2007 will be remembered as an explosive year in San Diego: wildfires, scandals, and historic trials. KPBS News captured the stories and sounds of the news over the past year. And KPBS Reporter Andrew Phelps takes us back.
In early 2007, San Diego’s Carol Lam and seven other U.S. attorneys lost their jobs.
Lam: I did not receive any pressure from the Department of Justice or any intimation that I was being removed because of the Cunningham investigation.
The scandal eventually cost Attorney General Alberto Gonzales his job.
It was the year a winter freeze devastated San Diego County agriculture.
Nan Sterman, gardening expert: The agaves melted. A bunch of my other succulents melted. We have palm trees with tremendous damage. My guava trees – the leaves on them are just, like, freeze-dried.
It was the year of military justice. Camp Pendleton Marines were accused of murdering Iraqi civilians. Some pleaded guilty. Some were convicted.
2007 marked the literal rise and fall of an office building near Montgomery Field. No one seemed to notice the building was too tall until the city attorney got involved.
David Rolland, San Diego CityBeat editor: Really, Mike Aguirre made himself the story, in a way, by suing this company, Sunroad Enterprises, to have them remove the top two floors in order to comply with FAA safety regulations.
Mike Stepner, architect: There is no easy way to do this. It is going to be painstaking. It is going to be expensive. But it’s something that can be done.
And it was done, but not without corruption allegations and a string of resignations at City Hall.
2007 was the year the East County town of Potrero spoke up. Military contractor Blackwater Worldwide proposed a backcountry training camp.
Jan Hedlun, Potrero civic leader: We’re a divided community. There’s anger. There’s frustration. There’s accusations. There’s finger-pointing.
2007 ended an era for an infamous Mexican drug cartel. Francisco Javier Arellano Felix pleaded guilty to running a criminal enterprise. A San Diego judge sentenced him to life in prison without parole.
It was the year of a remarkable turnabout for San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders. He tearfully announced he’d changed his mind about gay marriage.
Sanders: I just could not bring myself to tell an entire group of people in our community they were less important, less worthy, or less deserving of the rights and responsibilities of marriage than anyone else simply because of their sexual orientation.
2007 was the year of scandals for local schools. San Diego Unified’s chief administrator pleaded guilty to federal conflict-of-interest charges. The principal of Preuss charter school resigned in a grade-changing scandal.
Demolition began on a Tijuana bullring built 70 years ago. It was the year the San Diego Chargers searched for a new home and could not find one. It was the year of falling home prices and sales and rising foreclosures.
2007 was the year of shame for 15 former Padres, all named in the Mitchell Report on steroid abuse. One name was not on that list: Tony Gwynn, who entered the Hall of Fame.
Gwynn: The hardest thing about the game of baseball, to me, is understanding yourself and what you need to do every day – not so much what others expect from you, but what is it that you do that you bring to the table that you could do every day.
It was the year of vindication for victims of sexual abuse by priests. The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego settled claims for nearly 200 million dollars.
Michael Bang, sex-abuse victim: I wanna make sure that this information gets out, that the public understands that this was going on for decades, not just a couple years, but decades.
It was the year the earth moved underneath a neighborhood on Mount Soledad.
Pat Abbott, geologist: So you have a highly unstable situation here. Weak rocks, slanted up the same as the hillside, with gravity pulling on ’em. There’s no geologic surprises here. The only surprise is, Why would you build here to begin with?
2007 was the birth year of a cute cub at the San Diego Zoo: Zhen Zhen, one of about 1,600 Giant Pandas in the world.
Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes was convicted for bribing ex-congressman “Duke” Cunningham with vacations and prostitutes.
2007 was the year of water politics.
Sanders: I’m here to say today I’ll oppose any effort to bring about toilet-to-tap.
Politicians argued about where San Diego will gets its water and how to conserve it. A state judge shut down a major source of our water.
In October 2007, more than half-a-million San Diegans evacuated from the path of wildfires.
KPBS Caller: 4:35 p.m. We got the reverse 911 call urging everyone to prepare to evacuate.
KPBS Caller: You can tell when the wind whips up, these flames get higher than the telephone poles, and I’m watching structure after structure just fall down.
KPBS Caller: Four years ago, I actually lost my home. And it’s just hard to believe that it’s happening again. I’m just stuck in traffic. I’ve moved maybe a half a block in about 40 minutes, and I see fire.
Jeff Bowman, former San Diego fire chief: Four years ago, we committed this wouldn’t happen again. These intergovernmental arguments would not exist. And I sat with the ash raining down on my house this time, and I didn’t see any aircraft in the air.
Dianne Feinstein, U.S. Senator of California: We are seeing fires that burn hotter, longer, and with greater ferocity. We need to be ready for the next round.
Andrew Phelps, KPBS News.
