Officials call for more evacuations in Border fire
Cooler temperatures and higher humidity levels aided firefighters Tuesday as they labored to subdue a wildfire that has forced widespread evacuations while blackening vast swaths of mostly open land in the far southern reaches of San Diego County.
As of midday, the burn zone of the so-called Border fire near Potrero was holding at roughly 7,500 acres and remained only about 5 percent contained, according to Cal Fire.
The blaze, which erupted late Sunday morning near state Route 94 and SR-188, leveled four outbuildings that day but is not believed to have destroyed any homes, said Kendal Bortisser, a fire captain with the state agency.
In the early hours of the fire, authorities cleared residents and ranchers out of nearby Potrero as the flames quickly spread north of Tecate Junction over rugged terrain covered by thick chaparral and other dry vegetation. On Monday, heavy new flare-ups prompted officials to expand the evacuation order to include the communities of Canyon City, Cowboy Ranch, Dog Patch, Forest Gate and Star Ranch.
Early Tuesday afternoon, the northeast-spreading blaze also prompted authorities to direct people to vacate Lake Morena Village, a rural community northwest of Campo. Roughly 800 homes were considered threatened at that point, along with sections of the Pacific Coast Trail, which was closed to the public in the area, officials said.
Displaced residents in need of a place to wait out the fire were advised to take refuge in a makeshift shelter at Los Coches Creek Middle School on Dunbar Lane in Alpine. Those with livestock were given the option of taking their animals to Circle T Ranch on Viejas Grade Road in Descanso or to a Border Patrol station on Ribbonwood Road in Boulevard.
State Route 94 was blocked off from state SR-188 to Mountain Empire RV Park until further notice. Due to the closure, Metropolitan Transit System officials modified Route 894 to only service the area between El Cajon and Tecate.
The blaze also caused power outages that at one point affected more than 1,000 homes and businesses in Potrero and the nearby communities of Campo and Dulzura, according to San Diego Gas & Electric.
About 275 addresses remained without power today, SDG&E reported. Service was expected to be restored to all the affected areas by midday Wednesday.
Nearly 1,500 firefighters were battling the blaze on the ground and aboard four air tankers and a half-dozen water-dropping helicopters, Bortisser said. Temperatures on the fire lines were in the 90s, as much as 10 degrees cooler than they had been over the previous two days.
Humidity levels were somewhat higher and the winds had weakened, making conditions less conducive to rapid fire spread, according to Bortisser.
Three personnel have suffered minor heat-related ailments while working to quell the blaze, Cal Fire reported.