A little relief in Running Springs

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Running Springs:

Relief came today for many of the firefighters who had raced from house to house in the Slide fire in Running Springs. After nonstop action, the young five-man crew of U.S. Forest Service Engine 12
faced a new predicament -- idle time.

They fanned out on foot with shovels along a stretch of Highway 18 between Arrowbear and Snow Valley to serve as lookouts -- primed to keep an eye on the fire smoldering among the oaks and pines on the northern side of the road and to pounce on any flying embers that leapt to the other side. But things were pretty quiet.

They were a rare hometown crew among the hundreds of engines arriving from all over the state and the West. Based at the Deer Lick Station in Running Springs, four of the five firefighters had homes near the heart of the fires and were far from home -- working the Ranch fire -- when the Slide fire began Monday.

When they finally got home and began fighting the Slide fire Tuesday morning, “it was like a war zone,” said firefighter Brian Talbott, 21.

Talbott has lived in Running Springs all his life -- and though his own house was on his mind, he was doing everything he could to keep his town from burning up. “I’d see these houses and know the people who
live in them,” he said, “so it was real difficult to see them get close to fire and burn up.”

Members of the crew, part of a five-engine strike team, saved what they could.

They had managed to get the fire out near one end of town and then had to run to the other side to try to stop the blaze, said Chris Crowder, the crew’s 29-year-old fire engineer, whose own Lake Arrowhead home was right at the edge of the Grass Valley fire line.

“If we had more resources, we wouldn’t have had to do so much running around. We could have stayed in one area,” Crowder said.

“It was a pretty gnarly day,” Talbott agreed.

There were moments Tuesday night when they feared the fire would overrun them. They were trying to knock down the head of the flames near homes in western Running Springs on Live Oak Drive with “a hose
lay” -- where they ran along the fire’s edge, wetting it down.

“It’s only my second season, but I got nervous,” said firefighter Aaron Terry, 22. “The wind was pushing the fire toward the houses and we were running alongside downhill.”

The fire kept crossing their line, and they would have to turn around and run back uphill to knock it down again.

They beat the blaze around Live Oak Drive that night, but when they returned after five hours of sleep to retrieve a forgotten hand tool, the fire was again rolling up the eaves of one of the homes they saved. They lost that one but kept the fire away from the three around it.

“We were actually quite fortunate to have been there at the right time, at that moment,” said firefighter Mike Gomez, 25. “We caught it in time to where it didn’t spread to the house around it.”

“If we had been there 10 minutes before, we probably would have been able to do something to save the actual house, but that’s playing the what-if game,” Crowder said.

Their strike team leader, Bill Molnar, a U.S. Forest Service captain based in Waterman Canyon, said the combination of the unpredictable Santa Ana winds and the extreme shortage of engines made it the most
harrowing fire he had fought in his 18 years.

“When we were running up and down Live Oak with the howling winds and the fire coming at us, it was pretty incredible,” Molnar said. “It’s almost overwhelming when you have all these street blocks of homes and you’ve only got five engines and you’re doing the best you can with that. I’ve never seen that.”

Today, the crew’s cellphones were still flooded with calls from family and friends begging for news of whether their houses had burned. They hadn’t even had time to check on their own homes.

“You just have to hear from word of mouth where the fire is and where it went through and hope it’s still there,” said Crowley, who was told that his Lake Arrowhead house was still intact. They could already tick off
at least three firefighters whose homes were destroyed.

“While they’ve been saving other people’s houses, they’ve watched their own burn,” Talbott said. “It’s duty, you’ve got to do it.”

As they watched reinforcements roll up Highway 18 and water-dropping aircraft slam the fire from overhead, they were looking forward to returning to a normal schedule. “We’re finally getting to where we’ll have shifts. Before, it was just chaos,” Crowder said.

Even the food was getting better. After several days of barely eating breakfast, skipping lunch and eating dinner late at night, fire volunteers were rolling up to their lookout spot with treats Thursday.

“We’ve got breakfast sandwiches!” Kim Boda and several other volunteers yelled out as they pulled up in a white SUV from Big Bear with large McDonald’s bags and coffee. They got whoops and hollers from Engine 12. “We’re coming back with Domino’s,” Boda promised.

With things looking good, Engine 12 soon got a call and moved up the fire line to take on the next hot spot.

-- Maeve Reston