SB Fire & Wind Coverage

Elsewhere in Southern California, exhausted firefighters and weary residents looked forward Wednesday to a break — an expected slackening of the fierce wind that has fanned the state’s explosive wildland blazes since the weekend.
Some of the half-million people chased from their homes by the flames were being allowed to their neighborhoods.
Forecasters said the Santa Ana wind whipping across Southern California would begin to weaken late this afternoon, followed by cooling sea breezes. The 16 wind-driven wildfires have destroyed nearly 1,300 homes and forced the largest evacuation in the state’s history.
Frustration over the firefighting effort began to emerge Tuesday when a fire official said not enough had been done to protect homes.
Orange County Fire Chief Chip Prather told reporters that firefighters’ lives were threatened because too few crews were on the ground. He said a quick deployment of aircraft could have corralled a massive blaze near Irvine.
“It is an absolute fact: Had we had more air resources, we would have been able to control this fire,” he said.
The fires have burned 410,000 acres, or about 640 square miles, causing at least $100 million in damage. Twenty-one firefighters and at least 24 others have been injured. One person was killed by the flames, and the San Diego medical examiner’s officer listed four other deaths as connected to the blazes.
The state’s top firefighter said Prather misstated the availability of firefighters and equipment. Eight of the state’s nine water-dumping helicopters were in Southern California by Sunday, when the first fires began, along with 13 air tankers, said Ruben Grijalva, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Grijalva said the fires, spread by wind that at times topped 100 mph, would have overwhelmed most efforts to fight them.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger dismissed the criticism when questioned by an ABC News reporter, and praised the rapid deployment of fire crews and equipment across a region from north of Los Angeles to the Mexican border.
“Anyone that is complaining about the planes just wants to complain because there’s a bunch of nonsense,” he said. “The fact is that we could have all the planes in the world here — we have 90 aircraft here and six that we got especially from the federal government — and they can’t fly because of the wind situation.”
Thousands of evacuees packed emergency shelters, where many had an agonizing wait to find out whether their homes had survived.
“I’m ready to go, but at the same time, I don’t want to go up there and be surprised,” said Mary Busch, 41, who did not know whether her home was still standing in Ramona, in San Diego County. She has been at the evacuation center at Qualcomm Stadium since Monday, sleeping in her SUV with her 11- and 8-year-old sons.
At the Del Mar Fairgrounds in northern San Diego County, which was converted into a shelter, many stared at television sets blaring reports from the fire lines and damaged neighborhoods.
Evacuation orders continued today. Residents of the San Diego County communities of Fallbrook and Julian, an area devastated by a 2003 wildfire, were ordered out of their homes.
Officials also were evacuating De Luz, an unincorporated community north of Camp Pendleton that was threatened by a wildfire on the Marine base. That fire also closed Interstate 5 and the Metrolink commuter rail, snagging the morning commute.
Residents of some San Diego County neighborhoods were gradually being allowed to return, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders said at a news conference.