The wildfires in Southern California have forced San Diego and Long Beach State to move their three-game Fall World Series from this weekend to Nov. 2-4. The first two games will be at LBSU’s Blair Field, with the opener scheduled for next Friday at 6 p.m. and the second game for Saturday at 2. Sunday’s finale is tentatively scheduled for San Diego at 1 p.m.

Toreros coach Rich Hill said this morning that the fires are no threat to USD’s coastal campus, although the winds have blown the heavy smoke toward the ocean, affecting the air quality around USD. But Hill and his family live in Carmel Mountain Ranch, and they’re not out of the woods yet.

"Where I live, I’m right in the thick of it," Hill said. "My kids go to Rancho Bernardo High School and Bernardo Middle School–that’s the one on the news, they’re stuffing flames. (The fires are) a mile north of us and a mile south of us, so police set up a command post right in our neighborhood. It’s kind of eerie. My son said last night, ‘This is like War of the Worlds, Dad.’ You’re driving in, you see all the school buses they had to park in our neighborhood shopping center. Everyone’s walking around with masks on their face. Everyone around us had to evacuate–there were 300,000 evacuations, the most in San Diego history. Devstastion is all around us. It’s just surreal."

Hill said his home is not in the mandatory evacuation area, so the family decided to stay put for now.

"The evacuation centers and all the hotels are all filled up," Hill said. "This is obviously much worse than the Cedar Fire which happened four years ago. There are just so many people displaced, that’s the real issue. That Witch Fire is zero percent contained, burning to the ocean, you just don’t know.

"The only thing they can predict is the unpredictability. The Santa Ana winds are something we live with out there, they can last 48 to 72 hours. We’re hoping by the end of the day it should die down a little bit. We’re in the center of that Witch Fire, that’s the worst one. There’s a fire behind us and a fire in front of us. If the winds shift in front of us or behind us, we will have to leave immediately."

Our best wishes go out to the Hill family and everyone else affected by the fires.