San Diego County Sheriff Bill Kolender: more people evacuated from county’s wildfires than from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

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I am a few hours into my turn on watch. Getting sleepy. Gonna go watch the news. Evacuation area is 3 miles east and 4 miles south of us.

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What fitful sleep w/ KPBS twitters all night, but it’ll be worth it if this area is evacced. No Reverse 911 here.

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Wow. On the Border is packed for once because mall parking lot became evacuee RV space.

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Firefighters are trying to save Steele Canyon high school from the Harris fire. That’s the shelter we visited yesterday. It has 500 evacuees

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****UPDATE: Firefighters believe it will take at least one week from today to gain containment of the fires
****UPDATE: Pres. Bush will visit us on Thursday. He has declared a State of Emergency in 7 California counties, including ours.
****UPDATE: Number of evacuees in SD County has climbed to 500,000.
****UPDATE: The total number of acres burned in this county is not as high as I first put. It’s more like 250,000.My second impromptu video blog. This is footage of David and I on our way to bring supplies to the Steele Canyone High School Evacuation Center. We saw a Black Hawk land and take off in the parking lot of an Edwards movie theater.The total number of evacuees just here in San Diego has climbed to 300,000.

The good news is that some people have been abel to return and the National Guard has air dropped over some regions and stopped the fires. The bad news is that more fires are starting randomly. Two of them are converging right now.

Here are some helpful links.

http://www.sandiego.gov/ohs/reverse911/

http://sosdfireblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.sdcdpw.org/

http://sdcountyemergency.com/

If you would like to help, DO NOT go volunteer at a shelter randomly. They

are overwhelmed as it is. You can get information on training and also donate to this area’ Red Cross specifically at:

http://www.sdarc.org

Formats available: Microsoft Video (.avi)

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@kpbsnews - FWD from KPBS: Firefighters believe it will take at least one week from today to gain containment of the fires…

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The hill next to Jaime’s house is on fire! At least they have safely evacuated, but I hope he doesn’t become the first friend to lose a home

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@michaelsbecker and C, thanks. Shelter was busy! We saw a Black Hawk n National Guard. Evacuees helped us unload.

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I just got video of a copter taking off. Tom Tom’s leading us TOWARD smoke so shelter may be closed.

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