The church on the Rincon Indian reservation burned early this morning as the Poomacha fire roared through the Pauma Valley.
Several homes also burned, said tribal councilman Bo Mazzetti.
"We've lost a lot of our older buildings we had, that have been here for years and years," he said about 11:45 a.m. Tuesday. "Our church, our Catholic church, we lost that."
The loss is a spiritual blow to the tribe, he said.
"That's something we've all attended, that church, it's devastating to see that," he said.
Fire surrounded the reservation at dawn, he said, and the firestorm was particularly fierce about 8 a.m. Flames died down some two hours later.
"A lot of our members lost houses, we're still assessing that," he said. "Tomorrow we have federal officials coming in."
About half of the tribe's 650 members live on the reservation. The damage has been hard to assess this morning, Mazzetti said. "It's spread out all over the reservation," he said. "There's no one area."
The fire burned some buildings near the Harrah's Rincon casino owned by the tribe, but not the casino-hotel complex, where about 350 people and 75 workers gathered to protect themselves from the flames.
The fire began on the La Jolla Indian reservation to the east.
"La Jolla is pretty devastated," Mazzetti said.
Efforts to reach officials at the La Jolla reservation by phone were unsuccessful.
For out of towners this is not the town of La Jolla but on the Rincon Reservation. Just didn't want anyone to panic out there! :)