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American Morning
Firefighters Battling Two Large Brush Fires in Southern California
Aired February 12, 2002 - 09:33 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: More than 1,000 firefighters are battling two large brush fires in Southern California that have been burning since Sunday afternoon. Thousands of acres and more than two dozen homes have been destroyed so far.
CNN's James Hattori joins us now from Fallbrook, California, with the very latest on that.
Good morning, James.
JAMES HATTORI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula.
Take a look behind me, you can see the damage with daybreak here that this fire has caused here at Santa Margarita Drive in Fallbrook. This house reduced to rubble, just a foundation, a chimney you can see. These homes in the half-million to million-dollar range. What you can't see is that the winds have died down substantially over the past 24 hours, and that's the critical change from Sunday morning when the fire broke out.
Over the weekend, winds gusting up from the northeast up to 60 miles per hour fanned flames across the brushy chapperal (ph) type of terrain here in San Diego County. Some 5,000 acres, burned it all, including part of Camp Pendleton Marine base.
Now yesterday, the winds shifted, and a moist offshore flow occurred. That's a big difference, allowing firefighters to get more of handle on this blaze, and as of now, it's about 50 percent contained. Today more residents allowed into the area to survey the damage. It is a sad site indeed. Some residents have lost everything, just burned out shells remaining, although several homes along this block were spared.
And with me right now is Dale New. He lives on Santa Margarita Drive, just across the road here.
Dale, you saw the flames coming over this ridge, the embers burning everywhere. What did you see? What did you do?
DALE NEW, FALLBROOK RESIDENT: Well, it was a site like I've never seen before. The fire, we had a chance to view the fire coming up the ridge from a vantage point here, and it traveled probably about three miles in about 10 minutes. HATTORI: How did you fight it?
NEW: Well, we just got back to our homes and got -- rolled out as much hose as we could, got some buckets together and so forth, and began to put out hot spots as they came down, and wherever ash or embers landed, fire started.
HATTORI: Frenzied. You got some unexpected help, didn't you?
NEW: Very happy. An angel came by, Fred Goldman and his grandsons.
HATTORI: Were in the area?
NEW: They just were in the area. They came buy and say we will not let your home burn. They helped us. Without their help, we would have never made it.
HATTORI: Paula, just a bit of encouraging news in a scene that's still reeling from considerable devastation here in Northern San Diego.
ZAHN: It just makes you sick to look at that video, it's hard to believe how quickly it happened. Do investigators have any idea yet what caused the fire?
NEW: It's -- as of this moment, it's still unknown what the cause is, but they have isolated an area where they think it's occurred in the sort of northeast corner of this area, along a ranch where they're growing avocados and persimmons. There were reports of some burning going on there, but they still don't know exactly what caused it.
ZAHN: James, before we let you go, the last guest was talking about Fred Goldman dropping by and helping. Was he referring to the father of Ron Goldman?
HATTORI: I don't believe so. This is not the famous Fred Goldman we are talking about, right?
NEW: No. No, it's not.
HATTORI: I'll tell you though, one famous person in this area is Rita -- a singer -- now you put my on the spot. Rita Coolidge, who lives in this area, owns an avocado form, lost 800 trees. She was a Grammy Award winner. She lost part of home, and there's a lot of avocado ranches in this area. That's another story. A lot of avocados are going to...
ZAHN: And that ridge there is primarily residential.
HATTORI: This ridge here is residential. There is also farmland, avocado farms. This area, north San Diego Country, provides like 40 percent of avocados grown in the state, and California is like the biggest producer of avocados.
ZAHN: All I can say is thank God the winds shifted, at least for a while here.
James Hattori, thanks for that live report.
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