Thankfully, Rod Mitchell’s dogs roused him at 2 a.m. He’d slept through his landlady’s phone calls, unaware of an approaching wildfire. But after Oscar and Max got him going, the Bonsall man opened his front door to find flying embers racing through the air and firefighters already on the 5-acre property.
“The fireman, he said, ‘Where did you come from?’” Mitchell said. “And I said ‘I just got out of bed,’ and he says, ‘We didn’t think anybody was left up here.’”
Mitchell, 72, was among scores of inland North County residents jarred from sleep very early Tuesday and urged to flee as wind-whipped fires hurtled through bone-dry brush. Three fires erupted there overnight, one of them growing to 85 acres. Hours later and several miles to the south, residents of neighborhoods near Fashion Valley mall got a jolt of their own from evacuation orders and warnings as a brush fire swept along a hillside. San Diego Fire-Rescue said it grew to 15 to 20 acres.
RELATED: Why is California’s wind blowing so hard in January?
Fire crews moved fast, throwing heavy resources at the fires as Santa Ana winds delivered a big, direct hit on San Diego County, arriving from the east-northeast before dawn and whooshing largely unfettered through arid mountain passes and canyons. Sill Hill in the Cuyamaca Mountains hit a gust of 102 mph, equivalent to a category 2 hurricane. Deer Canyon near Black Mountain: 80 mph, equivalent to a category 1 hurricane.
The winds led authorities to divert high-profile vehicles off Interstate 8 from Alpine to Ocotillo for a stretch of time, and a toppled big rig blocked freeway traffic.
San Diego Gas & Electric cut power to more of its customers to minimize the chances of starting wildfires. Through 4 p.m. Tuesday, nearly 16,000 customers were without electricity, and the utility warned that another 68,000 could potentially have their power lines shut off.
Weaker Santa Anas are expected to blow in late Wednesday and early Thursday, according to Adam Roser, a weather service forecaster. There’s also a chance of seeing more than a quarter-inch of rain in the mountains on Saturday and Sunday.
“But it won’t be enough to make the threat of wildfires go away,” Roser said.
San Diego has only received 0.16 inches of precipitation (measured at the airport) since July 1 — barely enough to cover the bottom of a drinking glass. Weather service forecaster Dave Munyon said the region has never seen a period starting from July 1 stretch this long with so little precipitation since record keeping started in 1850. The brush is dry and the winds are harsh — conditions for a wildfire to grow out of control.
Within about an hour starting shortly after midnight Tuesday, three wildfires sparked in the Fallbrook and Bonsall areas. The largest was the Lilac fire, which jumped to 85 acres as it headed toward homes west of Interstate 15 and south of state Route 76.
Authorities used night-flying helicopters to drop water, and scores of firefighters battled it on the ground.
“We were having pretty strong gusts in the beginning of the fire,” Cal Fire Capt. Mike Cornette said.
At one point, both sides of Interstate 15 in the area were closed to traffic, as were parts of Old Highway 395, including at SR-76.
Sheriff’s deputies fanned out to warn sleeping Bonsall residents to clear out, using patrol cars and a sheriff’s helicopter to sound distinctive “hi-low” sirens. Residents also were notified by reverse 911 calls and deputies going door to door, said sheriff’s Lt. Noah Zarnow.
After finding firefighters on his doorstep in Bonsall, Mitchell fled with his dogs but without his phone. By mid-morning, he sat in his pickup truck at a road closure. He’d been there through the night, waiting to be allowed to return home, where the exterior walls are made not of wood clad in stucco or siding but of foam blocks filled with concrete.
At the Castle Creek Country Club outside north Escondido, about 20 vehicles were waiting in the parking lot when Red Cross volunteers arrived at 3 a.m. to open it as an evacuation center, volunteer Nat Giraud said.
The Lilac fire spread from the edge of nearby I-15 in a southwesterly direction and raked across the rear of a tan-colored home on the eastern side of Ranchos Ladera Road, burning up to the property’s patio. The homeowners had clearly put significant effort into clearing away brush, providing room for a solid defense.
Strike crews were able to hold out at these locations. By preventing them from igniting, they avoided the shower of embers that the wind would have pushed south and west toward more homes.
“The team that fought here did an amazing job,” said Battalion Chief Shawn Johnson of the Sonoma County Fire District. His unit and others, after helping to fight the Palisades fire in Los Angeles, were sent south two weeks ago, staged for a quick response.
Hours later, as crews got a handle on the Lilac fire, a brush fire erupted on Friars Road across from Fashion Valley mall. It raced toward residences and prompted evacuation orders and warnings for some on the west sides of Mission Valley and Linda Vista.
Law enforcement knocked on doors to evacuate people and blocked streets to keep others from entering the area. In both directions of state Route 163, the Friars Road off-ramps were also shut down for several hours, reopening around 4:30 p.m.
With dozens of fire trucks and police vehicles parked along Friars Road and throughout the mall parking lot, onlookers stood at the top of the parking structure near Nordstrom taking photos and videos.
With the fire stopped and crews mopping up, all evacuations were lifted by late afternoon.
By late afternoon, crews working on the Lilac fire in Bonsall had drawn a containment line around 50 percent of the fire’s footprint. The Pala fire, north of I-15 and SR-76, reached 17 acres and was entirely contained. The smallest of the three North County fires was the 1-acre Riverview fire in the area of Santa Margarita Drive in Fallbrook.
Staff writers Caleb Lunetta, Phil Diehl and Rob Nikolewski contributed to this report.