11 Fires raged within San Diego County burning more than 26,000 acres from May 12 to May 16 devasting the region.Andrea Parker, a senior in elementary education from San Diego, said, “In San Diego we have been though a lot of fires before. I told my mom to open our house up to anyone that would need a place to stay. I feel sad for the people that lost their homes and hope that everyone was ok.”According to Time Magazine, a combination of unseasonable triple-digit temperatures, extremely low humidity and hot winds blowing in from the desert stoked the blazes, kicking off what promises to be a historically destructive wildfire season. Wildfires tend to occur frequently in the late summer months into early fall in San Diego, but these fires were early, sporadic, and spread across an entire county. Cal Fire Captain Richard Cordova told Time Magazine, “We get extreme fire behavior every 10 years and the drought doesn’t help. This is very odd for the month of May to have these types of fires.”One of the first and quickest spreading fires was dubbed the “Poinsettia Fire” located in Carlsbad, California and named after the surrounding neighborhoods. Nick Brooks, a BYU graduate and Carlsbad resident said, “I felt like the fire department would preserve as much as possible and there would be few homes destroyed. I left my home to get away from the smoke in the air. Once I saw there were multiple fires burning I suspected arson. What would cause someone to do such a thing?” Arson is a cause that is currently under investigation for the numerous fires that burned in San Diego County. It could be months before investigators find the exact cause of the fires that burned much of the county. According to the San Diego County Office of Emergency Service, the county has established a reverse 9-1-1 evacuation notification system, a cellphone app that alerts residents about county emergencies and evacuations. The app alerted residents of the fires and helped them evacuate before their homes were engulfed in flames.
Writer: Reid Crickmore ~ Multimedia Journalist
