SACRAMENTO-
Metro Fire Captain Adam Mitchell saw the destruction in San Diego first hand.
“The fuels right now, the grasses weeds and things, are burning like we would typically see in mid-to-late summer,” Micthell said.
He and his strike team were originally sent to the lines of the Tomahawk Fire near Camp Pendleton, but strong winds changed things quickly.
“The fire that was next to us, that had started after we were dispatched, had gotten a lot bigger, a lot faster than anticipated,” Mitchell said.
Those winds, however, helped Mitchell and his crew.
“With the wind change that it kept it out of causing damage to significant homes,” he told FOX40.
But other homes were not so lucky.
“And then the winds would hit it and it was like a flame thrower. That’s what it did right to my house,” one San Marcos homeowner told FOX40’s San Diego affiliate KSWB. “It was kind of strange not to have a home to come back to.”
Amazingly, just up the street, another home was only scorched – a result of 200 feet of defensible space between brush and the house.
Fresh back from the wildfires in southern California, Mitchell fears the scenes he and his crew captured in these pictures from San Diego County could play out in their protection area.
He believes their experience has better prepared them. Crews here know if wildfires come to Sacramento County, they won’t be alone.
“On the flip side of that, when we need help here, people will come and help us, and that’s one of the great things about how the state system is set up,” Mitchell said.
Metro Fire is hosting a series of free workshops on wildfire danger and defensible space. For more information, click here.