Most of the 2,000 people or more who attended Wednesday’s fireworks show at Jaguar Stadium probably didn’t know how close it came to being cancelled due to the dry, hot weather.
On Tuesday afternoon, when temperatures reached 100° and the possibility existed of breezes kicking up, Fire Marshal George Lucia was thinking seriously about cancelling the $32,000 show.
“Safety is our first concern,” he told The Roadrunner. “If we reach a situation where the wind might carry the embers from the fireworks away from where they are supposed to fall, or should a real fire occur elsewhere in Valley Center and resources leave their post at the school, the show may not go on.”
Well, that didn’t happen. But it might have. Fortunately, the marine layer Wednesday morning brought in enough relief that, warm as it was, it wasn’t a tinder box.
Lucia added, “The special concern this year was the extreme heat, drought and high fire hazard.
“As always, these weather conditions must be evaluated up to the point of no return (9 p.m.).
“We checked the weather just before the shoot and the humidity was up to a safe sixty percent with no winds.”
The fire marshal required a 420 foot “fallout” area around the firing area. Additionally, charged fire lines staffed by fully protected fire fighters were in place at many locations.
Each shot was carefully monitored to watch for complete detonation and live ember fallout.
According to Lucia, “This year some embers did fall into the safe zone but no fires were started. This year the final ‘Finale’ caused some concern when a small portion of the charges did slip sideways causing a few rockets to travel horizontally.”
At no time did any of these fireworks leave the safe zone.
No one was injured and no damage was incurred.
“This is always a possible mishap during a fireworks show, but by following regulations, no one was hurt,” said Lucia.
It doesn’t always happen that way if fireworks are not launched properly. Last week in Vienna, Maryland 11 people were hurt when some fireworks misfired and shot sideways into the crowd. Two are still in a coma.
Extremely Dry Conditions
Valley Center and San Diego County are in a situation now as regards to the dryness of shrubs and weeds that we normally face in the fall. We will still be facing it in the fall, only it will be even worse.
We have just concluded the two driest consecutive years since 1860s.
Lucia added, “Now we are going very early into the monsoon season where we will get lots of the lightning strikes that account for seventy-five percent of the fires in the mountain areas [including our local Palomar Mountain area].”
This week fire resources in California are stretched thin because of a raging fire in the Plumas National Forest that had consumed 15,000 acres by Sunday.
“We are definitely on guard and we need people to be watching and careful,” said Lucia.
A North County contractor we know used to take building permit requests and site plans to the County office in San Marcos, where they greeted him with “Hi, Roger!”
Now, at the main county Dept. of Planning & Land Use (DPLU) office in Kearny Mesa, he’s lucky if anyone smiles or recognizes him.
County offices at San Marcos, which have included and will continue to include the Dept. of Environmental Health and the Tax Assessor’s office, no longer house a satellite DPLU office. The El Cajon DPLU office has also closed. The last day for the San Marcos office was June 22.
For many North County builders, getting projects reviewed by the County has gone from a short trip down Hwy 78 to deal with familiar staffers to an all-day trek down I-15 to the main county offices on Ruffin Road in Kearny Mesa.
Meet the new reality at the county’s DPLU, which, under pressure from a building slump, has pulled in its horns.
Speaking of Horn, as in Fifth District Supervisor Bill Horn, who is perceived by some as a friend of the building trades—we asked his office for a comment, and his communications director, John Culea, wrote us: “ The San Marcos office had very little traffic. It came down to the best use of taxpayer's dollars.”
“It was a strictly business decision,” Darren Gretler, Building Division Chief for DPLU, told The Roadrunner Monday.
“Due to the drop in building permits, due, we believe to the drop in the real estate market. That’s a decline in revenues and the division is a full cost recovery division [i.e. the department is not funded by taxpayer dollars], so we had to cut the budget.”
The number of building permits processed by the department went from 9,395 in fiscal year 2004–05 to 8,325 in FY 2005–06 to a projected 7,272 for the fiscal year just ended. That’s a 23% decline in two years.
“Our projected budget had been over $11 million, but for the end of this fiscal year we were looking at between $7–8 million in revenues,” said Gretler.
That would be a decline in revenues of between 28%–36%.
In a normal year, about 60% of the permits pulled are minor permits, for things such as room additions, tenant improvements and swimming pools. Those permits have continued to be pulled. However, the decline that has hurt the department the most has been for home building permits.
