Greetings from San Diego or should I say from Dantes inferno...
I am located in Rancho Bernardo, about as far north on I15 as you can go and still be in city limits of San Diego. Roughly equal distant between the valley center fire to the north and the ceder fire to the south. The smoke is everywhere, which makes it hard to discern where the fires are. I am trying not to venture too far from home to honor requests not to clog the streets. This leaves me getting my news the same as you, the TV. I am not seeing much of the air support other than transiting aircraft. The tempatures have started to cool as the winds blow in from the Pacific rather from the desert. This is helping some and hurting others. Have seen a number of fire officials say that the onshore winds will now push the fire twords previously untouched areas. The fire in North county near Escondido has started a southern fork and is burning slowly twords the San Diego wild animal park. This is a world class facility and its loss would be unthinkable. The last numbers I saw on the tube, in the whole of socal, 1500 homes gone, approaching 600,000 acres burned. 3/4 the size of the state of Rhode Island. Work was very understanding about me not leaving on a four day trip. There are a number of pilots that I have been unable to contact who live in affected areas. I can get the answering machine on all but one of them. Wife is a teacher, at least two of here co workers have lost homes or barns.
As far as the poster who commented on Posse commitatus, I don't know if that applies to non law enforcement activities. The military had committed C130s with the MAFFs equipment. The 130s are I believe a AFR componant, not guard. I stand to be corrected of course.To the best of my knowledge martial law has not been enacted, I imagine that would be all over the news if it had I myself was involved in bucket ops in the early 90s while living in Hawaii. As perhaps mentioned already, a law from the depression era days of the 30's may be the culprit. In an attempt to keep people employed civil assets must be used prior to military capabilities. This may have worked in the 1930s and still has some application today, but not at the expense of safety. I can't imagine the author of that legislation could imagine a broad based law such as that would hinder fire fighting operations 70 years later.
As far as the origin of the San Diego fires, seems it was a lost deer hunter in the moutains near Julian who started a fire to signal searchers. You have to feel for the guy, lost without food or water in the sticks. I don't know as I would have done anything different than he did.