The Firing Lines . . .

Tom Blair's i On San Diego

TRAGEDY & COMEDY: Mary Black man, volunteering at San Diego High School to aid evacuees of San Diego’s October firestorm, found evidence not all the confusion was caused by fire. As Blackman stood talking to a security guard, an agitated woman ran up and blurted, “Who’s in charge here?” “FEMA’s in charge,” the guard replied. “Well,” the woman shot back, “where is she? I want to talk to her!”

THE WANDERING I: Most of the elected officials who descended on the Qualcomm Stadium evacuation center during the firestorm made sure their voices were heard by radio and their faces seen by TV cameras. But one politico shunned the media glare. Councilwoman Donna Frye slipped quietly into the food tent, where she joined the volunteers serving lunch to evacuees . . . City Council candidate Carl DeMaio, whose own Rancho Bernardo home was threatened by fire, could have gone to family or friends after evacuating at dawn on the fires’ second day. Instead, he went straight to Qualcomm——and began working behind the scenes to organize 400 other volunteers . . . The media contingent at the stadium turned out to be heroes, too. “Every time we needed something, whether it was more ice or wheelchairs, we’d tell the radio and TV reporters,” says one organizer. “And 15 minutes later, we had what we needed.”

WELCOME WAGON: A New York Times reporter who covered the Qualcomm scene caught up with 26-year-old Raj Panandian, a software engineer who was watching live coverage on one of the stadium televisions of his apartment complex burning. Panandian, an Indian citizen who’d just settled in San Diego, told the reporter, “The only thing I managed to save was my passport and my H-1 work visa. Everything else is gone.”

BURNING SENSATION: Two days before the epic firestorm touched off, BusinessWeek magazine’s update on the crisis in the U.S. housing market advised readers on where to find the best deals in depressed markets. Among BusinessWeek’s “Hot Spots That Have Cooled Luring Savvy Retirees”: Rancho Bernardo.

OUTSIDE IN: With five young La Jollans scheduled for a preliminary hearing this month on charges they murdered professional surfer Emery Kauanui, The New York Times has waded in again. This time, with a sidebar story our local media missed. According to the Times, one of the men charged in connection with the murder, Henri “Hank” Hendricks, a quarterback at the University of New Hampshire until he was suspended, was the protégé of Doug Flutie when Flute quarterbacked the San Diego Chargers. (Hendricks reportedly intervened when Kauanui’s girlfriend tried to stop the beating that led to Kauanui’s death last May.) Flutie, who helped Hendricks win his college scholarship, told the Times he’s close to the entire Hendricks family. “Hank is a hard-working, disciplined kid, a good student, the whole package,” said Flutie, who wrote to the judge in the case on Hendricks’ behalf. More family ties: After Hendricks enrolled at UNH, his family followed him to New England, settling in Flutie’s hometown of Natick, Massachusetts. Hendricks’ younger brother, Nick, enrolled in high school there with his girlfriend, Alexa——Flutie’s daughter.

SECOND CIRCUIT: With La Jolla landslides and county wildfires in short supply, City Attorney Mike Aguirre has taken to crashing community forums for a piece of the spotlight. Most recently, it was a neighborhood meeting in Kensington, where opponents of a mixed-use development were airing it out. As the meeting wound down, Aguirre bounded in to voice his opposition to the project. Not exactly a boffo performance. “Hey, Mike,” one resident shouted, “we don’t have any cameras. No reason for you to be here!”

LOCAL FLAVOR: The Reduced Shakespeare Company, famed for condensing great works into two hilarious hours, brought The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged) to the San Diego Rep in November——putting the fun back into fundamentalism. And they poked a sharp stick at our town. There was a nod to our city attorney (for showing everyone how to “take charge of a landslide”). And a list of “10 commandments that didn’t make the cut.” Among them: “Thou shalt not squander the city’s pension fund” and “Thou shalt not fire a football coach whose record is 14 and 2.”

OUT OUR WAY: San Diego is the newest location for a chain of “integrative pharmacies” called Pharmaca. And the new La Jolla store offers consumers a bonus: conventional prescriptions for humans and pet medications——“All Under One Roof.” If you and Fido both have worms, no worries. Otherwise, be sure you keep your prescriptions straight.

HEROES PROVED: Robert Miller finally returned to his Jamul home when the last evacuation order was lifted. When he got there, he found all of the landscape surrounding the house——15 acres——had burned. But his house was still standing. A week later, he had visitors: two firefighters who’d driven their fire truck all the way from Spokane, Washington, to join the front lines of the San Diego blazes. Now that the fire was out, they said, they just came back to make sure there were no hot spots.

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