Nick Roman
October 23, 2007
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More than 500,000 people have been forced out of their homes by a string of wildfires burning across Southern California. The most destructive fires are moving through the San Bernardino National Forest near Lake Arrowhead, and across central and southern San Diego County. KPCC has reporters on the scene, and they spoke with Senior News Editor Nick Roman.
Nick Roman: This time around, fire crews in the San Bernardino Mountains have had some big help from the biggest air tanker there is: A giant DC-10 that can drop more than 10,000 gallons of fire retardant. That's almost ten times the amount that a typical air tanker can carry. KPCC reporter Steven Cuevas was covering the Slide Fire burning close to Lake Arrowhead when the DC-10 tanker was dispatched from its base in Victorville for a drop.
Steven Cuevas: And we look up and there it is. This big orange jetliner, right above our heads, and out comes this long plume of orange fire retardant and it drops not 20 or 25 feet from us. It did a pretty good job. The problem is a lot of the fire retardant will dissipate before it hits the ground because this jetliner flies so high; like it might get one side of a tree and the other side might be exposed.
Roman: That's why the DC-10 tanker won't replace helicopters and smaller planes that can hit the flames right on the button.
Cuevas: They can fly in much lower over the fire, and also at a much slower speed. And that enables them to be a little more precise in where that fire retardant goes. But what's cool is if those planes can drop a line down, then the DC-10 can come in and from above. It can see where the smaller planes dropped the retardant and use that as a guide and dump even more in that area.
Roman: The roads in the San Bernardino Mountains are largely deserted. Cuevas says it's easy to drive up and down because no one's around.
Cuevas: Most people have taken off. If they haven't taken off, they're staying put on their property, but definitely not in the Running Springs and Green Valley Lake area. I think everyone got out of there, although sheriff's officials and fire officials tell me that they could not remove some people from that area, and they're really concerned about them.
Roman: Cuevas says fire officials haven't been able to send in assessment teams to see what's burned in Running Springs. There's a fear that as many as 200 homes have been destroyed by the fire.
KPCC reporter Julie Small is covering the Harris Fire in San Diego. It's killed one person, and it's destroyed more than 200 structures. The Harris Fire is one of three major fires burning in the San Diego area. It's burning in Chula Vista and El Cajon, close by the Mexican border. Small says the fire operations are run out of a command center in the middle of a dusty field at a small airstrip.
Julie Small: We forget that it's not just fighting the fire. It's feeding the firefighters, giving them facilities to use. They've had to set up toilets. They've set up a mess hall, a huge tent with tables. They have a cooking staff. They have showers with sinks and running water. They had to bring in all their own generators. It's a huge operation, and it's like creating a city overnight.
Roman: Small says at one of the evacuation centers, the mood among those who've had to leave their homes is positive, but that can be misleading.
Small: One of the people involved in the incident command team told me today there's a sort of "honeymoon period" with evacuations where people are initially relieved or resigned – "Well, that's just how it goes, and this is what has to happen, I had to leave my home." But as the situation draws out and lasts maybe for days or even weeks, people lose patience. So we're at the start of this and people look pretty good here right now, but they're relatively new to the scene.
Roman: Some of the thousands who've been evacuated from San Diego neighborhoods have been sent to shelters in Orange County. There are simply too many fires over too large an area for firefighters to battle. But Tony Perry, the San Diego bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, says the fires' march to the west might hit a roadblock soon.
Tony Perry: The weathermen say that the closer it comes to the ocean, the more difficult the movement of the fire becomes. You start to get winds that move from the ocean eastward to push it back, as opposed to the Santa Ana winds that we're seeing pushing it westward.
Roman: The National Weather Service says the Santa Ana winds will ease up on Wednesday, although San Diego temperatures will stay in the 80s. It'll be much cooler in the mountains. By the weekend, the temperatures in San Diego will drop into the 70s, and the fire danger might have finally ended by then.
