Fires force Marines, families from homes at Camp Pendleton
Fox News reports that an arsonist, Alberto Serrato, pleaded not guilty to charges that he set a fire in Oceanside, CA which has forced Camp Pendleton Marines and their families out of their homes there;
Tanya Sierra, a spokeswoman for the San Diego County district attorney’s office, says witnesses saw Serrato adding brush to the flames near homes but he was not seen starting the fire. The spokeswoman says he has not been connected to any other fire.
Meanwhile, the Camp Pendleton public affairs office told Fox News firefighters are waging an aggressive fight against the newest fire on the base, which is one of three. At least 8,400 people were evacuated from the Marine base, though evacuations were lifted for some early Saturday.
Several camp areas and an infantry school remain under evacuation.
Category: Politics
Blame glowball warming all you want, but a lot of those fires wouldn’t be burning were it not for dipshits like Serrato.
Having been born in and lived in SoCal, this is far from new. Such is life when you live in a place with 300 days of sunshine per year.
I was at MCT over at Pendleton back in 98. Our final exercise before graduation was called to an abrupt halt due to a sudden thunderstorm that set the area on fire.
Out of nine major fires in San Diego county, one was started accidentally by a construction crew (Rancho Bernardo), and the rest are suspicious. That does not count the two small fires set by a couple of teenagers in or near Kit Carson park, which never got big.
I was on that one, got my ass kicked in the process. Some people are making all kinds of claims (mostly global-warming-related) about these being the “worst fires ever” or some shit. As a firefighter, I can say with some professional authority “not even close!” For one thing, this rash of fires, while serious, doesn’t hold a candle to the October sieges we had in San Diego County in 2007, 2003, or 1970, (saw two of those three firsthand myself) to name a few. For another, it is unusual to see this kind of weather and fire activity in May, but by no means is it unprecedented. It happens often enough, going back throughout the recorded history of the region. Anytime you have a bone-dry winter (like we just had), followed by early heat waves (which usually follow the bone-dry winter) you get this. It’s called drought, and it’s been happening from time to time since LONG before anybody ever fired up an internal-combustion engine. It is no more common or severe than before, it’s just that people seem to have short memories these days. Wildland fire is a fact of life in the western United States, Southern California more so than most areas. It happens! This is like living in Florida and claiming that hurricanes never happened before. Of course, some people don’t get it and probably never will. I’ve been told by some random Joe Schmoe on the street that we’re doing it all wrong and need to do what he says. I then have to find a tactful and professional way to say, “Wow, I’ve been doing this for over fifteen years, been professionally trained the entire time, seen hundreds if not thousands of incidents like this one, had hundreds of hours in fire weather and fire behavior calcs. It’s so amazing that you, who might have seen this on TV once, knows more about it than I do!” Then there’s those like a guy I once saw who was wetting down his concrete driveway and thought that was the best way to protect his house. When… Read more »
A guy watering concrete called you retarded?
Then again, that guy probably paid close to seven figures for a 1800-sq. ft. shitbox sitting on a hillside than hasn’t been cleared since his development was built.
My sister lives very near the San Marcos fire and self-evacuated early, knowing that there was only one way out of their neighborhood and traffic was already starting to gridlock. People who have to run at the last minute are not paying attention.
Fortunately, her home is most likely not at risk, although her employer is.
The talking heads are calling this unprecedented for May, but it’s not. Even here in Colorado we’ve had years when the fires start in May, including the first big one, the Buffalo Creek Fire on May 19, 1996, which burned 12,000 acres in ONE day, including our family cabin.
This year we’re having a cold and wet May, so maybe we’ll have a better year than the last few.
People need to realize that over 100 years of fire suppression left our arid area with a fuel buildup that no amount of controlled burns will mitigate. The Red Zone of the Front Range will continue to experience catastrophic fires until all of that excess fuel is gone.
