What happened this week in Los Angeles a year ago, is stirring up some painful and emotional memories here in San Diego.
You’re hearing how Cal Fire officials are saying that the deadly fires in L-A last year should be a reminder that something like that could happen here.
Actually, it has happened here, years ago, long before the L-A fires broke out.
In 2003, the Cedar Fire as it was called broke out in a rural area of the county near Ramona and in just few hours, it raced through parts of Lakeside driven by Santa Ana winds…burning more than 230 thousand acres, destroying more than 2,000 homes and killing people.15 people.
Then just four years later in 2007, the Witch Creek Fire and others associated with it that burned from the South County to the North County burned up more than 200,000 acres and destroyed nearly 3,000 structures and led to the mandatory evacuations of nearly a half million people from some 350 thousand homes and killed at least 10 civilians.
Both of these huge fires were frightening to go through and they left their marks on neighborhoods, landscape, property, ways of fighting fires and emergency preparedness and changed lives.
We hope we never have to witness fires like these again.
But the anniversary of the L-A fires is good reason not to forget what happened here.
(Photo Getty Images)
