Former San Diego fire Chief Jeff Bowman, who repeatedly warned that his city wasn't prepared to handle major fires, is out back of his house near Escondido at 7 a.m., watching the smoke come over a ridge and wondering if he'll lose everything he's got.
"I think I'm OK," Bowman says, pointing out how he cleared the brush, picked rocky surroundings and built his hilltop ranch house with very little exposed wood.
His wife, Denise, is making coffee, and I ask if she's nervous.
"I live with a fireman," she says, so why worry? But their photos are off the walls and on the kitchen table, ready to load into the car if they have to evacuate.
Firefighters and other friends call to check up on him.
"I've got fires all around me," Bowman says, his red eyes wet from the sting of smoke.
About 8 a.m., Bowman gets a call from his mother's nursing home.
They're evacuating the residents.
"I'll go get her," he tells Denise, and we pile into his truck for a short ride to a nearby neighborhood called Hidden Meadows.
When he isn't growing Malbec and Cabernet Franc grapes on the 1-acre vineyard in front of his retreat, Bowman works as a consultant to fire departments and municipalities. With 16 years as chief in Anaheim and four in San Diego before quitting over staffing and resource issues, he's got strong opinions on San Diego's long, proud culture of skimping on services to keep taxes low.
There's no way to adequately staff for fires of this magnitude, Bowman says, and he doesn't want to turn so much scorched earth and misery into an I-told-you-so speech. But as we drive to get his mother, he can't help but go over some of the facts.
Although the city of San Diego has a fire department, the county doesn't, leaving many suburban and rural areas to rely on volunteer departments. The city has but one firefighting helicopter and just 975 firefighters for 330 square miles and 1.3 million residents.
Compare that, he says, with San Francisco, which has 1,600 firefighters for 60 square miles and 850,000 people.
"San Diego practices the biggest don't-tax-me campaign I've seen," says Bowman, a proud, lifelong Republican. Fine, he says, don't raise taxes. But reevaluate how money is spent and redistribute it to public safety.
A number of San Diego suburbs have the same resource problems, he says, and are more inclined to invest in evacuation technology than fire prevention and suppression.
