Bruce Henderson on October 9th, 2008

(Photo of the fire overnight from Mike 68’s flickr photo stream)
To those of you waking up and wanting to know about the blaze near the south side of Camp Pendleton, according to fire officials it is now more than 70% contained. This means it is still going to be throwing a huge amount of [...]

Continue reading about Camp Pendleton Fire Tamed – Santa Ana Winds Sunday

Bruce Henderson on October 8th, 2008

October returns, and days before our first real Santa Ana wind event, we get our first good sized fire. This one is burning on the south west side of Camp Pendleton. At present there is not any danger to any structures, as it is burning in a weapons range on the base.
The smoke [...]

Continue reading about Fire Season Returns – Camp Pendleton Blaze

Bruce Henderson on November 19th, 2007

The local news and weather have been talking up the possibility of a Santa Ana wind period during the Thanksgiving holiday week. At the moment the models are so chaotic that there are no good or accurate predictions of if it will happen, and if it does how significant it could be.
Sadly if the [...]

Continue reading about Fire Watch Southern California – Possible Santa Ana This Week

bfwebster on November 7th, 2007

Just today I’ve had some communications with Jerry Sheehan at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). During the San Diego fires, they were also providing information to the public via the web, working with NASA to generate and publish satellite imagery of the fires (click on the photo and scroll down to [...]

Continue reading about San Diego Fires post-mortem: Calit2

We’ve been getting Google search hits looking for details on an Interstate 5 closure; my own digging shows that “a suspicious device” has been found near the intersection of I-5 and Genesee:
The discovery of a possible pipe bomb alongside Interstate 5 in the Torrey Pines area forced a complete shutdown of a stretch of the [...]

Continue reading about San Diego update — Interstate 5 closed for a period (11/02/07 – 1650 pdt)

bfwebster on November 1st, 2007

The San Diego Union-Tribune has two interactive maps of the San Diego fires available online:

A map showing the extent of the fires, including the ability to see where each started and how widespread it was at key points, with some data overlays (population density, median home prices)
A Google map showing houses burned in the fires [...]

Continue reading about San Diego Fires – infographics from SD Union-Tribune

bfwebster on October 31st, 2007

I’ve previously posted feedback from readers on how the media performed during the San Diego Fires as well as how the government performed. At the same time that I solicited that feedback, I also asked for suggestions on how our coverage here at “And Still I Persist” might have been better. Feedback and my own [...]

Continue reading about San Diego Fires post-mortem: ourselves

bfwebster on October 30th, 2007

[UPDATED 11/01/07 0734 PDT] – The San Diego Union-Tribune has an excellent article by Alex Roth and Mark Sauer discussing to what extent government agencies handled things better this time than back in 2003. It particularly notes the need for more fire stations (with matching firefighters and equipment) to meet the risk of large-scale fires [...]

Continue reading about San Diego Fires post-mortem: the government

Bruce Henderson on October 30th, 2007

Last week I commented on how courage, heroism and American self-reliance was on full display last week as the area faced its most wide-spread disaster in at least a generation. As the weeks go forward we are going to read dozens of stories about people who saw a chance to make a difference and [...]

Continue reading about Heroics saved firefighters in SoCal fire

bfwebster on October 30th, 2007

A few days ago, I asked for comments on what you thought the media did wrong or could have done better in covering the San Diego fires. Several of you have taken the time to respond, either via private e-mail or by posting comments. Sad to say, the comments tended to be largely uniform and [...]

Continue reading about San Diego Fires port-mortem: the media