Latest fires touch upon barely healed scars

It was just a simple little five-acre hillside fire, the kind that pops up in north San Diego County more often than you’d think, fueled by dry grass and a grove of old palms. But it was enough to send flashbacks of terrifying anxiety through the local Bonsall community, where just 11 months earlier a finger of the fearsome Lilac conflagration tore through the San Luis Rey Downs training center, killing 46 horses and displacing a vital segment of the Southern California Thoroughbred community. So much for a quiet Sunday. That was Nov. 11, early afternoon, and the burning hillside to the north of Highway 76, barely a mile from the training center, was quickly surrounded by fire brigades and attacked from both land and air. A firefighting helicopter dipped its water bucket in the large pond on the nearby Vessels Ranch property, now owned by Paul Reddam, and dumped its load on the flames. Van companies mustered their trailers in case the horses of San Luis Rey had to be evacuated. Trainers made frantic calls for updates.

By 3:30 p.m. the fire was contained, though nerves were still jittery.

“The responders were right on top of it,” said Kevin Habell, who manages San Luis Rey Downs for The Stronach Company. “There must have been a fire truck parked every 30 feet over there. I would tell people to let them do their job, and that we were ready for anything. After last year, we better be.”

As the anniversary of the Dec. 7, 2017, Lilac Fire approaches and the California drought moves through its seventh year, frayed nerves are to be expected, and the news from points north was no help. On Nov. 8, the deadly Camp Fire had broken out in Butte County, north of Sacramento, eventually consuming the town of Paradise (pop. 26,000), while on the same day the Woolsey fire ignited in Simi Valley, north of Los Angeles, and began spreading southwestward through the communities of Bell Canyon, Calabassas, and Thousand Oaks before expanding through the mountains and valleys of Malibu.

“I’ve lived in Bell Canyon for 37 years,” said Madeline Auerbach, California Horse Racing Board vice chair. “We’ve had fires a lot, but we never lost a home in our community. This time we lost 40, including the house up the hill across the street that burned to the ground. That’s why I feel like the luckiest person on the planet, because other than a few smoke issues, my house is perfect.”

Along with her neighbors, Auerbach was told to evacuate the evening of Nov. 8. She stayed with friends, then decamped to the home of her son Patrick in Los Angeles. After six days the evacuation order was lifted, and she returned to find her community eerily quiet, striped with paths of devastation, and still manned by firefighters.

“The deer have returned to the backyard, and the rabbits are eating what plants they can find,” Auerbach said. “But all I could think about was last year’s fire, the horses, and how awful it was.”

Three people died in the Woolsey fire and more than 70 deaths have been attributed to the Camp Fire, with hundreds of residents from the town of Paradise still unaccounted for. As the Northern California fires raged into the following week, thick smoke descended upon the San Francisco Bay Area, some 150 miles to the south, obscuring the skyline and rendering the air dangerously unhealthy.

As a result, both training and racing were canceled last Friday and Saturday at Golden Gate Fields, located on a peninsula of land jutting into San Francisco Bay just north of Oakland.

“It was legit,” said trainer Steve Sherman. “I figured when they canceled the Cal-Stanford [football] game here on Saturday that we wouldn’t be running. The air quality number was up into the 240’s or 250’s, and you’re not supposed to do anything over 200. You couldn’t even see the Berkeley Hills right next to us.”

Meanwhile, at San Luis Rey Downs, work is continuing apace to complete the installation of a sprinkler system lining the interiors of the two vast canvas-topped structures that replaced the barns burned in the Lilac fire. The installation could not be completed in time for the return of horses last April, and Del Mar’s stable area was not available for relocation of about 175 head until the start of the fall meet, when far fewer stalls are required.

It is anticipated that the installation will be complete by early December. Still, the temporary lack of sprinklers required not only dispensation from local authorities, but also the racing board.

“We didn’t have a choice, because we had to move the horses,” Auerbach said. “We put in place as many things as we could during the time of transition – extra water trucks, more fire trucks on ready call, 24-hour security, fire extinguishers every five stalls. It was as aggressive as we could possibly get to protect the horses.

“But there is something I certainly have learned,” she added. “We can have every fire precaution known to man, but having watched what happened in the northern part of the state, and having faced the enormity of it myself, if we think for one minute we can make it 100 percent safe, we’re fooling ourselves. We can do everything we can, but we can’t do everything.”