A Ringside Seat for Picnickers

About the same time a brush fire broke out Tuesday in Arroyo Verde Park, Peter Palmer was breaking out the charcoal.

“We’re just here for a picnic,” said Palmer, one of a few people visiting the Ventura park when smoke and flames provided some unexpected entertainment.

As firefighters battled the blaze at the northern edge of the park, Palmer kept tabs on the flames that were slowly blackening his chicken.

Palmer and his companion, Alicia Real, said the fire must have begun soon after they arrived at the park about 2:30 p.m. “We saw a little smoke, and I wondered if anybody had called the Fire Department,” Real said. Then a parade of firetrucks and ambulances arrived.

The couple, who live in Oxnard, said they saw no reason to leave. Their table, in the middle of the lush green park’s picnic area, offered a good view of the fire but was a safe distance away. And it was sunny enough for Palmer to work on his suntan as he sipped a beer.

The only problem was that the noisy helicopters drowned out the soft rock emanating from their portable radio.

Above them, on the steep hills on the east side of Arroyo Verde, other park visitors, mostly teen-agers, scrambled along trails to get a better look as the flames receded over the hills to the north. When the hikers looked back, they caught a panoramic view of a placid ocean and mist-shrouded islands that contrasted sharply with the fire and smoke.

The fire helped 5-year-old Nicholas Judson make a career decision.

“I want to be a fireman when I grow up,” said Nicholas, who was at the park’s playground with two of his friends and their mother, Sherry Herbruck.

“They’re totally excited,” Herbruck said. “They love watching the copters splashing water on the fire.”

But Herbruck’s son, Hayden, 4, was not as impressed as Nicholas. “I’m going to be a policeman,” Hayden said.

Will Gorenfeld, who lives across Foothill Boulevard from the park, ran over as soon as he saw the smoke. He brought a shovel.

“I used to work for the Forest Service,” Gorenfeld said. “I thought maybe they had lost control, and I could help.”

When it turned out that he wasn’t needed, Gorenfeld stayed in the park and watched. A little while later, his son, John, 15, joined him.

“I came to see what happened to our course,” said John, whose cross-country running team often uses the trails at the back of the park. “We won’t be running there for a while.”