Harris fire shelter closing

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Harris fire shelter closing

BARRETT JUNCTION – A shelter set up by a church and a private company to help victims of the Harris fire is closing Saturday.

The tent city in the East County community of Barrett Junction has been run by Mark Cremeans, director of Churches of Christ Disaster Response Team, and his wife, Laura.

The shelter has been open since Nov. 5, providing food, supplies, hot meals and a place to stay to people whose homes were lost or damaged when the October wildfires raged through San Diego County.

Several hundred people have stopped by the shelter, on a half-acre lot across from the Barrett Junction Cafe, to use the showers, washers and dryers, and other services. But few people chose to stay there despite its ability to house 88 people.

Some wondered whether the involvement of Blackwater Worldwide, the controversial private security company, kept people away. The company provided tents and cots and other items to the shelter, but had no hand in the day-to-day operations.

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****REMINDER**** Every fire has the ability to be catastrophic. The wildland fire management environment has profoundly changed. Growing numbers of communities, across the nation, are experiencing longer fire seasons; more frequent, bigger, and more severe, fires are a real threat. Be careful with all campfires and equipment.

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Every year in California thousands of wildfires start throughout the state. In most cases, the dispatch center sending the initial resources to a wildland fire will designate a name for the fire, but the first on scene engine or fire official can also name the incident. Fires are usually named for the area in which they start – a geographical location, local landmark, street, lake, mountain, peak, etc. Quickly naming the fire provides responding fire resources with an additional locater, and allows fire officials to track and prioritize incidents by name. For example during the Southern California Fire Siege of 2003, the largest wildland fire in California history, the Cedar Fire in San Diego County, was named after the Cedar Creek Falls area where it started. The destructive Old Fire, which burned during the same time period in San Bernardino County, was named after the road along which it started - Old Waterman Canyon Road.

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Sunday, January 20, 2008