Wildfires Scorch A Growing Rosarito In Baja California

Speaker 1: 00:00 California isn't the only region dealing with devastating wildfires in Baja. California, Mexican firefighters have squared off against quick moving fires that have destroyed homes and left local residents with little time to get to safety. Just last night and overnight, Brushfire destroyed six homes. According to the San Diego union Tribune, KPBS reporter max Rivlin Nadler traveled to Rosarito to tour a neighborhood now scarred by fire. Speaker 2: 00:27 Our Sally Brown is the mayor of Rosarito once a resort beach town that has in the past 20 years exploded into a city of over 70,000 people. We're driving up to colonial motor ELOs and neighborhood that's perched on a Hill overlooking the city. On Friday night, Brown had raced to the neighborhood to help residents escape a fast moving wildfire that had swept through in nearby Valley, fueled by Santa Ana winds. Speaker 3: 00:50 No, never before in the history of [inaudible] have there been fires like this. Never. Speaker 2: 00:57 Brown says the fires destroyed more than 60 houses in Rosarito and at least three people died. Brown says that following strong rains over the winter, there was far more vegetation in the valleys that was able to burn. Speaker 3: 01:11 The fire leapt in. Other times the fire ran no more, but this time the fire jumped and he fell on the roof of the houses and burned down the houses quickly. Speaker 2: 01:21 The communities hardest hit by the fires last weekend. We're the ones highest up in the Hills where the residents were least eager to leave their properties. Many residents don't have official paperwork to show that their homes belonged to them and we're worried that if they left they wouldn't be allowed to return up in Morelos. The city has set up a station where people whose houses have burned down can register for assistance, get a medical checkup and get replacement documents like birth certificates that might have been destroyed in the fire. Brown's administration is handing out large tents for people to stay in on their properties while they rebuild. It. Was Sylvia via Aveda Vega lived in her home with seven other family members. She's lived there for 17 years. Their entire house burned down. Speaker 3: 02:03 Yeah, me, the boy was better. There have been fires, but they never came here. Speaker 2: 02:07 Her family only had a few minutes to escape the flames. They didn't have time to take anything with them, so all of their possessions were destroyed, but they aren't wasting any time rebuilding their home. Volunteers have offered food, their labor, and even an oven as they try to recreate what they've lost. Oh, salvia says she knows that with more winds in the forecast and extremely dry conditions, that they're still at risk. She says they only plan to rebuild just this once. Speaker 3: 02:34 No, no, nothing more. Only one time. Speaker 2: 02:36 Seasonal fires have long been a part of the ecosystem in Baja, California. This isn't the first time that the area around Modelos has burned. In fact, before the neighborhood was called Morelos, it was known as low scale mottoes or the burned. The previous settlement there was destroyed by a wildfire decades ago. Omar, or is the head of the firefighters in Rosarito. It was up to his small department of under one firefighters, both full time and volunteer to put out rapidly advancing flames in Morelos, which has no running water. Speaker 4: 03:05 I'm not as if he's [inaudible]. The topography is very complicated. The mountains are very steep. It's very difficult for the equipment to get there. It's tough to bring the water up from below and then it gets muddy and it's even harder to get the trucks pass Speaker 2: 03:19 or T says the risk of fire has only increased as people have moved up into the mountains trying to find cheaper places to live in the prospering city. Speaker 4: 03:27 So yeah, when situations like this will become more common and we're going to need more firefighters, more trucks, more hoses, more firefighters in this area, Speaker 2: 03:37 the rebuilding of Morelos has begun. Local businesses have donated their workers and resources and students have begun clearing out toxic Ash from hallowed out houses with cities expanding their footprints further into areas that have a long history of seasonal burning. The question for these neighborhoods is not if the next fire will hit, but when and if they'll be ready or eval to get out of the danger in time. Speaker 4: 04:02 Joining me is KPBS reporter max, Revlon, Nadler, and max welcome. Hi. When a major brush fire breaks out in Baja, do us firefighters lend some assistance? They have an agreement with Mexican firefighters that as, um, resources allow, they will travel to South of the border. There's been training on both sides of the border between a local fire departments and Cal fire has an agreement with some fire departments in Mexico to send, uh, firefighters over. But during the recent, uh, Santa Ana winds and the last week or so, uh, Cal fire has not gone over to Mexico. Um, and that's mostly owing to that Cal fire really does have, it's handful North of the border here. Right now there's a fire burning at OTI mountain and I believe, uh, U S and Mexican crews are fighting that place right on either side of the border. So I talked, I spoke with