*** Updated at 7:30 p.m: The winds are calming. Reporters on TV are now filing pieces following evacuees returning to their neighborhoods to see if their homes have burned. Electeds are showing up. Fire died down near my relatives' homes in Spring Valley. Tijuana fire authorities are sending reinforcements north. Traffic jammed at Qualcomm. Many evacuation centers no longer need supplies and donations. Still, fires remain active and some new evacuations are being called. Six people have now died, four of them eldery evacuees. The estimates of people displaced and acreage scorched are just astronomical. The Union-Tribune also has a scenes blog. The L.A. Times too.
EARLIER TODAY:
Driving home late last night from the downtown area to City Heights you could finally see the flames of these fires standing down on the core of the city of San Diego. I gotta say it was a pretty awesome sight: a snake of glowing, steamy red laced around Mount San Miguel, which is visible from much of San Diego.
My cousin Martha and her family are preparing to evacuate right now from their home on the reservoir in Spring Valley, right at the foot of the mountain. My brother Sergio's house is less than two miles from there, in Lemon Grove. They're calling voluntary evacuations for east of the 1-805 and south to the border, the area where my own family lived for years.
"We're in for another dangerous day today," an SDG&E official is saying right now at a live 7:00 a.m. press conference. Mayor Jerry Sanders is telling San Diegans to stay home and stay off cell phones. Fire Chief Tracy Jarman is saying the winds remain unpredictable and many of the San Diego fires are out of control. The situation is so intense authorities don't even know the boundaries of the major blazes.
Last night my friend Katie and I visited Qualcomm Stadium, where thousands of evacuees stayed overnight. Everything looked calm and orderly, with National Guard troops posted up all over the place. Here's a photo Katie took in one of the quiet concourses, which ordinarily are packed with Chargers fans. Last night it was cots and tents and people tapping away on laptops:
It's worth noting firefighters and city authorities have been working around the clock since Sunday, as have local network news affiliates, where reporters and anchors have been on fire coverage non-stop. Channel 7/39, the local NBC affiliate, has provided updates in Spanish, something I've never seen before on a local news broadcast in English. Check out this clip of beloved San Diego TV news personality Larry Himmel reporting on the destruction of his own house. If you grew up in San Diego you know his energetic, personable reporting style.
As the L.A. Times notes, this is now worse than the Cedar Fire in 2003 but remarkably only one person has died in these fires as of this morning. The vicim was a man protecting his home in Tecate.
Outside right now (12:00 noon) the streets are quiet, the sun is white hot, and the air is calm and almost colorless, as if the smoke and ash have consumed the atmosphere. They're now saying more than 513,000 people are displaced from their homes. Half a million people. So far urban San Diego, where we live, has been spared. It should stay that way, right? If the fires keep pressing in, where are we going to go? Into the surf? Here's a shot of yesterday's fire-soaked sunset from City Heights, in the center of metropolitan San Diego. All the fires are to the north and south of us:
* For some amazing pictures and helpful map graphics see And I Still Persist, authored by a former Marine. All the pertinent and useful updates are at the SignOnSanDiego fire blog, now on a platform that allows hyperlinks.
* Updates all day. Previously, 'San Diego fires may burn to the ocean.'
* A SignOnSanDiego reader supplied the very top image, of Mt. San Miguel ablaze last night, linked here. Other images by Intersections.