‘Imagine Hiroshima’ : Firefighters Return From Yellowstone

Bernie Brawner works for a gas pipeline company, but his life’s dream has been firefighting. During the past 10 days, Brawner made significant strides toward achieving that goal.

On Thursday afternoon, Mindi Brawner waited for her husband and seven other Orange County Fire Department crew members to return from Yellowstone National Park, the third and last local team dispatched to battle a dozen wild fires that have stormed across about half of one of America’s greatest natural treasures.

“This has been kind of special. This is really what he wants to do,” the San Juan Capistrano resident said of her husband.

Brawner has worked as a volunteer for the county in San Juan Capistrano for seven years, waiting for the time he could become a full-time firefighter.

“This was a different experience. It was the most intense fire I ever worked. The conditions they had up there really burn a lot of trees,” Brawner said after climbing down from one of the two fire engines the team drove home from Yellowstone.

In all, 24 firefighters with the county department have lent a hand at the beleaguered national park since Aug. 20, when the first eight-person crew was dispatched to the Clovermist area. More than 400,000 acres were burned in that blaze, a significant portion of the total of about a million acres ravaged so far by flames.

Capt. Tom Connors, a 21-year veteran who works out of the fire station in south Tustin, was part of the second team dispatched to Yellowstone. While waiting for his colleagues to return home Thursday, he talked about the conditions endured by the thousands of firefighters.

“If you can imagine Hiroshima, that’s the way it was up there,” said Connors, who was vacationing in Las Vegas during the last week of August when he was called to head a crew bound for Yellowstone.