Cal fire this morning and they said no one has been sent South of the border as of yet. Speaker 4: 04:58 Uh, so, you know, it's, it's interesting you have this wall between a fire and a fire can go over that wall. Now we talk so much about the kind of fire prevention resources we have here in San Diego. We have video cameras that are monitoring the County public safety, power, shutdowns. Does Baja have any of that? Baja does utilize some technology. Um, but the fire department just in general, especially in places like Rosarito, um, are just much smaller than the fire departments that we have here. These are growing cities. Uh, the tax base has not necessarily grown with them. So you have individual, you have individual fire departments that are trying to tackle these really fast moving brush fires that they're not accustomed to as much as we have become accustomed to in, uh, the U S and specifically California. And that often has to do with the fact that we have, um, branched out into, uh, the hillsides and the valleys much more densely then Mexico has a lot of people have congregated in the cities and especially in places like Rosarito where, you know, for years and years it was kind of, uh, a beach resort town. Speaker 4: 06:08 Um, the growing metropolis hasn't quite reached the Hills. Um, as much as we've seen in California. Speaker 1: 06:13 Talk to us more though about the expanding population, colonial motor Eilis and where those people are building houses now. Speaker 4: 06:20 Yeah. So this is, uh, Rosarito has doubled in size over the past 20 years. Um, and that has to do with tourism and just expanding economy, NAFTA, things like that. Um, and for cheaper housing, people have moved up into the Hills and valleys, um, where, you know, these wildfires do tend to grow. They're searching for cheaper housing. A lot of this is more informal housing. This specific neighborhood that I visited, uh, on Tuesday was one that had been there for a few decades. But one interesting thing was that, you know, it had burned down previously a couple of decades back. So like we're seeing again on this side of the border, a lot of these ecosystems just have a long history of periodic burning. And when we put houses in the, in the path of them, they're going to, uh, be in the way of that fire. Speaker 1: 07:12 Just a little bit more about the resources that firefighters in that area have. Do they have helicopters, fire retardant drops and water drops? Speaker 4: 07:21 They have less of that. They, they, um, basically as I was talking with a fire chief, um, last Tuesday, it's, you have your, um, trucks and you basically have your volunteers and your regular fire department, uh, workers. But one thing that a lot of these neighborhoods do not have as running water or access to water. So you gotta if you want to put out this fire, you gotta bring it. Um, and they're not as much using that resources that we've become accustomed to in the U S like helicopters and fire retardant chemicals. Uh, this is much more manual labor that is being done. And in a lot of instances, you know, it is, listen, the fire's going to burn, Martin wants to burn, we're going to fight it, but you know, as long as there's no people there, and this is often what we do in the U S they're just going to let it burn. Speaker 1: 08:11 It sounds as if the mayor and the residents expect these burned homes to be rebuilt pretty quickly. Work quickly. Then we'd see on this side of the border, Speaker 4: 08:19 uh, in the U S we have, you know, this large insurance payout, um, mechanism, we takes a long time for people to inspect, make decisions about how much money you're going to get in return for your home and whether you should be able to rebuild. Whereas in Mexico, um, and in, in specifically in Rosarito, they were already building on houses that were burned down last Friday. So within three days they were putting up walls to get people how is back in there in their homes. Um, that leads to some issues of basically there was Ash still floating around and of course the winds picking back up today. Who's to say, you know, there were already fires shirting nearby. Who's to say that this all just won't be burned down again? Speaker 1: 09:00 Yeah. I know that there are many differences between the fire situation in Rosarito and in California from building codes to evacuation plans. But the one essential similarity is that we're all susceptible to the extreme fire dangers. How are the people in Rosarito coping with the increased speed and severity of these fires? Speaker 4: 09:20 This is a new reality for them. Uh, they, it hasn't been as much of an issue as it has been in the U S in California. Um, I think a lot of people I talked to were saying things like, I've never seen it like this before. This is not something we've had fires, but they've never come to the houses. This is not something that I've even thought of preparing for. So I would actually say, like a lot of people in California, they're unprepared and unwilling. Again, this is both sides of the border to kind of acknowledge that the places you've been living might not be a place you want to keep living. If every fire season, you're gonna be in insignificant mortal danger. Speaker 1: 10:00 I've been speaking with KPBS reporter max Rivlin Adler max. Thank you. Thank you. Speaker 5: 10:10 [inaudible].