A brush fire in a Santee riverbed on Sunday evening prompted the evacuation of customers in a nearby shopping center and a firefighting helicopter with night-flying capabilities sent to help douse the flames, authorities said.<\/p>\n
A Sheriff\u2019s Office spokesperson said deputies helped evacuate people from the Walmart and Michaels stores on Town Center Parkway. As of 7 p.m., the fire was not threatening any homes and no residents were being evacuated.<\/p>\n
Around 7:50 p.m., sheriff\u2019s officials said the blaze was holding at 3 to 4 acres. \u201cThey expect it to burn out at the Cuyamaca bridge,\u201d said sheriff\u2019s Lt. Paul Michalke.<\/p>\n
The fire, which sent up a huge plume of smoke, was reported shortly before 6:50 p.m. The cause of the fire was not known, Michalke said.<\/p>\n
High temperatures reached the 80s in Santee on Sunday but had dropped to about 77 when the fire began. Winds in the area were gusting out of the southwest up to 11 mph, according to the National Weather Service.<\/p>\n
Sheriff\u2019s officials took to social media to warn residents they might see increased law enforcement and firefighting activity because of the fire.\u00a0\u201cA fire is burning in the riverbed near the 100 block of Town Center Parkway. Please avoid the area until further notice. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding,\u201d the department said on X at 7:15 p.m.<\/p>\n
A San Diego Fire-Rescue spokesperson said Copter 3, a helicopter capable of flying firefighting missions at night, and two engines had been sent to help out with the fire. A sheriff\u2019s patrol helicopter also was sent to the area.<\/p>\n
Staff writer Gary Robbins contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A brush fire in a Santee riverbed on Sunday evening prompted the evacuation of customers in a nearby…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[138,181,23,100,74,76,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-242978","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-san-diego-headlines","14":"tag-san-diego-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}