By Miriam Raftery

June 16, 2013 (Palomar) –Palomar Mountain Volunteer Fire Department has hired an attorney in an effort to stave off strong-arm efforts by the County, which seeks to force the tiny department to join the County Fire Authority or lose funds.  Joining would mean handing over control to Cal-Fire, which runs rural stations under the CFA.

“Our closest mutual aid is 45 minutes down the hill,” Chief George Lucia said at a packed public meeting in late May, the U-T San Diego reported. “They’re telling me  I can’t hire local community volunteers. I say to them that without my local community volunteers that live here, sleep here and have a stakeholder’s interest in the community, I can’t guarantee that I can cover a call.”

Update 8:30 p.m. - Fire is 70% contained and has reached 110 acres, ECM reporter Nadin Abbott reports.

Update 8:00 p.m.  -- The fire has swelled to 60 acres, ECM news partner 10 News reports. One lane of 52 east is now open but the Santos ramp remains closed.  There are no threats to structures at this time.

June 16, 2013 (San Diego's East County) -- A fast-burning brush fire has consumed 20 acres and has now crossed into Mission Trails Regional Park, according to the CHP website at 5:25 p.m.  State Route 52 eastbound is also being shut down near Santo Road.

June 2, 2013 (San Pasqual) – Cal-Fire has informed East County Magazine that the 15-acre Boden Fire is burning off Highway 78 and Boden Canyon Road in the vicinity of the Boden Canyon preserve. The fire is in the San Pasqual Valley west of Ramona, burning in a westerly direction with winds approximately 10 miles per hour.

 “There are no structures in the area,” Mike Mohler with Cal-Fire told ECM.  The fire is burning at a moderate rate of speed.  “Aircraft are staging at San Pasqual Academy and it sounds like the aircraft are holding it,” he said, adding that there is no current threat to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park located about four miles east of the blaze.

Photos by Lisa Elkins-Goodman, Brett Stalbaum and Joseph Moulton

By Miriam Raftery and Nadin Abbott

Update May 28, 2013 -- The General Fire is now 950 acres and 85% contained, Cal Fire confirms.  The cause of the fire has been traced to shooting. One injury has been reported from the fire.

May 26, 2013 (San Diego’s East County) Upodated May 27 9 a.m.– The brush that began  yesterday in Rodriguez Canyon south of Highway 78, across from the Banner Grade Store in the 3600 block of Highway 78, is now 850 acres and 20 percent contained.  IPN indicates the fire is spreading rapidly and has potential for 300 acres. Helicopter indicates no structures are threatened at this time, however there is a power outage.

Power restoration is expected at 3 p.m.  There is no estimate on containment. 

Multiple strike teams have been dispatched to battle the fire on U.S. Bureau of Land Management  property.

Dozers ordered to Volcan Mountain

By Miriam Raftery

“Something will have gone out of us as people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed.” – Wallace Stegner

May 24, 2013 (Julian) Updated May 29, 2013 – The quote above is inscribed on the Volcan Mountain Foundation webpage, a site devoted to protecting the wilderness preserve. But today, as a raging wildfire that started as a controlled burn encroached, bulldozers were ordered to cut a firebreak on the crest of Volcan Mountain, ECM has learned.

Meanwhile an ECM investigation has raised growing questions over whether this fire could have been prevented.  Those questions include:

• Why did Cal-Fire order a controlled burn in hot weather just hours after a high wind advisory had expired?
• Why did the National Weather Service issue a spot fire weather report to Cal-Fire advising lower wind speeds when it has no wind monitor in the valley where the fire occurred?
• Why was Volcan Mountain Foundatiion advised conditions were too dangerous for it to conduct pile burning, yet Cal-Fire conducted its own controlled burn?
• Why did fire officials underestimate the potential size of this fire at 500 acres? (It has burned over 1,800 acres and is 60% contained.)
• Should Cal-Fire’s plan to sharply increase the number of acres it clears statewide be axed given the consequences of this out-of-control burn?
  

Photo by Jamelle McCullough

May 23, 2013 (San Diego's East County)--A controlled burn has grown out of control due to a change in wind directions. The fire started along State Route 78 at the Great Southern Overland Stage route. Authorities initally predicted the blaze had potential for 500 acres, but it has now topped 1,500 acres with 30% containment.

There is no current threat to structures of infrastructure,  per Cal Fire.

The California Highway Patrol website indicates that a closure has been ordered on S-2 at S22 and at State Route 78.  Smoke is blowing across San Felipe.  According to the Julian News editor, the route from Shelter Valley to Warner Springs is blocked. Road closures are expected to remain in effect through tomorrow.

May 22, 2013 (Spring Valley) – Maybe becoming a volunteer Firefighter is a bit much, but please consider being a volunteer “Fire Preventer.”

The San Miguel Fire District in cooperation with its partner CAL FIRE, is ramping up its “Before the Threat, Are You Ready” preparedness and prevention campaign. This massive public education effort provides critical preparedness information with an old- fashioned door-to-door contact.

Again this year they are hoping teams of community volunteers join CAL FIRE Firefighters in a door-to-door campaign in the Districts high hazard urban interface areas. Two major fires in four years have shown all of us the need to be prepared and to create defensible space, to have an evacuation plan, and have the supplies necessary to take care of your families for up to a week.

