Firestorm 2007 - Final update

Not your typical firefighter. A female prisoner fighting the Witch Fire in San Diego County [10/25/2007]. And here is a very interesting number, of approximately 9,000 firefighters battling Southern California flames, nearly 3,000 are inmates. But they do get a fairly good deal; two days off their sentence for each on the fire lines. About 300 are from all-women prisoner brigades. Thanks to all the firefighters for a job WELL DONE!

Updated 10/26/2007 at 1300 Pacific

Today is a great day here in the San Diego County. Things are getting back to NORMAL in several areas. This morning the temperature was much better, with the winds coming from the Pacific Ocean. The area was covered by a nice WOF [wall of fog] in the early hours, and this helped a lot. I was finally able to remove all the ash and dirt particles from my vehicles [easy to do thanks to all the condensation created by the WOF]. We have re-learned a lot of lessons during this firestorm, and I say re-learned because once again we had some issues due to all the bureaucracy [it was not supposed to happen this time around]. For example, at one point we had several air tankers sitting in our military bases just waiting for a phone call giving them the green light to take off. Some of those air tankers were sent to Southern California by the National Guard general in charge of the squadron - he sent them "on a training mission" to California. No, it was not a "training mission" but he was a good Soldier and displayed outstanding leadership by-passing bureaucratic firewall. But then the air tankers sat in a Navy air base waiting for "Cal Fire" to make a call. I know the governator and the rest of our career politicians will figure this out, and things will be better the next time [because there WILL be a next time here in the San Diego County]. Overall, outstanding job done by our city mayor and by our governator [both members of the Republican Party] and their teams. We did not have a Katrina moment here in the San Diego County. This is not a cheap shot to my friends in Louisiana, but we remember New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin demanding from president GWB to save his city. That did not happen here. Our mayor Jerry Sanders and our board of supervisors chairman Ron Roberts were always in charge, acted with a lot of competence, and passed the information to us so that we the residents of this county could make the critical decisions and save ourselves. This is my last update on Firestorm 2007.

Thanks for reading.

Updated 10/25/2007 at 0915 Pacific

The Birds are coming! For the first time this week I can see the birds flying around my home, and I can hear the crows calling each other on top of the light poles. This area was very quiet on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday with no vehicle traffic and no birds. Last night I was talking with my family about where have all the birds gone[?]. It is possible that the birds know that it is now safe to return to my area. On the fire fronts, things are looking better this morning but we still have thousands of residents evacuated from their homes. This morning my flag is not moving at all, calm winds, and I can feel the air coming from the ocean. But in the inland and mountain areas the temperatures will continue to be from the mid 80s to the mid 90s [not good for our fire fighting teams]. The president and his emergency team are scheduled to arrived at our Marine Air Station [in Miramar] this morning to take a look at the disaster area. We have turned the corner, but we still have a lot of areas burning in the San Diego County.

Thanks for reading.

Dante's Inferno - update as of 1200 Pacific 10/24/2007

Good morning. Thanks for your comments and all I can tell you right now is that my home is still standing here. I was on the line of fire [of "The Harris Fire"] this fire originated on the town of POTRERO near the border with Mexico, approx 45 miles to the east of my home. Yesterday morning there was a mandatory evacuation for a large number of residences including an area just 1/2 mile to the east of my home. My family was not ordered to evacuate [we did receive the REVERSE 911 call giving us info on what to do]. In the past 72 hours we had some shaky moments here, and I was just waiting to see the fires coming over the hills located approx one mile from my home [I expected the fires to reach my home yesterday during the evening hours], but the flames never reached the hills.

Yesterday the westerly movement of the fire was stopped by the air assault [helicopters] and by a lucky shift of wind. I could hear the helicopters fighting the fire to the east of my home [I could not see them because of the hills between my home and the lake used by the helicopters to fight the fire]. The high winds have abated on my area, but there are high winds in the mountains and canyons and the fires are still burning, but they are currently moving to the east [which is bad because there is a lot of unburned ground with a lot of "fuel" on the fire path]. Monday I had my 72 hours emergency kit ready to go [for my family], but I was planning to make a stand here, I was NOT leaving. My plan was to protect my home, I had already set my fire boundaries, and I had my firefighting gear ready to go. Where I live in San Diego I can not afford to leave this home unprotected. Monday was a long/frustrating day [we lost electrical power for a long period of time here on Monday], but yesterday was a good day for the firefighters and as of this writing things are looking better in my area, and hopefully the worst is over because we can finally use aircraft to fight the fires.

Attached is a good link showing you where all the fires are, "my fire" [the Harris Fire] is the one at the bottom of the screen [with more than 70,000 acres burned]. Link to the chart.

Good action photo. An MH-60S Seahawk assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron Eight Five [also known as the "High Rollers"], lifts a full 420-gallon extinguishing trough. This US Navy photo was taken yesterday on a lake located just a few miles to the east of my home. Photo

Thanks for reading.

Original Note:

Things are not looking good for the home team here in San Diego. As of this writing we have SEVEN fires burning in the San Diego County. The largest fire is near the Mexico border, originating at the small town of Potrero. Note, this is the town in which Blackwater wants to build a Soldiers of Fortune training center. The smoke from this fire is covering the sky on the area where I live [Potrero is located approximately 40 miles to the east of my home]. Bad situation here, I just heard one of the fire experts on the television telling everyone on the line of fire to start making preparations to leave their residence because the Potrero fire could reach all the way to the coast [from the Potrero mountains to the coast, we are talking about a lot of miles].

I live in a fire-safe area, but you never know, I keep looking at the mountains located to the east, a good distance from my house.

We witnessed a sad story this morning on a local television station, one of our best known reporters was giving a live report from one of the fires, one of the homes on fire was HIS own home. His home burned to the ground, total loss, but him and his family are safe [and at the end of the day this is what really counts].

Here in our county we have a good emergency communications system called the REVERSED 911, during an emergency the 911 operators will notify the citizen on what to do. So far they have sent a reverse 911 call to 250,000 residents telling them to evacuate their homes [this includes the expensive area of Rancho Santa Fe - some of the most expensive homes in North America are found in Rancho Santa Fe]. Again, the winds are not helping here, in some areas we have winds steady at 50 miles per hour, but in the mountain canyons we have guts from 60 to 70 miles per hour, and the wind is from the east. Under normal conditions those winds are no big deal, but under a fire they are bad enough to create conflagration or fire storms. Again, the high winds are preventing our firefighting teams from combating these fires from the air, and as per the latest weather forecast [from 5 minutes ago] we do not expect to see changes in the winds for the next 24 hours.

Current marching orders are for everyone in the San Diego County to stay away from the freeways and NOT to use their cell phones. Things are not looking good for the home team.

Thanks for reading.