San Diego Camp Fire Threat?

November 10, 2018 5:54 AM

I’m supposed to leave tomorrow for a five-day conference in San Diego. Should I be concerned about the Camp Fire spreading that far? I’ve found information about elevated fire risk generally due to weather conditions, and can’t decide whether to cancel.
posted by marguerite to Science & Nature (10 answers total)

No.
posted by Rash at 6:00 AM on November 10, 2018

San Diego is about as far away from the Camp Fire as you can get in California. There are closer, smaller fires in Ventura but nothing that would threaten San Diego.
posted by bitdamaged at 6:02 AM on November 10, 2018

No, don't cancel. None of the current fires are near San Diego.
posted by eleslie at 6:04 AM on November 10, 2018

Thanks everyone!
posted by marguerite at 6:09 AM on November 10, 2018

Yeah, Paradise is 600 miles from San Diego.
posted by xeney at 6:30 AM on November 10, 2018

Even if fires break out in San Diego county close to/during your trip, it's unlikely that your conference site will be near any of the hills that will burn. In any case, millions of people live through fire season every year and just go about their lives, you're fine to visit for a few days.

The Camp fire is a 10+ hour drive away from where you'll be, and the Hill and Woolsey fires (10 miles from me) are a 4-hour drive away. It's a big state.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:03 AM on November 10, 2018

San Diego is currently on a red alert for fire danger, so there's a chance a fire could break out in the backcountry or along one of the canyon sides closer to town, but if your conference is downtown, there will be pretty much zero danger of it being affected by the actual fire. All you'd have to worry about would be smoke, and I don't know if that causes enough of a problem that they'd shut down the airport (which is right by the ocean and downtown). I lived in SD during the Cedar Fire and the Witch Creek fire, and was basically a mile from the airport runway at the time. For the Cedar fire, the sun was red and it rained ash all day and I got a day off from work; Witch creek I got a day off but otherwise wouldn't have known there was a major fire going on without the news. Fires in the backcountry are an entirely different beast than anything in the city - no hillside fire would ever spread as far as those two did, and would have no effect on your trip.
posted by LionIndex at 8:19 AM on November 10, 2018

Watch https://twitter.com/NWSLosAngeles for updates.

Here's a recent smoke prediction, which shows smoke from the Ventura fire being mostly blow out to sea. Shifts in wind patterns could change that.
posted by dws at 10:50 AM on November 10, 2018

Thanks again! On my way
posted by marguerite at 9:14 AM on November 11, 2018

The Camp Fire, in Paradise California, is about the same distance from San Diego as Augusta Maine is from Washington DC.
posted by blob at 7:58 PM on November 11, 2018