Fire Update

While many of the fires are starting to be contained, or at least are blazing away from population centers, the real issue is the Santiago Fire, which is approaching the Silverado Canyon residential areas, forcing some to evacuate for the second time in a week.

Even as thousands of residents joyously returned to neighborhoods throughout the region, 100-foot-tall flames from the Santiago fire burned into the eastern end of Silverado Canyon [...]

"It's an extremely active fire in Silverado Canyon right now," Rich Phelps, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman, said of the community, which was spared in several previous fires. "Things are pretty rough."

Exhausted and on edge, some of the evacuees who gathered in a nearby strip mall wept when authorities couldn't reassure them about whether they could stop the latest threat.

"It's sickening. We thought yesterday we had dodged the bullet. We heard the fire was 50% contained and away from Silverado Canyon," said Ray Verdugo, 55. "Now we're hearing that within the hour it could rip through here and take our homes."

Nine fires continued to burn Friday night, at the end of a weeklong siege that has included nearly three dozen separate blazes. The total acreage burned topped 500,000, only 12,000 acres more than had been reported a day earlier but more than double the size of all of New York City's five boroughs. The number of homes reported destroyed increased from 1,775 to 1,889. The death toll remained at seven.

This is the area we're going to have to watch today. And it's also the hometown of our friend and Congressional candidate Ron Shepston, who at last count was volunteering with firefighting efforts, in a amazing expression of leadership, battling to save the homes there. Best of luck to him, and let's hope he stays safe. Check in with us if you can.

Meanwhile, in Riverside, Orange and San Bernardino Counties, the problem is air quality. You might want to stay indoors today.

UPDATE: As much as people want to make their stereotypical comparisons between this and the Hurricane Katrina efforts, there were significant problems here. Bureaucratic red tape hampered firefighting efforts from the sky, and all of the evacuations were forced by a lack of equipment for battling the blazes. It's ignorant to even suggest a similarity; dead bodies in waterlogged streets is no comparison to an inviting Qualcomm Stadium parking lot.