Lots of people from elsewhere move here thinking that it’s great to live in the mountains but be able to have a 30 minute or less commute into Denver. You couldn’t pay me to live in the Red Zone, it’s not worth the risk and the anxiety that goes along with it. We did rebuild our cabin (a log home, you aren’t allowed to build cabins anymore), but the anxiety goes up every year when fire season starts. We’ve had 3 additional fires come as close as across the road. It just may kill my parents to lose it again.
Despite the best efforts of PIOs from my department and others around here, even San Diego’s local media is utterly clueless about fire suppression. That doesn’t stop them from going on and on and on and on AND ON pretending to be experts on that which they know nothing about.
“Well, the firefighters are [insert random stupidity] right now.” No, we’re not. We’re doing something that might actually work instead.
“If they get in trouble, they have fire shelters to keep them safe.” Actually, a shelter is the difference between “you’re gonna die horribly” without it, and “you’ll probably still die horribly but might survive with major burns” with it. It’s much better to not have to deploy the damn things in the first place.
“The airtankers will put it out.” No, they will drop retardant to slow the spread of the fire so that engines, hand crews, and dozers can catch it and put it out. If it’s too hot, the retardant can dry out and be rendered ineffective in a few minutes or less. High winds can blow the retardant off-target and create unsafe conditions for aircraft (low altitude + mountains + crosswind = bad).
These are just a few examples I’ve encountered firsthand. The same shit over and over again from the same people who’ve reported on fires for 5, 10, even 20 years, had it explained to them God-knows-how-many times, and they still don’t grasp even the basics. Honestly, I don’t know how the PIOs do it. I sure as hell don’t have that kind of patience!
God, we have zeros like that moron who tried watering his driveway where I live. When I was five and we lived in a different town, some jackass tossed a butt into a patch of dry grass and started a brush fire about half the size of a football field. The firefighters had it about under control in a couple of hours (there were roads on three sides of it and well watered lawns on another, so I imagine that helped). But there was this one guy who lived about a mile away, saw the smoke, and freaked the hell out. So he runs down to the store, buys a few jerry cans of kerosene, and tries to start a backfire in the dry brush of his backyard to create a burned zone so his house would be safe from the massive conflagration he thought was going to be on his doorstep within the hour. By himself. In about eight acres of dry brush (there was a big field right next to his house, too, separated only by a picket fence). With only his garden hose to keep the backfire at bay. On a windy day. Yep, predictably, it took right the hell off and consumed all eight acres. But it gets better. On the edge of this eight-acre, dried-out as all hell field? A multi-acre grove of eucalyptus trees. The wind was, of course blowing right toward them. So they went straight up, and to this day I’ll never forget the sight of those trees burning. Each one was engulfed in fire up to eighty feet in the air. After a few days, they finally put it out. It burned twelve houses, four cars, killed a bunch of pets, but thankfully didn’t kill or injure anybody. I think I first became an advocate of eugenics after hearing that story in the newspaper from my dad.
Whitey, I’ll be praying for you and the rest of the SoCal firefighters. That place is a matchbox lately; God bless all of you!
Having been stationed at Pendelton and a long time SD area resident, the fires are not new. practicaly every summer there would be “range fires” on Camp Pendelton started by flares, illum rounds or other ordnance. The ast majority were simply left to burn out on their own, with the Fire Department making sure they didnt spread.
The other Whitey hit it on the head. Newsies and politicos love to stand in front of a camera with firefighter working in the background and smoke rising and lap their lips like they know everything.
The most unsettling thing is that when these fires happen there are always a few assholes who decide to go out and start crap on their own, These punks need to be thrown under the jail.
I was born and raised in SoCal, so I remember the summers and early fall down their. Growing up, I remember hearing the County Fire Departments getting on the local newscasts in May and June, telling people living in areas that were newly developed, or places in the foothills that they needed to clear the brush away from their homes – regardless of the previous winter was “wet” or “dry” before fire season started. And every year there would be a fire that would sweep through a new subdivision or an area with expensive homes – and the residents looking into the camera telling everyone that the brush was “right next to the fence” and wondering what was going to happen next.
To The Other Whitey and the firefighters on the line in SoCal – prayers to all of you and that the weather is in your favor in getting the fires under control soon.