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Fire rekindles Blackwater site controversy in Potrero: Flames
scorched valley walls
By Miriam Raftery
The Alpine Sun
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| Top,
the cloud of smoke rising in in the hills near
Barrett Junction. Directly above, fire fighters work
to put out embers still burning beneath the ground.
Below, this is all that is left of one home and
property in Potrero. |
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POTRERO — “It won’t burn,” Blackwater West Vice President Brian
Bonfiglio predicted in an interview published Friday, Oct. 26 in
the Virginia Pilot. Asked about the Harris wildfire that had
already ravaged the town of Potrero and scorched more than
80,000 acres, Bonfiglio expressed confidence that grazing cattle
and the lack of trees or buildings would protect the 824-acre
site where the company hopes to build a private military and law
enforcement training camp.
But by Friday afternoon, smoke was rising from Round
Potrero Valley. A steep canyon wall towering above the single
paved road in and out of the valley was blackened as fire crews
worked to extinguish still-smoldering hot spots. Two canyon
walls were charred from the rims to the valley floor. A large
red stain from fire-retardant chemicals dropped by aircraft was
evident just behind chicken coops at the valley’s north end.
The valley floor was unburned and fire fighters
battling the blaze camped there overnight, said Chuck Frank,
safety officer with the Forest Service Department of
Agriculture. “I heard an order for 350 meals,” he said, adding
that backfires were set to limit the fire’s destructive path.
In the fire’s critical first hours, however, little
manpower was available to slow its spread. “I think the fires in
other places, Los Angeles, got more priority,” Frank said.
As flames reached the Blackwater site, DC10 planes
dropped fire retardant chemicals and several hundred fire
fighters were in the Potrero area. But the slow initial response
heightened concerns among critics about future fires if the
Blackwater facility is constructed.
Blackwater seeks County approval to build 11 firing
ranges, a vehicular training track, helicopter landing pad and
other facilities, including bunkhouses to sleep 200 or more
trainees. Critics have expressed concern that such operations
pose a fire hazard to the community.
Blackwater says facility
would make community safer
Bonfiglio insists that Blackwater would not pose a fire
risk and said he is pleased that the valley floor did not burn.
“The concern was never a fire leaving the valley. It was a fire
coming into the valley,” he said.
He stated that Blackwater would not conduct bombing
practices and that no flares or tracer ammunition would be used.
Shooting areas would be surrounded by 24 foot-high berms and 150
feet of fuel modification to prevent rounds from entering brush
or rocks on hillsides, he noted. “There will be a standby fire
watch person when shooting is occurring and there will be fire
equipment readily available,” Bonfiglio said.
The Harris fire has not derailed Blackwater’s plans for
Potrero, Bonfiglio confirmed, adding that the company’s six or
seven proposed 35,000 water gallon storage tanks could be a
benefit to the community. Blackwater has also offered to
shelter-in-place residents in a building equipped with
sprinklers and other fire protections slated to meet or exceed
county and state standards.
Skeptics contend Blackwater
would increase fire danger
Opponents of Blackwater’s plans scoff at that notion
that the proposed project would help protect the community.
"You would never get me driving down that winding road
to their private military base,” said resident Carl Meyer,
leader of efforts to recall Potrero Planning Group members who
voted for the Blackwater proposal. “It’s dangerous.”
Ray Lutz, founder of
www.stopblackwater.net,
agreed. “The idea that the Round Potrero Valley could be an
evacuation site or a staging area for fire crews went up in
smoke as we witnessed the ferocity of a wildfire coupled with
strong Santa Ana winds,” he stated in an e-mail to this
reporter.
“In the Harris Ranch fire, the valley was spared.
However, if Blackwater builds their paramilitary boot camp in
that boxed-in valley and is confronted by a similar fire, there
is no doubt that the huge gasoline tank, the 18,000 square foot
armory filled with tons of ammo, any structures, and the urban
simulation areas would be a death trap.”
The proposed facility would be situated immediately
adjacent to Bureau of Land Management property, which Blackwater
could not clear of densely-packed brush.
Potrero recall election will
go forward
More than 200 Potrero residents found themselves
trapped for several days while fires raged. Some did not receive
reverse 911 calls warning them to evacuate. Others chose to stay
and fight to save their own homes, as many here have done in
past fires, where help from outside came slowly or not at all.
Thell Fowler, one of the planners facing recall for
supporting Blackwater, saved several homes from burning. Jerry
and Mary Johnson, two other planners facing recall, lost their
house to the flames. Meyer doused hotspots to help his mother
save her home.
The fire in Potrero will not disrupt plans for the
local planning group’s recall election, to be held Dec. 11 by
mail-in ballot.
“Any voters displaced by the fire do not lose their
domicile for purposes of voting,” Registrar of Voters Deborah
Seiler announced Tuesday. “We just need a mailing address so we
can deliver ballots.”
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| Lolie
Lopez, stirs up a pot of soup over a propane stove
to feed some of her hungry and displaced neighbors. |
The majority of the 509 registered voters in the district pick
up their mail at the Potrero post office, that resumed
operations on Oct. 27, in advance of the Nov. 13 deadline for
recall ballots to be in mailboxes.
Voters who receive street delivery and whose homes are
no longer habitable can apply for general delivery, a service
offered by the U.S. Postal Service.
At least 12 to 17 homes in Potrero have burned,
estimated Jan Hedlun, the lone planner opposed to Blackwater.
Left without power, Hedlun has been staying with Lolie
Lopez, who operates the Potrero-Tecate Community Development
Council, better known as “Community Soup.” Lopez lost her house
to an electrical fire a year ago and watched in fear as burning
embers ignited blazes around her newly rebuilt home.
Stirring a pot of soup on a propane-powered camp stove
set up in her kitchen, she described how she’s been feeding,
“whoever comes in here. People stop in to find out how other
people are doing. If they’re hungry or weary, we take care of
them.”
Her resilient spirit is characteristic of the
independent frontier mindset of many Potrero citizens. “When
there is this much devastation, your survival instincts kick in
and you just do what has to be done,” Lopez said.
Blackwater and others bring
in supplies
Blackwater did help with relief efforts to reach
Potrero on Wednesday, Oct. 24, bringing five loads of food and
fuel to the area.
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| Potrero
planner Jan Hedlun is still smiling, even though
flames from the Harris Fire came within 30 feet of
her house, she did not lose her home. |
“I’ve been trying to bring in enough to feed 300 people at a go,
but I’m also going to bring in shovels and rakes to start help
with cleanup,” said Bonfiglio. Assemblyman Joel Anderson, State
Senator Denise Ducheney, former City Attorney Casey Gwinn, Rock
Church in Point Loma and the Red Cross have also aided in relief
efforts, with FEMA arriving over the past weekend.
Volunteers at the emergency drop-off point set up at
Chicano Park also helped, beginning Monday, making frequent
trips to the Potrero area with what supplies were donated.
Transported by volunteer drivers, including South Western
College students, trucks were loaded to bring supplies to the
small community.
The Harris fire now proves how devastating a wildfire
begun by a single spark in Potrero can be, not only for the
town’s residents, but for people throughout San Diego County.
The Harris fire scorched a path as far west as Otay Lake,
forcing evacuations in Chula Vista.
Fire burned to within 30 feet of Hedlun’s Potrero home,
yet she considers herself fortunate.
“I spent three hours cleaning, but I was grinning,” she
concluded, “because I still had something to clean.”
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