Commentary: I documented the 2007 San Diego wildfires. The official death toll is wrong. Here's why

Laura Castañeda, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Jan 23, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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Oct. 21, 2007, is a day many of us in San Diego will never forget. I was at Ocean Beach enjoying a warm sunny day with my family when we saw thick black smoke in the distance. At the time I had an infant 7 months old.

Within hours, the county was up in flames. One fire grew to four, including the Harris Fire near the U.S.-Mexico border where I live. The intense heat, the uncertainty and the floating ash that looked like rain left my heart thumping. I was afraid.

My husband, a former Mexican lifeguard, remained calm. We decided we could not abandon our home and flee, so I called my dad in Illinois. He flew to San Diego, picked up his grandson and took him to Phoenix with my prima Yvette.

The winds were whipping and the conditions were changing rapidly. I kept hearing about the Santa Anas. But I didn’t understand anything about wildfires, or what fuels them.

During his quick visit, my father had seen a story in The San Diego Union-Tribune about migrants who had gotten caught in the fires out in East County.

After reading that article, and with little planning or funding, I jumped into action with two other journalists, videographer Willie Williams and editor Joaquin Elizondo. Along with Shannon Bradley at UCTV, we produced a documentary telling stories of the travelers who perished in the blaze but appeared to be left out of the official state death toll of eight. “The Devil’s Breath,” got its title from Native Americans. That’s what they called the Santa Ana winds.

I reached out to community leaders like Jesse Navarro, then-spokesperson for then-District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, Celia Diaz of the nonprofit Binational Emergency Medical Committee and Rafael Hernandez from the nonprofit Desert Angels, a volunteer search and rescue team. They were the people who had direct contact with the families of the deceased and injured migrants. Within days, I had exclusive interviews with survivors who were alongside those who died.

They told harrowing details about how they became trapped in the fires. Six men who were traveling together near Tecate called 911 for help. I sat in my car listening to an audio cassette of the calls with a lump in my throat. The operators had treated them rudely, transferring them over and over again with language barriers that seemed irresponsible for a border community.

Then there was Maria Guadalupe Beltrán. She was the undocumented mother of four American-born children in Vista. She begged her husband Felipe Mercado to let her go to Mexico City after learning her father had died suddenly. Her children were 8, 7, 5 and 17 months. She took the trip with her younger brother Nicholas and took her two youngest kids.

On the return trip a relative picked up the children in Tijuana and the siblings paid a coyote to cross back not knowing there were fires. The siblings succumbed to the flames and ended up airlifted to the UC San Diego Burn Center, where they slipped into comas. Mr. Mercado later identified his wife by her white nail polish and remained at her bedside for two weeks, but she didn’t survive. Her brother lived to tell their story.

Finally, two young couples who traveled together on their way to Anaheim were found huddled in a ravine out in the East County. One woman was so small that at first, authorities thought she was a child. Araceli Peralta’s father traveled from the state of Guerrero on a humanitarian visa to give a DNA sample so his daughter could be positively identified. The Desert Angels took him to the site where the couples’ bodies had been found. He sobbed and spoke out to her as though she could hear his voice.

I hired crews to cover the funerals back in their hometowns. A local musician, Joaquin “Quino” McWhinney, wrote a song for the credits entitled “Te Llevo En Mi Corazón,” which means “I Carry You In My Heart.” It makes me cry even now when I hear it.

Every anniversary of the San Diego wildfires and seeing Los Angeles up in flames, I can’t help but think of these victims and their families. I will never forget.

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Castañeda is a deputy editorial and opinion editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune.

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