El Cariso Hotshots to the Rescue : Tenacious Crew Draws the Line at Fire

Cords were yanked and a symphony of chain saws broke the quiet of Los Padres National Forest as blades whirred through the chaparral that blankets the hillside above Ojai.

Twenty U.S. Forest Service firefighters, sweat oozing from beneath their hard hats, began their attack on an out-of-control brush fire that had already charred 27,000 acres of countryside around the quaint Ventura County town and forced the evacuation of 2,100 people.

Swinging saws, axes, hoes, shovels and rakes, Orange County’s El Cariso Hotshots methodically tunneled through the brush, leaving nothing in their wake that could burn. Their strategy was to halt the 120-foot wall of flame by removing its fuel.

‘Eat Up Brush’

Several hours earlier, flames had jumped one of the fire lines, forcing the El Cariso crew and others to retreat and fight from a distance. This time, their efforts had worked, at least for the time being.

“Those guys just eat up brush and spit it out,” Capt. Rod Sims of the Ventura County Fire Department said later. “That particular crew is well-known for that up and down the state.”

Highly regarded for their tenacity and esprit de corps, the El Cariso Hotshots are one of the 50 National Forest Service teams that are considered the John Waynes of brush fire battle. As such, the El Cariso Hotshots help form the front-line offense on wild lands fires throughout the western United States.

Lately they have had been busy close to home.

Since a rash of brush fires erupted last week from San Diego to Santa Barbara, the brawny firefighters have not returned to the barracks on the outer edge of Orange County that they call home six months a year.

For days the El Cariso Hotshots fought at the head of a raging desert brush fire in San Bernardino National Forest near Palm Springs in temperatures of up to 120.

When it appeared that the 20,000-acre fire was under control, they boarded their green four-wheel-drive trucks Monday evening for the five-hour drive to Ventura County, where acres of rugged countryside in Los Padres National Forest already had been ravaged.

Shortly after midnight, the weary crew settled into a fire camp, stretching out on bedrolls for a much-needed rest. An arid breeze made the 100-plus temperature bearable for sleeping. But the winds also fanned a fire that was suddenly flirting dangerously near homes in the hills surrounding the resort village and artist colony of Ojai.

The sleepy-eyed crew was sent into the fiery forest.

“We got maybe an hour’s sleep,” said crew foreman Russ Brengman.

By 3:30 a.m. the crew was cutting a firebreak to contain the blaze, but the effort was abandoned after soaring flames jumped the line.

“This fire’s been moving so fast you really can’t plan much,” said Hotshot Paul Davidson, 25. “You get here and the fire has moved. It’s impossible.”

‘Kicking In Doors’

Moments later, flames were circling a summer youth camp and several homes, and the Hotshots charged in that direction. Four hundred youngsters and staff at Camp Ramah were evacuated. But a caravan of school buses at the ready could hold no more than 200 people.

“We’re stuffing them into the crew carriers, 23 to a truck,” Jacobson said. “Those things normally hold eight (people).

“They were all up here sleeping,” he said of about 200 evacuated area residents. “They didn’t even know (how close the fire was). We were kicking in doors like cops.”

It was 36 hours before the Hotshots returned to their fire camp. After a quick meal they trudged back to their bedrolls. Eight hours later, they were briefed and sent back to the mountains.

Yet the only thing the Hotshots find more taxing than fighting a fire is not having one to fight.

Back at their base on the grounds of the Los Pinos Conservation Camp for juvenile offenders in the Cleveland National Forest, the Hotshots keep busy chopping fire breaks and clearing brush, as they do at fires. It’s grueling work, cutting a clean path through a wall of manzanita.

There is overtime pay for fire work. The rest of the time Hotshots make about $5 an hour--and there is a waiting list to work the mid-spring-to-early-winter stint on the El Cariso crew.

“The camaraderie is great. Nothing in my life has ever compared to it,” said Don Matias, 25, of Lemon Grove.