11,000 Flee as California Blazes Rage : 13,000 Fight Fires; Governor Declares State of Emergency

Rising wind brought additional miseries Thursday for 13,000 firefighters battling the plague of brush and timber blazes that have blackened more than 300,000 acres in California, driving 11,000 people from their homes and straining reserves of manpower and equipment to the limit.

Fires were also burning out of control in six other Western states, and officials at the Boise Interagency Fire Center in Idaho called the situation “a disaster . . . the worst we’ve ever seen.” California was at the top of the disaster roll.

Gov. George Deukmejian declared a state of emergency in 22 counties struck by the epidemic of lighting-caused fires, and the state’s top fire official predicted that it would be “several more days” before firefighters bring the major blazes under control.

Larger Than Entire City

By Thursday afternoon, the 1,275 fires started since last Friday by 9,240 lightning strikes from the Oregon line to the Mojave Desert had scorched 334,533 acres of brush and timber--an area larger than the city of Los Angeles.

In briefing the governor, California Department of Forestry Director Gerald Partain predicted that one of those clusters of fires--the Tuolumne County blazes near the northern entrance to Yosemite National Park--”could go as high as 200,000 to 300,000 acres” before it is contained.

“We’re looking at no estimated time of containment of any of these major fires. We’re still looking several days ahead” before they are controlled, Partain said.

3 Homes, 1 Trailer Lost

An estimated 7,000 people were evacuated Wednesday and Thursday from about 2,000 homes in Tuolumne City, Groveland, Big Oak Flat and at least four other Tuolumne County communities, but only three homes and one trailer were lost as the fires swept around those communities into uninhabited land near the western boundary of Yosemite.

Another 3,000 to 4,000 were evacuated from homes in Lassen, Mendocino, Siskiyou and Trinity counties Wednesday and Thursday, but officials reported only one other fire injury and 12 homes destroyed throughout the state, bringing the statewide total since Friday to one fatality, 52 injuries and 32 homes destroyed.

About 600 firefighters were creating fire breaks south and east of Tuolumne City, where the 25,000-acre Paper-Cabin fire, fed by northeasterly winds, threatened residences and surrounding subdivisions, U.S. Forest Service officials said. Smoke from the fires reduced visibility in the area to less than a mile.

Nine buildings, including four mountain cabins and several ranch structures, were destroyed in the Paper-Cabin fire, prompting state and federal officials to pronounce the area “the No. 1 firefighting priority in the nation,” said Irl Everest, spokesman for the Incident Command System, the California firefighting emergency coordinating body.

California Air National Guard C-130 airplanes were used Wednesday night to protect homes. The planes dropped fire-retarding chemicals on the blazes approaching Tuolumne City from the North Fork of the Tuolumne River, Everest said.

“They might not be able to stop it here,” Everest said, pointing to distant flames in the smoke-filled Tuolumne River canyon. “There will be a threat to Tuolumne City until we control the fire in the canyon.”

Everest said it could be several days before the blazes are contained. The steep canyon walls prevent the fire crews from fighting the flames there.

“If you were to try to fight it down there, you would never know what is below you,” he said. “It would endanger the crews’ lives.”

Pacific Bell urged customers to refrain from placing calls to Tuolumne, Stanislaus or Siskiyou counties except in emergencies because lines were overloaded.

Department of Forestry spokeswoman Robyn Lawton said changes in the weather Thursday were a mix of good and bad news.

The good news, she said, was that there had been only a handful of lightning strikes since late Wednesday, which meant no additional fires. The bad news was that winds were picking up, making it harder to control the existing blazes, while humidity remained below normal and temperatures were up.

“We’re trading one evil for another,” she said.

Three other major fires merged Wednesday night to create a 49,000-acre blaze 20 miles southeast of Sonora. That fire crossed several miles of California 120 after authorities closed 40 miles of that highway between Moccasin and Crane Flat, U.S. Forest Service spokesman Dick Wisehart said.

‘Squirrelly Fire’

“This is a real squirrelly fire,” said George West, 46, a firefighter from New Mexico whose crew was creating backfires and bulldozer lines to protect livestock and ranch barns four miles east of Tuolumne. “It is just a heck of a lot of little fires. When you think you’re getting something accomplished, suddenly it blows up somewhere else and goes all over the place.”

West and the other members of his crew drove their fire engines for two days before reaching the fires. After nearly 24 hours on the fire lines, the crew was still waiting to be relieved, he said.

“I have this feeling in my stomach . . . almost sickening,” said John Egger, 40, whose father-in-law owns the Matsen Ranch, four miles east of Tuolumne City, where four cabins were reduced to charcoal and twisted corrugated metal Wednesday afternoon after the residents had evacuated the area.

Egger, who owns a Tuolumne City grocery store and is a lifetime resident of Tuolumne County, was rounding up livestock at the ranch.

“One guy told me he saw the flames shooting up in his rear view mirror when he left the cabin,” Egger said. “You just hate to see it all destroyed. Hopefully, my kids will be able to see the way it was before it all started.”

