VC RESIDENTS NOT ALLOWED IN YET

VC RESIDENTS NOT ALLOWED IN YET
By DAVID ROSS
For those who ask if they can return home yet to Valley Center—the answer is no.
But the answer may soon be yes. Perhaps as soon as today. Perhaps tomorrow. Certainly within 48 hours.
The official news will be released through the San Diego County Emergency Operations Center.
WE WILL POST THAT NEWS ON OUR INTERNET SITE AS SOON AS WE GET IT.
It will also be announced on TV, the radio and all other news outlets.
Rest assured, the authorities would like to get residents back into their homes as soon as possible.
However, do yourself a favor and don’t show up at the checkpoints just yet. A nice young man in a National Guard uniform will just turn you away.
However, at the command center briefing this morning Sheriff’s Lt. Sean Gerrity announced that he and his staff are working on a plan to let VC residents back in—in stages.
Phase I would likely be the western part of town, i.e. the part of town nearest to Escondido.
Phase II would be the eastern part of town, where fire actually invaded the town.
The meeting was attended by the fire’s incident commander, various CalFire executives, school and water authorities. Supervisor Bill Horn was also there.
The meeting was led by CalFire liaison officer Steve Gasaway, incident commander Dave Alt and Gerrity.
“We have a lot of good things happening, announced Alt.
He noted that much of the land that was hit by this fire was the same part of town hit four years ago.
This time, however, there was much less property damage, and no deaths, unlike 2003.
“Our issues are trying to get people back into their homes,” said Alt. “The law enforcement issue is reduced when people are back in their homes.”
Lt. Gerrity noted that “I still have areas that I need to keep people out.”
He explained the reasons why law enforcement wants residents out of the area and off the streets until it’s safe to return:
• They don’t want people on the streets getting in the way of law enforcement and firefighting vehicles.
• They only want people who should be in town so that they can readily ID those they spot who might be potential looters.
“This works best if everyone who is there is someone who needs to be there,” said Gerrity.
Everyone who doesn’t have an official reason for being here gets stopped, he said. That’s why platoons of deputies and National guardsmen are patrolling the area.
If there’s a lot of people on the road, “then I’m wasting my time stopping the good guys when I should be stopping the bad guys,” he said.
Once residents are allowed back in ONLY residents will be allowed back in. If you can’t prove you live here, you won’t be allowed through the checkpoints manned by the National Guard.
Authorities have been allowing owners of large agricultural operations in to, for instance, feed large chicken populations.
“Chickens need water,” said Gerrity. “If they don’t get it they die and we have a large health problem.”
Several people, including this writer and fire board Pres. Mel Schuler, who, with CERT volunteers has been manning the fire district’s phone center, expressed extreme frustration that we were not being feed timely information about the situation.
“We are getting hundreds of phone calls asking us questions and we don’t have the accurate information to give them,” groused Schuler.
Your editor made similar comments to the effect that the local paper should be the first in line to get information to disseminate to the residents, and not told to call a public information officer or a phone number.
Having said that, however, there is a number that residents can get somewhat accurate information on: 211.
However, I believe I made enough of an impression on the group at this morning’s meeting that we should be, as Chief O’Leary put it, “in the pocket” of the CalFire public information officer.
Later this week deputies will begin checking near the burned areas to see if there are any victims that weren’t reported earlier and to make sure that there are no live power wires down that haven’t been accounted for.
Gerrity once more reiterated that his first goal is to get as many people home as soon as he can. Once that happens, he said, the potential for crime drops dramatically.