Fire and Ice : Water Polo Players Cooly Save Home in Box Canyon

Susan McNichol is one homeowner who’s thankful the Pierce College water polo team has trained by running up and down hills.

That’s what four of the team’s players did Monday night as McNichol’s home in Box Canyon was surrounded by walls of fire.

McNichol, her husband John and their two sons, Ian, 1, and Jason, 15, live on Webb Road. Four of the homes at the top of Webb Road were caught in the middle of a brush fire Monday.

“We didn’t know where they (the players) came from,” McNichol said. “They came running up the hill and saved our home--just like angels from heaven.”

Pierce water polo players Scott Drake, Norm Skorge, Matt Turley and his younger brother, Tom, faced a hot challenge.

“If you could picture hell, that’s what it was like,” Tom Turley, 20, said. “The ground, everything, was black. Red embers were glowing like hot coals all over the ground. And the wind was blowing hard. It was crazy.”

The four had disregarded roadblocks and hopped barbed-wire fences as they ran through brush-covered hills amid fire and smoke.

But it was nothing new for the water polo team members.

Earlier on Monday, they ran up and down 10 hills on the Pierce campus in the windy heat as part of their daily routine.

“We could hardly breathe,” the younger Turley said. “But once we got through, it was, ‘Thank God for our training.’ ”

His brother Matt, 21, agreed.

“Our water polo training even helped us to see,” he said. “Our eyes are used to the chlorine, so the smoke didn’t bother us. We just worked together like we would in the pool.”

When they left the Pierce pool earlier that day, the four starting players went out to load up on carbohydrates before a game against Palomar the next day. They were still looking for something to do that night, so Drake suggested they check out the fire in Box Canyon.

Drake, 18, is a fire science major who plans to become a fireman when he’s finished with school.

The four climbed into Matt’s Pinto and followed the eerie orange glow into the Chatsworth mountains.

“Once we got there, we saw that it was way out of control,” Matt said. “We decided it was more important to help people save their homes than to worry about getting in trouble.”

After helping several homeowners, the Pierce players saw McNichol standing on her balcony holding her baby. She pleaded with them, “Please, help us, we’ve worked eight years for this house. It’s all we have.”

Drake grabbed a bucket. For the next two hours he repeated the routine, running up a hill to a faucet, filling the pail and running back down to splash the flames around the McNichol home. Skorge grabbed a garden hose and fought a flaming tree. The Turleys helped a fireman haul a 300-foot hose up the narrow road.

Firemen at first couldn’t reach the McNichol’s house, and for 20 minutes the Pierce volunteers worked alone.

“Once they (the firemen) got up the hill and saw us,” said Skorge, 18, “they were happy to have all the help they could get.”

So were the homeowners.

“They were amazing,” Jason McNichol said. “There aren’t too many brave people like that left.”

The players shrugged it off.

“And anyway,” Drake said, “what goes around comes around.”

The Pierce water polo team won the fight against the Box Canyon brush fire at about 4:30 a.m.

Ten hours later they won their game, 14-11.