Sunday, May 18, 2014

Firefighters restrain fires in San Diego by Bob Cummins

     This season has been a harsh wildfire season for California.  In San Diego, the firefighters have mostly subdued a large fire that destroyed dozens homes and evacuated thousands of homes.  Governor Jerry Brown said that California was still preparing for its harshest fire season yet.  Because the winds decreased and the temperatures lowered, the fire crews were able to at least mostly encircle almost a dozen fires by Sunday.  These fires have caused damage including burning at least 26,000 acres of brush that was dry from the state's drought since midweek of last week.  With the exception of a burned corpse at a homeless encampment in Carlsbad which has officials trying to determine its cause of death, no serious injuries have been reported.  Since January, before these last week's fires, more than 1.350 wildfires have started since January, which is doubled the number of fires from last year in the same period, according to Mike Mohler from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.  "We're in a very serious fire season, more serious than we've seen before," said Brown.  "Humanity is on a collision course with nature, and we're going to have to adapt to it in the best way we can."  By Sunday, the fire crews had carved lines of containment around 85% of the so-called Cocos fire in San Marcos, which destroyed 39 houses, they contained 100% of a smaller fire in Carlsbad which caused property losses that estimated to up to 15 million dollars, and they got the upper hand against three large fires spreading over 20,000 acres of Camp Pendleton Marine Base north of San Diego.  The origin of the fires are currently unknown, and none of the fires have been ruled suspicious as a result of arson.

     Drought can do a lot to a state, and this is one of those results.  At least no one except for that guy they're not sure of was injured badly.  California doesn't seem like the best place to be right now.  On top of their high taxes and natural disasters, they have wildfires, and this is the worst it's been yet.  It is a good thing that they are contained, though.  Pray for rain, though.  If it doesn't come to California now, who knows how big of fires they'll get soon.  I didn't know about these fires until now, so it's a shock to me, and I hope they get them all contained soon.


1 comment:

  1. Yikes! Hopefully they'll get rain soon, before the fire becomes too uncontrollable.

    ReplyDelete