San Diego’s traditional wildfire season has arrived and fire officials are worried about the heat and wind that may be coming.
September and October are typically some of the hottest months in the San Diego region and the threat of dangerous wildfires has now stretched into November. The possibility of a catastrophic firestorm also goes up when there are Santa Ana wind conditions.
“Any kind of wind-driven fire creates a significant issue for us,” said Thomas Schoots, a CALFIRE spokesman. “But having that hot dry air coming out of the desert, it’s proven and we’ve seen it in the past, it can get to the point where it makes a fire front unstoppable. You have embers shooting, you know, embers can fly up to a mile in advance of the main fire front.”
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Local firefighters have had a pretty good year so far, according to CALFIRE. Both the number of fires and acres burned are down this year compared to a year ago.
“We’re able to throw a ton of resources at them very quickly. We’re able to typically make a stop very quickly. And we have a sufficient amount of resources to handle that,” Schoots said.
The monsoonal thunderstorms that are over the East County mountains this week will help keep brush and trees from drying out, but Schoots said it is a temporary condition that isn’t expected to have a lasting impact on fuel in the back country.
