By Rocky Neptun
Jamul, California. Oct. 23, 2007. The crackling
and popping of exploding brush mixed with the hissing
sounds of quick burning dry grasses, growing ever
louder as we stood on the ridge.
Waves of thick, dirty smoke pushed down the
opposite slopes in jerks as the flames headed over the
crest, sucking the winds inward for combustion and
outward as burning energy. Embers flew over our heads
like flaming birds. Dead, hardened Indian rice grass
and San Felipe dogweed flipped the flames upward into
the chaparral, most of which is over 50 years old,
mummified wood, prone to burn extremely hot.
Brad Everson, who’s family complex near Jamul was
threatened several times in the two days since the
fire began, had driven me up the winding two-lane road
called Skyline Truck Trail about 10 miles to a vista
point overlooking a valley. We watched the flames rush
down the slope, disappearing under a blanket of leaves
and branches in a parched creek bed. There was an
eerie silence for less than a minute, then a kind of
rustle, followed by a thunder-like explosion and the
flames continued up the slope toward us. We drove away
quickly.
It was Tuesday and Everson hadn’t seen a single
firefighter since the fire began on Sunday. Fueled by
the strongest Santa Ana winds in decades and drought
conditions throughout the Southern California region,
the blaze near Jamul (called the Harris fire) was one
of two major firestorms in San Diego County. The
other, the Witch Creek fire, also began on Sunday,
whipped by the ferocious winds, was spreading across a
swath of swanky homes and estates in North County.
As we peered through layers of dense smoke,
Everson, a handyman and carpenter, showed me around
the family compound he had built with his own hands on
10 acres of a bluff on the south side of a hill,
looking across the unmarked border into Mexico. Off,
in the distance, there was an occasional bang as
propane tanks exploded.
Everson, this day, surrounded by conflagration,
would find personal transformation as he inched toward
a radical perspective. He had a radio that intercepted
police and fire rescue communications and had known
that Sunday and most of Monday, the high winds had
kept helicopters and the giant air tankers grounded.
Yet, this morning, finally in the air, these crews
were being sent north to save luxury estates and
mansions in the Rancho Santa Fe area (median household
income – $194,000) and the community of Fairbanks
Ranch (median income – $174,000); while his East
County neighbors hovered around a meager income of
$50,000 a year.
County Supervisors Profit from Dangerous Fire
Conditions
Everson told me that the San Diego County
Supervisors, whom he had supported in the past, was a
group of right-wing, Republican politicians, elected
year-after-year (for decades, with no term limits) by
developer and building association campaign dollars.
“Dianne Jacobs, from East County, and Bill Horn, who
represents North County, are particularly owned by
land and housing development speculators,” he said.
“Not only did the San Diego Supervisors help defeat
the 2004 Rural Lands Initiative, which I mistakenly
opposed,” he said, “but in in 1995 they had illegally
zoned 191,000 acres of cultivated and rangeland
preserves in 8-acre minimums, opening these rural
areas to housing tract development.
“After the devastating Cedar and Paradise fires in
2003, I realized that the environmentalists were
right. Without growth limits, suburban sprawl will
continue out into the brush, putting more and more
people in harm’s way,” Everson said.
The rural Lands Initiative would have created
growth-limit circles around cities and unincorporated
towns in San Diego County. The Building Industry
Association and the San Diego Association of Realtors,
with the aid of the Board of Supervisors, spent over
$2.5 million in a campaign of lies and confusion.
After the ballot measure was defeated, developers have
raked in billions grading away back country acres;
while Supervisors stash the cash for subdivision
decisions.
“Not only have the Supervisors allowed this inane
pattern of scattered estate lots,” Everson mentioned,
“they are so conditioned by those with wealth against
taxes that they have failed to develop a solid,
effective county fire fighting department.
In the County there are 28 fire protection agencies
and 7 volunteer departments that serve 3,572 square
miles. Approximately $49.4 million of the $57.9
million annual budget for unincorporated fire agencies
is from property tax revenue, with the remaining
funding coming from $8.3 million in special
assessments and $200,000 in fund raising by volunteer
departments. Some districts are underfunded or lack
adequate staff or equipment . The East County Fire
Protection District which serves about 13,000
residents in Crest and Bostonia, with a $1.4 million
annual budget, and has been struggling to overcome
financial problems that may force it to close.
Everson told me it is time for the Board of
Supervisors to take some responsibility and spend the
money necessary for a full-fledged fire department,
with permanent fire stations, fully staffed and
equipped, including air resources. Also, he said, they
must “nip the hand that feeds,” oppose the building
industry and limit suburban growth in rural San Diego
County.
Will These Firestorms Allow People to Recognize Our
Broken-ness?
Global Warming. With four fire-related deaths and
the destruction of over 1,300 homes and other
buildings (and 300,000 acres scorched); will the
politicians and corporate-owned media finally take a
sober look at global warming. Everyone knows that we
have had relatively low amounts of rain during most of
the past four years; with record breaking heat spells
that dehydrate vegetation and desiccate entire
eco-systems. As an article in the August edition of
Scientific American pointed out, our fire seasons are
growing longer each year, with spring snow melts
occurring earlier each year.
Also, to add to Southern California woes, it is
possible that the dry, westward Santa Ana winds that
blow in from across the Mojave Desert are intensifying
each year, including not calming down at night as
usual, because of global warming.
When will we demand that all political and economic
decisions have a global warming mitigation component?
How many more lives, property destroyed, lives
disrupted, will it take before we acknowledge
ourselves as energy addicts? As AA teaches, we must
first admit our addiction before we can begin the
10-step process.
Homelessness. Half a million people were
displaced by the fires; forced to seek shelter in
unusual places, including Qualcomm Stadium, where the
profit-driven Chargers management forced people onto
hard floors in stuffy, poorly ventilated hallways
because they did not want to allow tents on their
grass. Will there be a mellowing of the fear and
revulsion against the un-housed? An understanding, a
shared empathy that things happen over which we have
no control? A sense that bad things sometimes happen
to good people – and without resources or family
members, to climb up and out could be a daunting task?
As the San Diego City Council does it’s usual dance
around the NIMBY’s over the winter shelter, hoping the
Mayor’s re-election will give him the political
courage to torch the whole project; will some of this
week’s displaced come forth asking for a permanent
city shelter?
Migrants. Several hours before he met me at the
local Catholic Church in Jumal; Brad Everson, was
returning from taking is 92-year-old mother to a
friends house in La Mesa, when he discovered a family
of undocumented migrants in his barn. Several of the
children had slight burns and they were hungry.
Everson had already hidden from the Border Patrol
earlier. Yesterday, they had driven by his property
and yelled over the gate for him to evacuate; so early
this morning when another unit passed, he ran to the
barn to hide.
He had heard on the radio that one border crosser
had died and six others, from central and southern
Mexico, had been hospitalized with burn injuries.
Everson, who at one time had been a supporter of the
California Minutemen, even allowing them to camp on
his property, inquired about my sympathies and
political views before allowing me to help translate.
He told me that almost losing his life’s work – his
home, his mother’s and his brother’s – gave him a new
perspective about migration and borders. “If I had
lost all this today, with my crummy insurance,” he
said, waving his arm expansively, “I would have had to
start at the bottom again.”
“That’s all these simple people want – a good,
safe, decent life for their families,” he sighed,
lifting his Rosary out of his shirt pocket, “God
looked after me today, and I will help these people.”
He urged me to come on Saturday, pointing to a camper
shell that would fit on my pick-up. “You say they have
relatives in Indio…………”
