SOME REFUSE TO LEAVE PARADISE

1:25 p.m. Tuesday

In spite of the fact that Valley Center was lying under a thick pall of smoke on Tuesday afternoon, Joy Justis, a spokesman for the VC Fire Protection District tells The Roadrunner that “I don’t think it has burned many places in Valley Center It has come up on the same slope that it came four years ago. It’s coming through Paradise.”

Although everyone in that part of town was ordered to evacuate early Monday, apparently lots of them chose to disregard that warning. Justis says that the fire department has been getting a host of phone calls from that area. “People should be out of there!” she said. “But a lot of them are not!”

Fire Board Pres. Mel Schuler told The Roadrunner that firefighters are “holding the line along Yellow Brick Road. They are trying to keep the fire from cresting on that whole canyon. It seems like they are doing that. It has moved west, towards Paradise Mountain.”

The command post, which had been at the Sheriff’s substation on N. Lake Wohlford, is being moved out of the fire’s path. It will be relocated to the VC Community Hall.

The high school evacuation center has been closed, mainly due to air quality issues and also because the Red Cross doesn’t want to have a shelter that close to the fire.
Chief Kevin O’Leary is working with the Red Cross to try to set up an alternate site.

I-15 north is open, and folks who want to get away completely from the fire can take Lilac to Old Castle and then up the I-15 to Riverside Count.

An evacuation center is being maintained in Temecula at 30875 Rancho Vista Road, cross of Margarita. This shelter does not accept animals.

Our reporter/photographer Ray Flores is traveling through Valley Center looking for fire news.

He saw no flames burning on Woods Valley Road or Cole Grade. “There’s a lot of smoke and the wind is really kicking up,” he said.

At last call he went along Valley Center Road, less than a mile east of Valley View Casino. He saw flames at the big horse farm halfway down the grade towards Rincon.

At the Rincon fire station, just up the road from the casino he saw signs of the fire, but no destroyed structures. Random small blazes were still burning.

Across the street from Mazzetti’s Garage on VC Road, cross street of Rocky Top Lane he saw a major structure fire. The fire department has deployed four trucks.
“Across the street from Harrah’s there was an automobile storage that is completely gutted. Burned to the ground. A quarter of a mile up up a slope from the house that is burning a house has been completely destroyed,” said Flores.