Emergency Shelter

Residents from eight Tuolumne County communities and several rural areas, who have been evacuated since Tuesday, have been accommodated in emergency shelter in Sonora.

“When I closed my door behind me I didn’t know if I would ever have a home to return to because the fire was so close,” said Cathy Adams, 26, who was asked to evacuate her trailer in Tuolumne with her two children. “When I saw the flames leaping over Mt. Easton, I had butterflies in my stomach.”

Evacuees said they were satisfied with the way they were received in Sonora.

‘I Feel Sad’

“It’s as good as it can be here,” said Violet Crafton, 72, of Tuolumne City. “I feel sad because I have never been in a situation like this. There is no place like home.”

Other major fires in the state included the 11,305-acre Klamath cluster in Klamath National Forest, consisting of 60 fires, and two large clusters in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, which have destroyed a total of 21,000 acres.

Lightning strikes Wednesday set off 16 fires in the Mendocino National Forest that raced through 30,000 acres of brush and timber, a fire spokesman said.

August and September have typically been a time for fires in the Sierra foothills, where timber and brush become tinder-dry after a long hot summer with little rain. But this fire season has become one of the worst in history.

“We’re used to a fire season,” said David Drennan, a forestry department spokesman.

“Normally, you build up to this. But not where you have them all at once. The whole state’s burning.”

Oregon was also a hot spot, with 52,000 acres of watershed destroyed, at least 2,700 people evacuated from danger points and 10 homes reported burned in the southwest part of the state, where a choking pall of smoke filled the skies.

The largest single fire covered 8,000 acres of brushland near Roseburg, and a 7,000-acre fire was burning in the Siskiyou National Forest near the California border. Fires of 5,000 acres were burning near Galice and Canyoneville.

At the Valley of the Rogue State Park near Medford, a base camp has been set up for about 3,000 firefighters from as far away as Kentucky and Minnesota.

Two major fires were burning within a few miles of the camp. Soot-faced firefighters slept on the ground as a helicopter clattered overhead, dipping a 1,000-gallon bucket into a creek and then dumping the water out over the smoldering ridges.

‘Awfully Strong Winds’

Mike Johnson, a fire weather forecaster from the National Weather Service in Salem, hovered over data spread out on the picnic table where he had set up a mini-weather station.

He had not had a night’s sleep for three days, because the machinery he monitors must be adjusted every 90 minutes.

“I don’t expect to leave till the fires are contained,” Johnson said, predicting that warmer, drier conditions and “awfully strong winds” are in the weekend forecast--fire weather.

At the first aid tent, safety officer Larry Robbins said he had sent four people--sprained ankle, illness, foot laceration and poison oak--to the hospital by noon Thursday.

In two days, Robbins treated 65 minor injuries and about 40 “ChapStick calls, where they just need a Band-Aid or something.”

“Poison oak--that’s one of our biggest problems,” Robbins said, adding that the itching firefighters usually just use some lotion and head back for the fire line.

At nearby Sykes Creek, reporters were allowed to tour the woods where a 6,300-acre blaze still burned.

Skeletons of Firs

From the road, smoldering trees could be seen. A bewildered doe and her fawn stumbled through an ash-covered clearing. Rubble smoked where a remote house once stood; a tire-swing dangled from an oak tree and a lawn mower stood unscathed in the drive. Towering Douglas firs were black skeletons against the acrid sky.

Lee Oman, the state forestry incident commander at the base camp, groped for the words to describe the magnitude of the destruction.

“This is . . . the state of Oregon, well, I’m not sure when it ever faced a fire situation like this,” he said.

Ron DeHart of the Oregon Unified Coordination Group in Salem said the manpower shortage is so critical that some large fires have to be ignored. “That’s tough to swallow, but that’s the situation,” he said.

5 Other States

Five other states also had problems:

- In Idaho, nearly 25,000 acres of range and forest land were burning. Nine active fires covering 7,000 acres were being fought. A 10th fire, the 35-day-old Deadwood Summit blaze 29 miles east of Cascade, covers another 17,500 acres, and is being allowed to burn because of the high cost of fighting it.

- In Arizona, three fires had burned 3,885 acres. Forty-five firefighters were battling a 3,200-acre blaze 50 miles northeast of Phoenix, and a 660-acre brush fire was burning on federal land near Needles, Calif. Seventy firefighters expected to bring the fire under control Thursday.

- In Montana, a 540-acre brush fire was contained in central Montana, and a 175-acre forest fire was still out of control near Townsend.

- In Washington, 200 firefighters were mopping up a 355-acre fire north of Spokane. An 80-acre blaze that forced the evacuation of campers in the Cascade Mountains was under control.

- In Wyoming, an 80-acre fire was allowed to continue burning near Polecat Creek, two miles west of the south entrance of Yellowstone Park.

Imbert Mathee reported from Tuolumne City and Tamara Jones from southwestern Oregon.