Witch Fire Scorches San Diego Area

Qualcomm Stadium has turned into a refugee camp for some of the thousands of homeowners in the San Diego area who have evacuated their homes due to raging wildfires which have blackened thousand of acres and destroyed numerous homes and other buildings. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger visited some of those who had taken shelter at the facility during his tour of the areas hardest hit by the wildfires, being referred to as the Witch Fire in the San Diego area, after the fire which started in the Witch Creek area. The governor had earlier proclaimed a state of emergency in Southern California.

Just a few miles from QualComm Stadium, at the Doubletree Club Hotel where I have been spending the past week on vacation, the lobby was filled with evacuees seeking shelter for the night after being asked to leave their homes as the wildfires raged perilously close to their neighborhoods. Some of them brought their dogs and cats because they had no other place to take them. One hotel clerk said she stopped asking guests how they were doing as they checked in because she never knew what kind of answer she was going to get. She reported one guest told her a relative had died in a traffic crash while driving to her home to help her evacuate. Later in the evening, the desk clerks at the Doubletree had to break the news to new evacuees walking into the lobby that the hotel was sold out and no rooms were available. They referred would-be guests to the evacuation center at QualComm.

Every public school in San Diego has canceled classes for the day, and officials running the evacuation center at QualComm Stadium put out a public plea for licensed teachers to come and help manage the many children now being sheltered at the facility. Military officials at Camp Pendleton warned Marine and Navy personnel and their families living in the Eastern housing units of the military installation to be prepared to evacuate should it become necessary.