Oct 22
2007 San Diego Wildfires
A few friends have emailed me asking if we’re affected by the fires that are raging all around the county. Thankfully, we’re only affected by crappy air quality at this point. All of the fires started pretty far east in the county in more rural (and brushy) areas. However, one of the fires in the northeast county, the Witch Creek fire, has been heavily fueled by strong westerly Santa Ana winds and has resulted in the evacuation of a large area north of Highway 56 between Interstate 5 and Interstate 15. Though that area is about 10 miles or so north of us, it’s a pretty large area.
The pictures below show the sky this morning from our house. It smells like a campfire, and you can see bits of ash on our cars, and the sky is a little hazy, but it’s not nearly as bad as the sky was back in 2003 when I lived closer to downtown. Here are some pictures and whatnot I posted in 2003 related to that Cedar Fire.
Noon update : Air quality still not too bad here (smells like a campfire, some ashes) but the skies aren’t black like they were over downtown in the Cedar Fire. I’ve been watching a lot of local news coverage; houses have been lost in Escondido, Rancho Bernardo, and I think even a southern corner of Oceanside. Parts of Poway (just north of Scripps Ranch the hardest hit area of the Cedar Fire) seems to be in danger. One fire official said that given the wind conditions for the next few days, the Witch Creek fire could spread as far west as the coast, which could affect anywhere from Oceanside to Del Mar, I’m guessing. I think the only reason our neighborhood isn’t too smoky is that there are no fires directly east of us, and the wind seems to be blowing in a strong westerly direction.
You may have noticed this evacuation area map. This is quite a large area, so you may be wondering, “aren’t there more than 250,000 people there?” Much of this area could be described as high-income, semi-rural (large estates with several acres of property or more), so the population density is much lower than some other parts of San Diego county. Check out this Zillow link to see what I mean.
Here are some photo galleries from SignOnSanDiego.
Here are some Google map links showing areas where houses have burned or were in imminent danger:
3925 Tierra Vista Place Escondido
Lomas Serinas Drive, near Escondido
Local news coverage
