OB Rag

UPDATE: Forward Progress of Fire Stopped, Evacuation Order Still in Place in Immediate Area, Friars Road to Be Closed

As of 1:15 p.m., the evacuation warnings were lifted, while the evacuation order in the immediate area of the fire was still in place. The San Diego Police Department told an ABC 10News producer on the scene that crews stopped the fire’s forward progress.

SDFD says Friars Road will be closed west of State Route 163 for an “extended time” as crews work to mop up the remaining hot spots. SDPD said on X that Linda Vista Road to Genesee Avenue was closed as well.A vegetation fire ignited in the area of Friars Road in Mission Valley Tuesday afternoon, prompting evacuations nearby.

According to the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department’s website, the fire was first reported at 12:09 p.m.

So far, the following resources have been sent to battle the fire: five engines, three brush rigs, three helicopters and 55 personnel.

The San Diego Police Department confirmed to ABC 10News they are beginning to inform people about evacuations in the area. Specifically, they mentioned Camino Degrazia and apartments at the top of a hill north of Friars Road.

By Paul Krueger

A passionate revolt against the Mayor and City Council’s “Bonus ADU” program is gaining momentum in the Encanto area of Council District 4 as well as in the Chollas and Emerald Hills communities, and basically throughout the district. The revolt is being led by Neighbors for Encanto.

The area is being targeted by developers who are buying up large single family lots and building — or planning to build up to 42 ADUs on a single parcel, with no parking, no added infrastructure, and — equally important — no approval, input, or feedback from neighbors and residents.

Organizers have identified 11 of these projects in the area and in response have crafted their own website — bonusadubadforsd.com and placing pallet-sized signs throughout the neighborhood. Some of those signs have been repeatedly defaced which I witnessed myself on Monday.

There’s two important political angles to this revolt.

By Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams / Jan 20, 2025

Just minutes before leaving office, Joe Biden on Monday commuted the life prison sentence of Leonard Peltier, the elderly American Indian Movement activist who supporters say was framed for the murder of two federal agents during a 1975 reservation shootout.

“It’s finally over, I’m going home,” Peltier, who is 80 years old, said in a statement released by the Indigenous-led activist group NDN Collective. “I want to show the world I’m a good person with a good heart. I want to help the people, just like my grandmother taught me.”

While not the full pardon for which he and his defenders have long fought, the outgoing Democratic president’s commutation will allow Peltier—who has been imprisoned for nearly a half-century—to “spend his remaining days in home confinement,” according to Biden’s statement, which was no longer posted on the White House website after Republican President Donald Trump took office Monday afternoon.

By Alanna Durkin Richer and Michael Kunzelman / PBS / Jan. 21, 2025

President Donald Trump on Monday said he was pardoning about 1,500 of his supporters who have been charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack, using his sweeping clemency powers on his first day back in office to dismantle the largest investigation and prosecution in Justice Department history.

The pardons were expected after Trump’s yearslong campaign to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 attack that left more than 100 police officers injured and threatened the peaceful transfer of power. Yet the scope of the clemency still comes as a massive blow to the Justice Department’s effort to hold participants accountable over what has been described as one of the darkest days in American history.

Trump also commuted the prison sentences of leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy for what prosecutors described as plots to keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.

By Teri Figueroa / The San Diego Union-Tribune / January 18, 2025

The images of the fires in Los Angeles stopped some Harmony Grove residents cold.

Debbie O’Neill knows the stress of evacuating as fire bears down. A decade ago, she and her husband fled after they saw the flames from the Cocos fire crest a nearby hill and hurtle down toward their Harmony Grove home. And that was before more than a 700-home development went up in the semi-rural area.

There’s the potential for 453 more residences in the area. O’Neill and neighbors are fighting it, arguing that they — and the new residents — will be vulnerable if there is a fire due to inadequate evacuation routes.

“We don’t want to die in here,” O’Neill said Tuesday. “And if we do, I want to make damn sure that everybody knows that the county Board of Supervisors knew that this was not a safe development.”

By Bonnie Kutch / SD Union-Tribune Op-Ed / Jan. 21, 2025

San Diego so far has dodged a major disaster during the recent Santa Ana winds, but more events are just around the corner. With our vegetation bone-dry, and wildfires becoming more extreme and unpredictable, residents here have never been more vulnerable and justifiably terrified.

The devastating wildfires that have been ravaging Los Angeles tell us one thing for certain: Wildfires are far more deadly in dense urban areas where traffic grids are limited and evacuation is more difficult. This factor was also in play in the tragic 2023 Maui wildfires.

This should be enough to caution San Diego City officials that building in very high fire hazard severity zones is foolish and irresponsible. Adding more people to these areas means more cars on the road, potentially creating traffic gridlock and making it impossible for residents to get out of harm’s way.

From PLA’s Peninsula News

By Ann Jarmusch / SOHO Newsletter / January-February 2025

At their November 2024 meeting, the City of San Diego Historical Resources Board designated three houses and an apartment building and heard a detailed informational report on the current Heritage Preservation Program, which is under review.

Kelley Stanco, the City’s Deputy Director, Environmental Policy & Public Spaces (which includes heritage preservation), noted that November is Native American Heritage Month, when “we honor the history, rich culture, and vast contributions” of the Kumeyaay, on whose ancestral lands San Diego was built. She announced that the City’s Historic Preservation Awards, which were reinstated in 2024, will again be presented in May 2025 during National Preservation Month.

Stanco also outlined the application process for 2025 Mills Act contracts. Owners of historic resources designated in 2024 or earlier must submit applications for 2025 contracts between January 1 and March 31, 2025.

As usual, our friends at PLA’s Peninsula News have their eyes and ears close to the ground — so here’s the latest from the neighborhood around the proposed project at Rosecrans and Talbot.

By Eric DuVall / Pt Loma-OB Monthly (SDU-T) / January 14, 2025

In summer 1958, 27-year-old Navy Staff Lt. Don Walsh was assigned to the submarine tender Nereus, part of Submarine Flotilla 1 at the sub base on Point Loma. It was a safe, steady desk job, but less than exciting.

Six months later, Walsh found himself as the officer in charge (OIC) of what he referred to as “the strangest craft in the Navy,” the bathyscaph Trieste. How did that happen? He volunteered.

The bathyscaph was a deep submergence vehicle, or DSV, invented by Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard. It was no ordinary submarine. In fact, Trieste had been further described as a deep-diving dirigible.

By Mat Wahlstrom / Special to the OB Rag

My attention was caught by a throwaway statement in Wednesday’s [1-15-25]  Union-Tribune article about dangerous street intersections and Vision Zero. Vision Zero is a public policy initiative that has taken priority over and bled into the other programs and initiatives being pursued by the City of San Diego.

For those who don’t know, Vision Zero has as its singular goal “to reduce traffic fatalities to zero within a decade.”

As such, one might understandably think that this initiative merits applause and anticipate these street intersections will become less dangerous. Yet readers were greeted with this airy admission: “Vision Zero hasn’t reduced injury crashes or fatalities since it was launched in 2015. But instead of giving up, city officials said they plan to spend more money on safety features and other initiatives.”

I, too, needed to reread that sentence to be sure I understood it correctly.