“Houses are down,” said Gretler. “So we took some steps. That included not replacing vacancies. We also released contract workers, student workers and temporary workers.”
Staff levels went from 105 down to the 60s.
However, there was still room to cut the budget.
“Now that we’ve cut our employees and cut every way possible and looked at what the economy has done, we projected that we need to cut another $1.5 million for the next fiscal year. The only thing left was office closures,” said Gretler. “When business goes up we will look at reopening.”
County building inspectors will continue to operate out of the San Marcos offices, which the County owns. They just won’t be open to the public.
Closing the two satellite offices allowed DPLU to eliminate unnecessary redundancy, according to Gretler.
We asked Gretler what the reaction in the building trades community has been.
“We’re doing everything we can to minimize the inconvenience. We realize that customers have to drive significantly farther. Some customers have been frustrated but overall there’s a level of understanding that this is a budgetary issue. So far they have been fairly understanding.”
We called a couple of Valley Center contractors at random.
“I think it sucks!” said VC builder Jim Courter of Courter Construction, who has been a licensed contractor for over a quarter of a century.
“It’s a major inconvenience having to run down to Kearny Mesa. It pretty much will slow down being able to process permits to serve my customers. It’s going to make it so much harder to do things.”
Courter predicts that unpermitted (i.e. illegal) construction will increase as a result.
“I’ve had two people approach me and say, ‘Let’s just build it, forget the permits,’ ” he said.
For a typical project, said Courter, “it will add half a week. Every change I’ll have to fight the traffic to get down there. It’s a major, major inconvenience!”
Another VC contractor, George Stech, agrees: “I just love spending fuel driving to Ruffin Road and getting on the road at 4 a.m. to drive three hours down I-15!” he said.
Then, “After getting this, this and this address, during the busiest time of the afternoon, it’s another couple of hours back up the I-15. Most of the day is shot,” he said.
“I would love to see them back all the way up to where they would have to close up shop!” Stech added.
DPLU’s official written response about the closing, besides bringing up the points that Gretler made to The Roadrunner, also claims that more than half of the existing “customers” only use the Kearny Mesa facility and that “consolidating services at the Kearny Mesa facility does allow for ‘one-stop’ shopping in that the same building also houses the Department of Environmental Health, DPLU Regulatory Planning, and the Department of Public Works.”
Movie star John Wayne, who once lived, shopped and rode horses in the Valley Center-Pauma Valley Area, is being remembered at a centennial birthday exhibit at the Valley Center History Museum.
Born 100 years ago, Wayne’s life in northern San Diego County is being profiled through rare photos, personal mementos and related memorabilia. The display will continue through the end of the year. The museum, at 29200 Cole Grade Road is open Tuesday through Saturday from 1–4 p.m. Admission is free.
Documentation in the archives of the Valley Center Historical Society shows that Wayne first came to the Valley Center-Pauma area about 1940. Although he had appeared in a number of films and had used the John Wayne moniker since 1930, he introduced himself locally as Duke Morrison.
Morrison hired Valley Center contractor Charles Hall to construct a 3,600 square foot adobe house on Pauma Valley Drive. Built by local tradesmen from the Rincon Indian Reservation, the house was a rambling structure with two separate living areas. Actor Ward Bond, often named as Wayne’s closest friend, physically built an addition to the original structure. The house was razed in 1989, but five photos of the home are on display as is one of the original adobe bricks.
The exhibit also includes photos of actress Loretta Young, a frequent house guest who often went riding with Wayne, and Wayne with Randolph Scott who lived on a 600-acre ranch on Woods Valley Road in Valley Center.
Although he died in 1979, Wayne remains one of the most recognizable faces in the world. A Harris Poll conducted earlier this year rated him as the third-most popular movie star.
For information on the exhibit, call 749-2993 or visit valleycenterhistory.org.
The Valley Roadrunner
P.O.B. 1529, Valley Center, CA 92082
Tel. 760.749.1112 Fax 760.749.1688
Website: www.valleycenter.com
Email: editor@valleycenter.com
Copyright © 2007, Palomar Community Newspapers, dba Valley Roadrunner. All rights reserved. This content may not be archived, retransmitted, saved in a database, or used for any commercial purpose without the express written permission of the Valley Roadrunner.