San Diego Firestorm 2003

Well, I'm back home from PDC now, and am trying to absorb the magnitude of what happened while I was gone.

I wasn't able to get current reliable news while in L.A., as most stations fixated on L.A.-area fires and gave minimal airtime to what was going on in San Diego. The little snippets on CNN weren't terribly informative either, as they never went into the detail needed to fully grasp what happened here.

Some stats as of yesterday:

• Cedar Fire: 280,293 acres burned, 2,232 homes lost, 22 businesses lost, 14 deaths, 91 injuries
• Paradise Fire: 56,700 acres burned, 179 homes lost, 2 deaths, 20 firefighters injured
• Otay Fire: 46,291 acres burned, 1 home lost

I live on the coast, so my home was never threatened, but all of these are local fires, ranging from a few miles away to a couple of hours drive. When you see a fire map, it's staggering how much of the countryside around here has burned. The Cedar fire actually caused evacuations and many homes lost in a San Diego suburb, and jumped a major freeway to start encroaching on the Miramar Marine base.

I'm a hiker/camper/geocacher (see geocaching.com), so I know some beautiful landscape has been lost. I have memories of sitting on some big rocks creek-side with my family, under an impossibly blue sky, in an Oak shrouded valley on one of my favorite local hikes. We have a couple of caches in that area. That area was dead center of the Paradise fire, and must be a charred lunar landscape now.

Last year we had the massive Pines fire near the historic/scenic mountain community of Julian. I drove through there a few times this year on my way to the dessert, and was blown away by the extent of the damage. Based on the reports I've seen, the Cedar fire (much much bigger than last year's massive fire) took out a lot of what did not burn last year. Downtown Julian itself was saved thanks to a massive firefighting effort, but a lot of homes were lost.

We know several people that were evacuated, one of who lost some trees as the fires burned to within feet of their home, but we don't know anyone directly that lost a home. More stories of loss and sorrow, and heroism and survival, are emerging every day.

The cause of the fires is under investigation. One sounds like it was caused by human stupidity. Others may have been arson (who I think should be dealt with following the “eye for an eye“ approach, Salem-style!). Years of fire suppresion led to an abundance of brush and fuel, drought-weakened trees were succeptible and killed by the thousands by Pine bark beetles, so there was lots of standing deadwood. The photos of the 200ft walls of flame are unbelievable.

We will bounce back, but it will take many years for landscape to heal.

We're going to be heading off desert camping over Thanksgiving in a few weeks, and will probably end up driving though Julian. I don't know how many dry eyes there will be as we drive through the devastation.

I had to get this out of my system, I'll try to keep future posts more technical!

Teach your kids not to play with matches...