Witch Fire
California wildfire in 2007
The Witch Creek Fire, also known as the Witch Fire, was the second-largest wildfire of the 2007 California wildfire season, burning 197,990 acres (801 km2) of land in San Diego County. Fanned by powerful Santa Ana winds, the Witch Creek Fire rapidly spread westward and consumed large portions of San Diego County. During its duration, flames reached 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 m) high, and the Witch Fire exhibited the characteristics of a firestorm at its height.
On the morning of October 22, 2007, about a day after the Witch Creek Fire had ignited, residents of San Diego County were ordered to evacuate through the Reverse 911 system. Eventually, the Witch Creek Fire led to the evacuations of 500,000 people across San Diego County. It also contributed to mass evacuations across much of Southern California, which saw 1,000,000 residents evacuate, the largest in Californian history. The Witch Fire caused at least $1.142 billion (equivalent to $1.773 billion in 2025) in insured damages alone, becoming the costliest wildfire of 2007. As of 2022, the Witch Fire is the nineteenth-largest wildfire in modern California history, as well as the seventh-most destructive wildfire on record in California.
Fire progression
The Witch Creek Fire started in Witch Creek Canyon near Santa Ysabel, at 12:35 p.m. PDT on Sunday, October 21, 2007, after powerful Santa Ana winds blew down a power line, releasing sparks into the wind.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Witch Fire” is california wildfire in 2007. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Witch, Fire and California, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “california wildfire in 2007” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21012114. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2007, 2025 and 2022.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Witch Fire” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.