City Report Skirts Air Drop Issue : Firefighters Praised on Normal Heights Blaze

San Diego firefighters and police performed “most adequately” during the brush fire that roared up canyon slopes in Normal Heights to destroy or damage 123 homes on June 30, according to a preliminary report issued Monday by the San Diego city manager’s office.

But the report failed to address whether fire officials lost precious time by failing to make formal requests for tanker air drops, which arrived six hours after the blaze was reported. A state official has said a formal request would have sent planes to Normal Heights much earlier.

The Times has reported that a San Diego fire dispatcher who made the initial call for the air drops at 1 p.m., an hour after the first firefighters began battling the canyon blaze, called the California Department of Forestry in El Cajon and engaged in a friendly conversation about the possibility of the department providing aerial support, but failed to make a formal request using the city’s billing number.

Three hours later, San Diego fire officials again tried to obtain air drops, but again they failed to follow the proper procedure because they called the state’s Office of Emergency Services.

At 4:40 p.m., San Diego fire officials tried a third time, this time calling the Forestry Department’s office in Riverside and again failing to give the city’s billing number. A forestry dispatcher discerned the problem, however, and three minutes later diverted four planes with fire retardant from Ventura County to San Diego. The aircraft arrived at 6:27 p.m. and helped stamp out the blaze.

Mike Harris, fire prevention chief at the Forestry Department’s regional office in Riverside, has told The Times that if the dispatcher had made a formal request on his first call at 1 p.m., air drops would have been provided sooner to Normal Heights.

San Diego Fire Chief Roger Phillips has disputed that assertion. He said the first request made by the city at 1 p.m. was a formal one.

The city manager’s report, however, fails to address the issue and does not mention how the San Diego fire dispatcher failed to use the proper billing number.

“Local CDF informed San Diego Dispatch that they had no aircraft available locally but would return our call when they had more information,” said the report. “Fifty-two minutes later, the local CDF office called San Diego Dispatch restating that no aircraft were available.”

The report noted that the call from San Diego to the state’s Office of Emergency Services “was not normal procedure, since we are supposed to work through the local CDF office.” The report does not mention that city fire officials again failed to make a formal request when they called the Forestry Department in Riverside at 4:40 p.m.

The report does recommend a review for the “organization and procedures for establishing regional priorities for air drops.”

It also concluded that the water pressure in the Normal Heights neighborhood met the minimum requirements of 20 pounds per square inch set by the state. The water pressure “is considered sufficient” for battling fires, it said.

Lockwood said he was satisfied with the way the Fire Department responded to the blaze.

“Under the circumstances, we think the fire people did everything they could do,” said Lockwood. “They were there early, they recognized what it was early, and called every piece of equipment they could get their hands on. But given the circumstances, there was nothing else they could do.”

Councilwoman Gloria McColl, whose district includes Normal Heights, concurred.

McColl said Monday she is calling for a task force to study the fire and make recommendations on how to prevent similar tragedies in other San Diego canyons, where native chaparral, dried by the sun and weather, can become tinder. Both she and Lockwood suggested that the city develop a program to remove dead brush from the canyons.

The report estimated damage from the Normal Heights fire at $8.9 million. It said 67 homes were destroyed and an additional 56 were damaged.

The Fire Department received its first call at 11:53 a.m. June 30 to battle a blaze in the canyon near Camino del Rio South and Interstate 805, said the report. The first unit responded at 12:01 p.m., and 35 minutes later the Fire Department called a general alarm. At one point, it said, more than 400 firefighters used 97 pieces of equipment to battle the flames.