When a call came in on Thursday reporting a brush fire in Otay Mesa, fire departments responded. Not just San Diego Fire-Rescue, but also Chula Vista, National City and Coronado. Officers quickly deployed air assets, hand crews and various types of firefighting equipment.

“We just overran it. “We were able to catch a fire on a hillside and have it cool down within 20 minutes,” Brian Brainard, deputy chief of the San Diego Fire Department, said Thursday.

Crews limited it to one acre.

San Diego County fire departments have been operating at full capacity all week as Santa Ana experiences dangerous fire weather and low humidity, particularly in the dry brush. And nerves are on edge as San Diego residents watch Los Angeles grapple with deadly, destructive fires.

The high fire danger warning for San Diego has been extended until Friday at 6 p.m. The National Weather Service says the Santa Ana winds hitting Los Angeles from the north are shifting and coming from the east – blowing directly into the canyons of San Diego County – and in areas east of Interstate 15, winds of 40 to 70 miles per hour will bring.

Earlier this week, on Wednesday evening, the threat resulted in San Diego Gas & Electric shutting off power to nearly 9,000 customers upstate and beyond. All lights were back on Thursday afternoon, but high winds could result in another public safety power shutdown.

Improved weather conditions allowed crews to patrol power lines and inspect equipment in affected areas.

Schools in Mountain Empire, Warner and both Julian school districts will remain closed Friday due to possible power outages.

Fire departments across the region are working to prepare for, and more importantly prevent, a firestorm fueled by dry brush and high winds. Brainard pointed to cooperation between all agencies in the metropolitan area. “The perfect example is what we experienced earlier today, with that one-acre fire where we had all these different agencies responding,” he said.

“We are doing everything necessary to ensure we protect life, property first and the environment second,” Brainard said.

Brainard said authorities are working with the state Office of Emergency Services and are considering multiple factors when making decisions about resources and planning. He noted that San Diego saw Santa Ana’s “not nearly as bad as what we saw in LA.”

He also said firefighters from all regional fire departments had regular conversations throughout the day, whether in meetings or phone calls. Considerations include where to house equipment and crews and how to replenish those resources to fill gaps. “Questions like this are evaluated literally hourly during these significant events,” Brainard said.

At Cal Fire, which has more than 50 stations in the region, all firefighters are on duty and all regular days off have been canceled. The extra people mean additional equipment, including water tankers and fire engines, will be staffed, and some can be pre-positioned if necessary. Cal Fire said it also had five helicopters, two air tankers and one air attack aircraft on standby.

That kind of preparedness helped them respond quickly to a brush fire in the Crest area of ​​rural East County early Thursday afternoon. Crews limited the area to less than 3 acres.

While firefighters worked in Crest, more than 20 employees from Cal Fire and the U.S. Forest Service worked in an office building in the back of Cal Fire’s 5-acre headquarters in the San Diego area just outside El Cajon. Its mission is to monitor and manage over 1.8 million hectares of land within its jurisdiction.

At the front of the room, sitting under 10 separate 50-inch screens, was intelligence specialist Suzann Leininger, who helps coordinate firefighters’ response in real time. The new screens, installed last summer, display maps, graphics and camera feeds with topographical information, weather patterns and even locations of individual engines and aircraft in the field.

Within seconds of receiving an emergency call, Leininger can pull feeds from AlertCalifornia — a camera system that UC San Diego has installed in remote areas to track wildfires — and scan for smoke and flames. Artificial intelligence software also provides assistance by showing potential smoke or fire in the camera images before an individual witness calls.

Within two minutes of confirming a fire, Leininger can send a one-page file to firefighters on scene that breaks down the expected burn zone of the fire and what to expect when they arrive on scene, including how unpredictable it will be the fire could be the growth rate of the fire and the terrain difficulty.

The forecasts and forecasts, Leininger says, have been used by Cal Fire for four years, but the high-resolution screens give crews a “picture that’s worth a million words.”

This results in a faster and better response with the right resources.

“We had over 200 fires last year, but you hardly hear about them,” Leininger said, sitting at her electronic command center. “Our goal is to keep the fires to less than 10 acres, and stopping the fires early before they make the news is the best scenario.”

Staff writers Gary Robbins and Rob Nikolewski contributed to this report.

Originally published: January 9, 2025 at 7:35 pm PST