San Diego State football coach Chuck Long said Tuesday he is pushing for his team's game against BYU this weekend to be postponed as more than a dozen wildfires continue to rage in cities from the Mexican border north past Los Angeles.
Long said both schools' athletics directors and officials from the Mountain West Conference would discuss whether it's prudent to play Saturday's game at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego County. A decision will be made by 6 p.m. ET.
"I'm actually pushing for a postponement if we can," Long said during an interview on "College Football Live" on ESPN. "There's just so much going on in this city right now and the fires that it's hard to think about a football game at this point.
"The air quality is so bad that you can't practice. You can't breathe if you go outside for any length of time."
California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said that more than 300,000 people have been evacuated and some 8,000 of those people had sought refuge at Qualcomm Stadium. Up to 1,000 homes have been destroyed and the governor said that 1,500 more homes remain in danger.
"If you're told to evacuate, evacuate. Safety is the most important thing," Schwarzenegger said, according to ABC News. There have been two confirmed deaths and 34 people have been seriously injured, The Associated Press reports
LaDainian Tomlinson and quarterback Philip Rivers were among 40 members of the San Diego Chargers' organization who were forced to evacuate their homes Monday.
The team said it will spend the rest of the week practicing in Arizona in preparation for Sunday's game against the Houston Texans. The game remains scheduled at Qualcomm Stadium, where thousands of people fled to wait out the calamity and wait for word about their homes.
"We are monitoring," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said in an e-mail Monday.
If the Texans-Chargers game is moved to Arizona, Houston coach Gary Kubiak said he heard it could be played Sunday night or Monday night. The Cardinals' stadium, located in Glendale, is scheduled to host a motorcycle show Friday through Sunday.
The Chargers, who had just returned from their bye weekend, canceled practice Monday due to poor air quality and so the players could take care of their families.
The Chargers were to fly to Phoenix on Tuesday and practice at the Arizona Cardinals' headquarters in Tempe on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
"It was crazy," Rivers said Monday night, not quite 24 hours after his wife talked him into leaving their suburban home before the evacuation orders came in.
Meanwhile, sources told Golf World on Tuesday that Phil Mickelson's wife, Amy, and the family's three children evacuated from their Rancho Santa Fe home on Monday while Mickelson was playing in a corporate outing at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J. Mickelson flew home immediately afterward to join his family in their San Diego beach house.
In San Diego County, at least 513,000 residents have been ordered to find refuge in shelters, schools and stadiums as fires pushed into new areas Tuesday, CNN reported.
"It will not end ... until it reaches the ocean or the winds turn around," San Diego Fire Battalion Chief Bruce Cartelli said, according to a story on CNN's Web site.
The fires were eerily reminiscent of those in late October and early November of 2003, when flames in many of the same areas killed 22 people and destroyed 3,640 homes.
Trevor Hoffman, baseball's career saves leader, was among a handful of Padres personnel who had to evacuate Monday. Also leaving their homes were manager Bud Black and CEO Sandy Alderson.
Baseball Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn and his wife left their Poway home at 6 a.m. Monday and were waiting out the fire at their daughter's house in Mission Valley.
"I think we're going to be all right. I hope," Gwynn said. "When we left it was fine, but who knows?"
Gwynn said he and his wife didn't wait for a reverse 911 call notifying them to get out.
"We were up watching the news, they gave a description of what area they wanted evacuated, and it was us," said Gwynn, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame on July 29 with Cal Ripken Jr.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
Source: ESPN.com
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