By Sholeh Sisson 

May 22 2013 (Ramona)-- Mike Mohler, spokesman from Cal-Fire, has informed East County Magazine that a vehicle/ residential fire burned into brush in a nearby field.  Fire crews halted the blaze at one-quarter acre.

The fire was dispatched at 11:55 this morning and resources will be there until 2 p.m. Avoid area near 2014 Montecito while crews are at work.

View video  of fire  and airdrop  by Adam Cameron.

Photos by Leslie O'Brien and Nancy Hauer

Update: Forward spread is halted; firefighters are expected to remain on scene through this evening.

May 12, 2013 (San Diego's East County) -- A brush fire that began near the river bed at 13425 Old Highway 80 near Las Coches Road could reach 20 acres or more and is now burning mobile homes.   A female burn patient from a homeless camp that burned has been transported to a hospital.

Two strike teams and a helicopter have been ordered.  CHP is shutting down traffic on Las Coches.

By Nadin Abbott

May 12, 2013 (Lakeside) Updated May 13, 2013—A fire that led to voluntary evacuations on Mapleview in Lakeside yesterday serves as an early warning of the difficult fire season forecast due to unusually dry conditions this year.  According to Lakeside Fire Chief Andy Parr, the fire started at 3:40 p.m. and crews quickly mobilized. The fire started at the top of the hill and raced downhill towards the San Diego River.

“It is very dry, it was bigger and moved faster than they usually do at this time of the year,” Chief Parr told ECM. This is expected to be a very busy fire season and Chief Parr emphasized, “it is critical that residents have defensible space.”

At the top of the hill, one property stood out. (Photo, top left).   The owner had cleared 100 feet of defensible space as recommended around the property, Chief Parr pointed out.

May 10, 2013 (Ramona) -- The federal government has provided another extension on the announced closure of the Ramona Airport's air traffic control tower and other similar facilities across the nation, this time through at least September 30.

“The decision to keep the Ramona Airport tower open for now is a step in the right direction, but the federal government needs to come up with a long-term budget fix," Supervisor Dianne Jacob said in a press statement today. "Closing the Ramona tower at the end of September would endanger our region when we need the air traffic facility the most. Many of San Diego County’s biggest and deadliest wildfires, including the 2003 and 2007 firestorms, have started in our backcountry in the fall."

Public urged to Report Suspicious Activity

May 8, 2013 (Sacramento) –While encouraging wildfire preparedness this week, CAL FIRE is also reminding residents of the dangers posed by arson. CAL FIRE is pleased to join the United States Fire Administration (USFA) in announcing the theme for the 2013 Arson Awareness Week: Reducing Residential Arson. The goal for this year’s Arson Awareness Week, which takes place May 5-11, 2013, is to provide all residents with strategies to combat arson in their neighborhoods.

According to the USFA’s National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) during 2008-2010, an estimated 16,800 intentionally set fires in residential buildings occur annually in the United States. These fires result in an estimated 280 deaths, 775 injuries, and $593 million in property loss each year. The average dollar loss for an intentionally set fire in a residential building is $21,320. The fatality rate for intentionally set residential fires was more than twice that of other residential building fires.

May 3, 2013 (San Diego)—On Monday, May 6 at 1 p.m., East County residents opposed to the proposed County Wind ordinance and Boulevard Plan amendment will hold a press conference outside the County Administration Center at 1600 Pacific Highway (by the fountain on the west side.) 

“On May 8^th, the Board of Supervisors will make a life-altering choice for rural East County residents and valued resources,” a press release sent by the Protect Our Communities Foundation and Backcountry Against Dumps. Supervisors must choose to either “sell out to the taxpayer-subsidized wind industry and developers and turn the ruggedly beautiful Boulevard/Jacumba area into an unnecessary industrial energy sacrifice zone and fire trap," the rural residents say,  or"protect and defend the ratepayers and real people and resources in the predominantly low-income fire-prone area from expensive, unreliable, and dangerous industrial wind turbine projects and related web of electrical infrastructure.”

Speakers will include rural residents and a fire official speaking out on dangers posed by industrial wind projects in our region.

Wind company fails to call fire department, lets blaze burn overnight

By Miriam Raftery

Photo: Tehachapi fire, 2012

April 27, 2013 (San Diego’s East County)—Why is there no federal requirement for wind farm operators to report fires? 

That troubling fact came to light following a turbine malfunction that caused a fire, destroying a $4 million wind turbine at the Kibby Mountain facility in Maine.  Opponents accuse Trans-Canada of a cover up, the Bangor Daily News reports. (Trans-Canada, builder of the project, is also the company seeking to construct the controversial Keystone Pipeline.)

A sensor in the turbine detected the fire. But an employee did not arrive on scene until the next morning, after the fire had burned itself out.  The fire department was never notified, nor was any state agency.  Had the blaze not occurred in winter with snow on the ground, the fire could have spread to the adjacent forest, a Maine forestry official has stated.

 ECM has asked Cal-Fire in an e-mail whether wind facility operators are required to report fires to fire officials.  No response has been received.