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(continued)
The fire was burning in over a dozen places, in six counties, all the way down to the border of Mexico. It “rained” over Los Angeles, showers of white ash swirling from thick smoke clouds. The fire was feeding off of ninety-degree weather and low, single digit humidity; the heat of its flames could be felt a mile away. Nineteen firefighters and civilians were injured, and sixty thousand acres were on fire.
The fire had grown, had matured, and was completely beyond anyone’s control.
The fire entered downtown Laguna Beach. Thick, black smoke consumed the landscape. Flames crept down the hills into the city, eerily matching the bleakly gleaming streetlights, which shone with a red-orange glow through the ash in the air. Red light permeated everything. The trees, buildings, the night sky, even the black smoke looked red in the fire’s bright glare. The flames could be seen leaping dozens of feet into the sky.
The firefighters around Chris knew that this could well be the biggest event any of them would ever be exposed to. Chris calls it the most dangerous wildfire he ever fought, “because there was so much fire all at the same time . . . there was just so much more going on than we had people to do the job.”
Sirens wailed in the streets. Homeowners with garden hoses wetted down their roofs while black smoke billowed about them. On Coast Highway, southbound traffic was bumper to bumper, as twenty four thousand and five hundred residents had been ordered to evacuate. Fire engines were rolling into the city in the northbound lane.
All afternoon, Chris’s strike team had been shuffled from one place to another. The men in the vehicle were all struck with deep awe for this fire. It was simply too powerful and too fast for their resources to defeat before it wrought devastation. It was stunning.
Chris’s team’s assignment was structure protection. Finally they got the call ordering them to go. It was nightfall when Chris jumped off of his fire engine with his crew, determined to follow his captain and engineer around and do exactly what they wanted of him.
They were positioned ahead of the fire, on the east side of an elementary school below a hill, to protect homes the fire hadn’t yet reached but was approaching. The wind was picking up, which blew away enough of the smoke that they had at least fifty yards’ visibility. The increased wind speed brought the fire to the houses faster, making it harder to contain. But at least they could see.
R.J., their captain, was a calm, well organized company officer. He knew how to pace himself, taking in the whole picture and coming up with a solid plan for his men. Chris felt secure working for him, confident and ready for action.
R.J. looked at his firefighters and said, “You’re watching for spotfires.” They would use chainsaws and axes to cut away combustible materials from around houses. “Anything you take off,” R.J. said, “I want you to let me know and then I want you to go work on it.” He told the crew to pull out hand lines from the fire engine and get to it.
Embers and white ash were floating in the air like flowery puffs of charred newspaper. The embers were nestling down among the properties ahead of the main blaze, starting small spotfires. Up the slopes of the hill were expensive houses surrounded by large properties, and behind them, housing tracks and smaller properties, a normally more heavily populated zone. The hill they were defending was rightly named “Rim of the World.” Fire was scalding its crest and descending, changing from a distant glow to a bright, shining light rushing toward them.
The crew had three hundred feet of one-and-a half-inch–thick hose. Their job was to squirt and defend everything in range. Eventually, the fire would pass directly over them, because a fire cannot burn back over the track it has come from. What happened beyond them was not the crew’s concern. Their task was simply to repel as much as they could within their assigned area around the elementary school.
The fire was coming from the northeast, heading west toward the ocean. In the open hills it burned flash fuels that intensified it and were spent quickly. Now, it was burning structures.
Chris saw spotfires beginning and took action. Many houses had wood or shake shingle roofs, which are particularly vulnerable to fires. Chris could see on the skyline many two-story houses, illuminated by the glow of the approaching fire.
He rushed toward a spotfire, jumping a wooden fence and running by a swimming pool. Chris attacked fire after fire. He slapped small ones out with the back side of his shovel, while others he blasted with the hose. Sometimes he had to climb onto a roof, because a few shingles were burning. He’d squirt the shingles and then pull a few back, peering in to make sure the fire hadn’t eaten deeper into the wood.
Other times, he would rush to another roof because pine needles or a clump of leaves, carried by the wind, were burning it. Pine trees could explode when they grew very hot, a fiercer hazard. The fires around Chris and his companions were growing ever closer, so hot they were melting aluminum ladders.
Then, fires were burning all around them. Chris and his companions were forced to prioritize, hop-scotching between burning houses to save what they could. The heat radiated against Chris. The fire burned in front of him, white hot, seething, raging, and again and again he put water down its throat only to see it come back at him. It was taking up houses, and they were saving a few, fighting for all they could . . . for hour upon hour.
(conclusion on page 4) |
