Wednesday, 1:20 a.m.
DEL MAR, Calif. – Half-filled plastic water bottles dotted the bookie windows instead of losing trifecta ticket stubs. Television screens usually reserved for horse race coverage were tuned to David Letterman, but few were listening to him in the early morning hours Wednesday.
The scene at the Del Mar Racetrack, a track where Seabiscuit once caught the nation’s eye and Hollywood’s Golden Age movie stars once frequented, was transformed into a temporary home for the hundreds North County San Diego evacuees escaping the fires that have ravaged San Diego County throughout the course of the past few days.
Attempts at life-as-usual in circumstances that were anything but peppered the bottom floor of the grandstand, where hundreds of cots and stockpiles of supplies were stored.
A game of “Life” sat waiting to be finished. Teddy bears rested on pillows on cots. Magazines and newspapers were sprawled out on tables.
Red Cross volunteers patrolling the grounds said a few hundred were bedding down Tuesday night – considerably fewer than they said were originally anticipated.
Many horse owners from nearby Rancho Santa Fe and other North County San Diego communities with acreage homes and stables were also said to be staying with their animals in the stables on the north side of the racetrack.
Other News:San Diego fire evacuees make temporary homes in ‘The Q’
