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Cedar Fire
Cedar Fire
Location	San Diego County
Date	October 25, 2003 17:37 (PDT)
Burned area	280,278 acres (0 km)
Ignition source	Signal fire
Land use	Mixed, residential and wildlands
Fatalities	15
Perpetrator(s)	Sergio Martinez

The Cedar Fire was a human-caused wildfire which burned out of control through a large area of Southern California in October 2003. Driven by Santa Ana Winds, the fire burned 280,278 acres (0 km) 2,820 buildings (including 2,232 homes) and had killed 15 people including one firefighter before being contained on November 3, making it the largest fire in recorded California history.^[1][2] The Cedar Fire was one of 15 fires throughout Southern California that month, including the Old Fire, which became known as the "2003 firestorm"^[3] and the "Fire Siege of 2003"^[4]

Fire chronology

The Cedar Fire began in the Cleveland National Forest and was reported at 5:37 p.m PDT on October 25, 2003 south of Ramona in central San Diego County. Within ten minutes of the initial report of the fire, the U.S. Forest Service had deployed 10 fire engines, two water-supply trucks, two hand crews and two chief officers. Within 30 minutes, 320 firefighters and six fire chiefs were en route.^[5] A San Diego County Sheriff's Department ASTREA helicopter that was rescuing a hunter spotted the fire at about the same time as the first phone report was received and called for an air response. Another Sheriff's helicopter, equipped with a Bambi bucket, en route to the burgeoning fire and only minutes away, was called off by a National Forest Service fire chief because it was after sunset "cutoff" for firefighting air attack missions.^[5]

Overnight, the fast-moving fire killed 12 people living in Wildcat Canyon, north of Lakeside, who had little or no warning that the fire was approaching, and destroyed 28 homes on the Barona Indian Reservation.^[6] In only 16.5 hours the Cedar Fire had pushed southwest over 30 miles (0 km) and had burned over 100,000 acres (0 km) at 5,000 acres (0 km) per hour. By this time the fire was burning hundreds of homes in the Scripps Ranch community of San Diego, and was threatening many others. The entire community of Cuyamaca and most of nearby Cuyamaca Rancho State Park and many homes in the town of Julian were destroyed.^[7]

The fire forced the evacuation of the main air traffic control facility for San Diego and Los Angeles, shutting down all commercial air traffic in the area and disrupting air traffic across the United States. On October 26, the fire forged into Alpine, Harbison Canyon and Crest burning hundreds more homes in areas that had been devastated by the Laguna Fire 33 years earlier. It merged with the ~56,000 acres (0 km) Grand Prix Fire that was burning nearby. By October 27, the Cedar Fire had lost most of its energy as the Santa Ana winds died down. On October 29 a fire engine crew from Novato,^[8] over 500 miles away in Northern California, who were attempting to defend a house in the Riverwood Estates near Santa Ysabel became entrapped and overrun by the fire. One firefighter was killed and three others were injured, one severely.^[9] When the typical westerly winds of the area returned, the fire turned east with them consuming another 114,000 acres (0 km). Full containment was achieved on November 3 and the fire completely controlled on December 5.^[1]

Aftermath

In the wake of the 2003 firestorm, including the Cedar Fire, California Governor Gray Davis declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard to assist in the disaster relief process, and President Bush declared Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura counties major disaster areas.^[10] San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium was used as an evacuation site, forcing the October 27 National Football League game between the San Diego Chargers and Miami Dolphins to be moved to Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona.^[11]

Investigation

The Cedar Fire was started by Sergio Martinez of West Covina, California, who claimed he was hunting in the area and had become lost. At first he claimed the fire was started accidentally by a gunshot but later said he started the fire to signal rescuers. Martinez was charged on October 7, 2004 in federal court with setting the fire and lying about it.^[12] On March 10, 2005, Martinez plead guilty to deliberately setting fire to timber in the plea bargain under which the charge of lying to a federal officer was dropped. He faced up to five years in prison, but was instead sentenced to six months in minimum-security confinement, which allowed him to leave for work and other commitments, 960 hours of community service, and five years' probation. He was also ordered to pay $9,000 in restitution.^[13]

