Weather Cools Wildfires’ Fury

A cloud bank carried welcome Pacific moisture to Southern California’s mountains Thursday, bringing badly needed relief to firefighters battling twin foes of fire and fatigue.

Six fires, by some measures the most devastating in California history, continued to burn out of control in Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino and San Diego counties. But the most dangerous of them appeared to be moving away from any towns, and there was a sense on the front lines that the worst may have passed.

“This weather is so bizarre,” said Rancho Santa Fe Fire Department Capt. Gary Snavely, who was deployed to save the San Diego mountain town of Julian. “This town is threatened and on the brink of burning yesterday. And now it’s raining.”

Julian, a historic gold mining town, appeared to have been spared, as was most of Lake Arrowhead. Fires were beaten back from communities in Ventura and northern Los Angeles counties.

Still, there were new losses Thursday, including most of the community of Harrison Park in San Diego County. And any relief came tinged with an awareness that nature is unpredictable and the fires could yet be re-stoked by a change in winds.

“I’m still very concerned,” Deputy Incident Cmdr. Donald Feser of the U.S. Forest Service said as he helped oversee the battle against the Old fire. That blaze had turned away from Arrowhead but still threatened the San Bernardino Mountain resort of Big Bear. “This fire still has a tremendous amount of potential.”

Six days after the fires turned catastrophic, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said this had become the worst wildfire season in the state since record-keeping began in the early 20th century.

As of Wednesday, 959,955 acres had burned statewide, two-thirds in the past week in Southern California. The previous record was in 1987, when 873,000 acres burned.

“We are nowhere near out of the fire season yet,” noted department spokeswoman Karen Terrill, “so it’s very likely we’ll pass the million-acre mark.”

This week’s fires have been blamed for 20 deaths, including one firefighter, and the loss of at least 2,612 homes. They have scorched an estimated 745,000 acres, an area larger than Rhode Island. Losses have been estimated at more than $2 billion.

“This will be the most expensive natural disaster the state has ever incurred,” Gov. Gray Davis said Thursday after an aerial tour of the devastation. “It will be the most expensive, the most severe and the longest in duration.”

Despite Davis’ words, it seemed unlikely that the fires could approach the $20-billion cost of the 1993 Northridge earthquake, or the devastation of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Twenty-five people died and about 3,000 homes were destroyed in a much smaller area in the 1991 Oakland Hills fire.

On Thursday afternoon, Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger took an hourlong helicopter tour of burned sections of the San Bernardino National Forest. Afterward, sporting a yellow CDF jacket, Schwarzenegger said he was impressed with the “incredible coordination of how this was planned. They knew this was going to happen if the forest was not cleaned up. If not for that ... many more families would not have their homes.”

Schwarzenegger said he and Davis will meet today to discuss the devastation, and might fly over damaged areas together.

Schwarzenegger earned a roar of applause from the roughly 1,000 assembled fire personnel when he praised their efforts, particularly in evacuating thousands of people from isolated mountain areas.

“I play heroes in the movies,” he said. “These firefighters are the true heroes.”

For the thousands of firefighters who have been deployed against the threat, many of them around the clock, the past week has been filled with danger, frustration, awe-inspiring spectacle, heartache and, ultimately, utter exhaustion. By Thursday, the ordeal was taking its toll.

Allan Lee, 40, a Rancho Cucamonga firefighter, came down from the mountains Thursday morning after working on the Old fire in San Bernardino County since Saturday and watching hundreds of homes burn. Hungry and homesick, a cell phone call to his wife and two children brought his emotions welling to the surface.

“I’m really tired,” he said, turning away and fighting back tears after hanging up the phone. “I just miss home.”

San Diego

The town of Julian, site of one of the most dramatic stands by firefighters, was deserted Thursday except for a dozen firetrucks parked on the main street. In front of the town hall, an American flag flew at half-staff in honor of the firefighter who died Wednesday defending the town. Two others injured in that battle were released from the hospital Thursday but a third remained in critical condition.

The Cedar fire reached within 2 1/2 miles of downtown Wednesday, and spot fires licked within 300 yards. By Thursday, though, the fire was obscured by a haze of fog, mist and shifting smoke.

Fire Capt. Ken Hale of the California Department of Forestry sat in his truck, exhausted, monitoring radio communications. Hale said firefighters were flanking the fire on its north and south sides in an attempt to narrow it until the two flanks meet.

Hale said the main body of the fire was 25 miles wide.

By Thursday night, the fire was 38% contained.

The Cedar fire has been the largest in California’s recorded history, stretching over 272,318 acres from the outskirts of San Diego into the rugged terrain of the Cleveland National Forest.

To attack it, firefighters have created fire breaks out of roads and bulldozed lines in the brush. But the steep, scruffy terrain made the effort difficult. It could be days before firefighters manage to narrow down the head of the fire significantly, Hale said.

Meanwhile, he said, winds are expected to continue out of the west, pushing the fire to the east for the next two days. Little lies in that direction but hills and desert. The desert should serve as a natural fire break and could be where the fire finally dies.

It remained dangerous Thursday. While firefighters managed to save Julian, a popular weekend destination for San Diegans, several small neighborhoods were badly damaged. The worst hit was Harrison Park, about five miles south of Julian, where at least 15 of approximately 20 homes were destroyed.

“It just got nuked last night,” said Hale.

Little that resembled an intact community remained in Harrison Park, which is nestled in a valley between steep hills. Trees were burned to skeletons. Homes were reduced to smoldering ruins. Chimneys stood near burnt-out truck and cars.

Larry Cooke, 61, a retired fire captain with the San Diego City Fire Department, showed up to survey the destruction of his vacation cabin. The bed of his big green pickup truck contained the twisted remains of an antique cooking stove and kerosene lamps.

