoke coming from, at one
count, 8 fires in San Diego County, all in the eastern part of the
county but going nearly from the northern border all the way down to
the border with Mexico. The southernmost fire did cross the border.

We were in the middle of one of our occasional Santa Ana winds which
blows from the deserts in the east towards the west (normal airflow
is from the ocean on the west, towards the east and brings us our
infamous marine layer). Because they are from the deserts, Santa
Anas are very hot, very dry winds. Lips chap, skin cracks and hair
is a joke during a Santa Ana.

At the same time, we live in a fire habitat. Our native habitats are
fire adapted and fires are part of the natural cycle, devouring
biomass on a periodic basis and causing f dormant seeds to sprout and
rejuvenate the chaparral.

As humans invade the native habitat, we bring with fire suppression
tactics so that the native habitats burn very infrequently, but still
accumulate biomass that dies on a regular basis. In wetter
environments, the biomass would become a nice, thick, spongy mulch.
Under such dry conditions, however, what dies becomes a thin layer of
paper-dry carbon-based material. That translates to enormous amounts
of fuel just waiting around for an errant cigarette, dragging
tailpipe (sparks) ,etc. The largest and most deadly fire at the
moment, the Cedar fire, was caused by a lost hunter who lit a signal
fire so his buddy could find him. He might regret that decision for
the rest of his life.

Another problem is that our region was planted with combustible
eucalyptus trees in the early 1900s. Eucalyptus did so well that
they spread throughout the area. In a fire, they go up like
matchsticks.

In more mountainous areas, native pines have been plagued by pine
bark beetle. The number of dead and near dead pines is tremendous,
and they too are more fire prone than healthy pines would be.

So the fires started to spread with the wind and the huge fuel load.
They looked to be making a clean sweep, north to south, east to west.
One fear was that they would all merge. That fear still exists.

Under normal circumstances, San Diego has a fairly good fire fighting
force. However, many of our fire fighters were deployed to San
Bernardino to the north and other areas where fires started burning
earlier last week. When the fires hit here, we were operating with a
reduced crew. There were too few of them to try containing the
fires - only to save people and buildings. Reinforcements from
elsewhere didn't arrive until late on Tuesday, after more than 1100
homes had burned, a dozen people died and hundreds of thousands of
acres were destroyed.

Schools are closed, most nonessential businesses were closed until
today in the City of San Diego and coastal communities. Yesterday,
the sky was the most awful shade of orange tinged putty, thick and
smoky. Ashes rained down like big snowflakes. It was impossible to
breathe.

Today, the winds have shifted and are blowing from west to east (and
driving the blaze that directoin) so we have a bit of blue sky, but
I suspect that the clearer skies are still filled with micro
contaminants -- my chest aches.

Communities in the mountains to the east of us are meanwhile being
decimated. You might hear people talk about the rural towns of
Cuyamaca, Julian, Pine HIlls, Alpine, Descanso... these communities
are all taking it very hard. The community of Cuyamaca is virtually
gone. This is after homes were destroyed in rural Valley Center (to
the north) and in suburban Scripps Ranch, Tierra Santa and San
Carlos (central). The Otay fire in the south seems to have caused
only minimal loss of property. .

Up towards the north in Riverside County, the mountain resort of Big
Bear was evacuated yesterday and pretty hard hit by that fire. It is
now moving towards Lake ARrowhead which is another mountain resort in
the area. Further north in Ventura county, the fire in Simi Valley
is still burning.

That's all for now

Nan
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Nan Sterman Plant Soup (TM)
PO Box 231034
Encinitas, CA 92023 760.634.2902 (voice)
Talkingpoints@PlantSoup.Com 760.634.2957 (fax)

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