Del Mar sounded eerie Thursday afternoon. They were expecting a few hundred horses from SLRD. Maybe one or two trucks showed up in the early afternoon and then nothing for hours until early evening.
Trailers couldn't get in to SLR to get the horses.
Abby is right. You can't appreciate the power of a high wind fire. I haven't been there for the CA fires but was in Colorado Springs for the Walden Canyon and Black Forest fires. The Black Forest fire was burning close to 1 mile/hour at it's peak. The majority of the damage was done in the first 6 hours as embers would fly great distances to set more undergrowth and trees on fire.
For those that live in a urban/wildland interface, the local wildland crews are usually more than willing to give advice on how to clear and maintain property to help them keep your home and structures safe. They are willing to give advice on evacuation plans
I know after a smaller fire a few years before the big Black Forest fire, the fire chief was invited to talk to our HOA. He talked about the need to keep understory (the undergrowth) cut low, clear cutting the Ponderosa pines up 15' (i.e., remove all branches) and removing all trees close to or overhanging structures. He said at the time (don't know what the policy is now) that in a big fire, they would go down a street and mark the homes they felt were defensible and focus on those knowing they would not be able to save them all.
A subdivision very close to where the fire started had very little understory and all the pines were clearcut and IIRC they lost no homes.
Maintaining land and having plans is great but sometimes, the fires blow up so fast and so quickly that things like SLR happen... turn the horses loose and hope for the best.
Hoping that today the fires don't flare up again or new fires start with high winds (I grew up in So Cal and those Santa Ana winds can be nasty).
