Guejito Fire Essay

2007 San Diego Fire Season: The Witch Creek and Guejito Fires The Witch Creek Fire (WCF) took place in San Diego County on October 21st 2007 ("Witch Creek Investigation Report"). The exact location of the fire within the county was the witch creek area, just east of the Southern California town of Ramona ("Witch Creek Investigation Report"). This fire was believed to have been started around noon of that day ("Witch Creek Investigation Report"). The Guejito fire was discovered near Guejito bridge in the NW corner of Rancho Bernardo on Oct. 22nd, at around 1pm (Kochanski et al, 2009). A witness to the fires noted that the Guejito burned the North-East portion of his land and a couple of hours later the WCF advanced from the South-East and destroyed the rest of his property (Kochanski et al, 2009). The Witch and Guejito fires quickly merged, burning 80,000 ha, destroying 1141 homes and causing two fatalities (Mitchell, 2013). The combined fire ranks as the fifth largest and third most destructive in California’s recorded history (Mitchell, 2013).
In the case of the WCF, it was determined that the cause of ignition was electrical line arcing. The Guejito fire started half a day later than the WCF and was ignited by energized power lines that came into contact
The heterogeneous topography of the region, working in unison with inland high and coastal low pressure cells, generate winds that can measure up to 100 km/h. Winds of this speed alter humidity in a way that increases susceptibility of vegetation to fire ignition. Furthermore, the winds are strong enough to cause power lines to arc, ejecting molten material that easily ignite dry plant fuels. Thus, the source of ignition and the increased amount of ignition events, both directly and indirectly caused by humans, are a significant change to the historic regime aside from a gradually warming