Response criticism

There were a number of controversies associated with the Cedar Fire, resulting in investigations lasting several years. A report, 2003 San Diego County Fire Siege Fire Safety Review^[14] prepared in the wake of the fire and presented to the Governor's Blue Ribbon Fire Commission, criticized the overall response. The report stated that though the fire conditions and severity should have been expected, the responsible agencies were not properly prepared when the fire broke out, and radio communications problems exacerbated the problem. The report stated that "Disorganization, inconsistent or outdated policies among agencies that grounded aircraft or caused other problems, and planning or logistics in disarray also marked the preliminary stages of the difficult, dangerous firefighting."^[15]

The turning away of the Sheriff's helicopters by the Forest Service came under severe attack by the public, media and elected officials, believing that an opportunity to prevent the fire from becoming out of control had been lost. The State has an aviation assets "cutoff" policy which stated that "aircraft (planes or helicopters) may not be dispatched so as to arrive at an incident no later than 30 minutes before sunset".^{[5][12][14][16]} The pilot later claimed he could have made three water drops in the time he had before darkness.^[5] However, a study performed by the US Forest Service concluded that even if the helicopter had been able to drop multiple loads of water with direct hits on the flames, the impact on the fire would have been minimal.^[5] Cutoff also prevented two air tankers and a helicopter stationed at Ramona Airport from being dispatched to the fire, although the tankers likely could not have been used anyway as the pilots had just spent seven hours fighting another fire, and FAA regulations stipulated that they could not continue to fly.^[17]

A contributing factor to the initial lack of aviation resources to fight the fire was the state's "no divert" policy, which allows incident commanders to dedicate certain resources to a particular fire; the policy applied to both airborne aircraft as well as those on the ground awaiting dispatch. At the time that the Cedar Fire started, there were already 11 other fires burning in the region. Aviation resources in the area were currently being held on the ground under a "no divert" declaration, in order to be available for structures protection on another fire. However, weather and visibility at the other fire was precluding their use, so the aircraft sat idle despite the fact that the conditions were acceptable for their use on the Cedar Fire.^[14]

Resources to relieve the initial attack crews did not appear on the fire scene until around 5:00 a.m. PDT on Monday 27 October, since they had to be dispatched from Northern California, which was depleted in its own right, and some were delayed on their way by other fires in the northern region.

Both the media and area elected officials were also critical of the lack of use of military aviation assets which were located nearby at Camp Pendleton and Miramar. The U.S. Marine Corps operates CH-46 Sea Knight and CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters with water-dropping buckets, but existing policies prohibited their use until all other civilian resources were used. Additionally, the military aircraft radios were not compatible with those used by most state and local fire agencies, and the military pilots had not received any training in fire-specific operations.^[14]

References

External links

• City of San Diego Fire-Rescue Department After Action Report
• Time lapse animations and other images of the Cedar Fire incident
• Animated map of the fire
• Cedar Fire time-lapse animation narrated by a CDF fire captain who flew the Bronco, available online and as DVD
• Firestorm 2003 (map of San Diego County ablaze)
• Fire photo albums at the Scripps Ranch Civic Association
• Article on the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) at the Cedar Fire

•  • [ e] Notable California wildfires by size
#1 - Cedar Fire (280,278 acres) #2 - Zaca Fire (240,207 acres) #3 Marble-Cone Fire (~178,000 acres) #4 - Laguna Fire (175,425 acres) #5 - Day Fire (162,700 acres) #6 - McNally Fire (150,670 acres) #7 - Old Fire (91,281 acres) #8 - Sawtooth Complex fire (61,700 acres) #9 - Esperanza Fire (40,200 acres) #10 - Great Fire of 1889 (~40,000 acres)

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