“When I rebuild, I’ll put those in there just to remind me,” Cooke said as he chomped on an unlit cigar.

He said he and his wife had been planning to fix up the cabin, which had been in his family for more than 75 years.

“Well,” Cooke said, “now we won’t have any arguments on how to remodel. We have to start from scratch.”

San Bernardino

Two fronts of the Old fire continued to burn east of Lake Arrowhead after destroying an estimated 350 homes in the lakeside community of Cedar Glen. One was on the western edge of Big Bear Valley, near the Big Bear dam. The second was to the southwest near Keller Peak.

As a layer of fog and mist moved into the area, accompanied by temperatures that cooled all the way down to the 40s, the fire slowed to a crawl.

“This is the Pacific Ocean lying over our heads right now,” said Pete Dennen, the San Bernardino Fire Department division chief in charge of the Big Bear area.

Still, Dennen warned against complacency. Wind gusts of up to 50 mph were blowing the fire northeastward, in a mostly harmless direction. But the blaze has mocked earlier predictions, along with efforts to contain it.

“This fire can do anything,” Dennen said. “We’re just lucky, I’ll be the first to tell you.”

In the 24 hours leading up to Thursday afternoon, fire crews bulldozed 20 miles of fire break between Big Bear and Highway 38, according to Feser, the Forest Service official.

“The question is, ‘What would it take to put this fire out?’ ” Feser said. “I would say it would take a period of several weeks with at least three inches of rain.”

Still, fire officials seemed pleased at the end of the day. A voluntary evacuation order was lifted in the high desert community of Lucerne Valley, which lies below Big Bear, as authorities became less concerned that the fire would charge down the north slope of the mountains.

Although a cloud of smoke and fog hung over Big Bear, the unscathed forest areas to the east enjoyed a crystal-clear, smoke-free autumn day. The oak trees and chaparral were green and gold beneath a crisp blue sky, up to the point where Highway 38 wound around a mountain and back into the smudgy gray haze of the fire.

On the eastern shore of Arrowhead, the community of Cedar Glen was a burned-out ghost town, the result of the fire that blew through on Wednesday. Falling trees and limbs, emerging out of the fog, posed a hazard to emergency crews, as did downed power lines. So hot were the flames that little silver streams marked the spots where aluminum window frames had melted.

All was not devastation, however. Alan Wheeler returned to his wood-paneled split-level home in lower Cedar Glen, relieved to find the structure intact -- only 1,000 feet from where the fire tore its way through Hooks Creek late Wednesday afternoon.

“I just can’t believe I’m standing in my house,” said Wheeler, a construction worker who has lived in the Arrowhead area for 29 years. “Yesterday I wouldn’t have given a plugged nickel for Cedar Glen or Arrowhead.”

Wheeler said the first evacuation order came Saturday night, but he and his wife, Carolyn, decided to wait for the fire, confident that they could escape on Highway 173, which runs downhill into Hesperia. Finally, on Tuesday, they drove halfway down the mountains with two neighboring families to stay at a campground above the last checkpoint.

Although the Wheelers returned home Thursday afternoon, Alan Wheeler said he was not going to unpack until the last hotspots around upper Cedar Glen were extinguished, and he was also not going to leave, even though supplies were limited to a single market and the weather had turned freezing cold.

He said he would turn on his gas stove for heat through the night.

“I thought about lighting a fire in the fireplace, he said. “But I don’t think that’d be a very good idea right now.”

Ventura/Los Angeles

The front lines of the 115,920-acre Simi Valley fire remained near the Stevenson Ranch subdivision in Los Angeles County, according to Ventura County Fire Department spokesman John Wade. Numerous bulldozer and hand crews worked to keep the flames from advancing north of Interstate 5.

A reduction in winds and the cooler temperatures helped the firefighting effort. Wade said no homes had been lost in Stevenson Ranch.

In Ventura County, “we don’t have any critical areas that are posing an immediate threat to any homes,” said Wade, a veteran firefighter who officially retired on Monday after nearly 38 years, but has remained at the fire base camp to lend a hand.

Maintenance of the Simi fire in this area has turned to the monitoring of hot spots and continuing to build nearly 100 miles of containment line around the blaze. So far, containment is estimated at 60% and officials predict the job will be finished before Wednesday.

“There’s still a lot of hard, dirty, cruddy work to be done,” Wade said. “This is when it becomes less exciting.”

Near Fillmore, crews continued to battle a 63,719-acre fire burning north and northwest into the Los Padres National Forest.

Hand crews and air tankers kept at the fire, which began a week ago and has been difficult to attack because it is burning in steep terrain and thick vegetation that in some areas has not burned since 1917, a Forest Service official said.

Although the fire continued to spread westward within the national forest, officials said there was no imminent threat to the cities of Santa Paula, Fillmore or Ojai.

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Southland fire coverage contributors

Contributing to the fire coverage were Times staff writers Fred Alvarez, Hector Becerra, Daren Briscoe, Stephanie Chavez, Amanda Covarrubias, Megan Garvey, Scott Glover, Gregory W. Griggs, Christine Hanley, Karima Haynes, Daniel Hernandez, Allison Hoffman, Peter Y. Hong, Steve Hymon, Daryl Kelley, Mitchell Landsberg, Jack Leonard, Caitlin Liu, Eric Malnic, Seema Mehta, Geoffrey Mohan, Monte Morin, Sandra Murillo, Jennifer Oldham, Tony Perry, Stuart Pfeifer, Gary Polakovic, Lance Pugmire, James Ricci, Joel Rubin, Kristina Sauerwein, Ann M. Simmons, Jocelyn Y. Stewart, Julie Tamaki, Janet Wilson, Tracy Wilson, Nora Zamichow and Alan Zarembo.