Asian America and the So. Calif. Wildfires of 2007
October 26, 2007
QUALCOMM STADIUM, San Diego, Calif.—If we weren’t here to experience it firsthand, we’ll probably never know what it felt like to receive that “reverse 9-1-1″ call in the middle of the night telling us to flee the flames, and we won’t know what it felt like to wait hours or days to find out if we still had a home or not.
But another week has passed and the fires are nearly out. As the evacuation shelters were closing and the news crews were packing up their equipment, the first real accounts began trickling out of fire-struck areas of San Diego County. The tiny, family-owned, National City, Calif.-based weekly San Diego Asian Journal deserves a Pulitzer (I’m not kidding) for their reporting, commentary and community service during the inferno that swept through its community during the Great Southern California Wildfires of 2007.
“I always thought that San Diego, California, my adoptive hometown for the past 25 years, is Paradise.”
Simeon G. Silverio, Jr.
