Firefighters Get Their Rest in Short Doses : Respite: Weary crew members recoup, recall the ‘good saves’ and the close calls. They wait to return to the line.

To many weary Ventura County firefighters, Thursday had the feel of the Day After and the Day Before.

The winds died and the fires lay down. An eerie pall of smoke hung over the county. Firefighters--some off the line for the first time in 36 hours--finally slept. Then they savored the “good saves” that snatched homes away from columns of flame.

“We had a really good save up here,” Thousand Oaks Fire Engineer Brian Dilley said, recalling a fierce firefight on Yerba Buena Road. “It was such a last-minute deal, and we saved it. The owner said to me, ‘I never realized what you guys go through.’ ”

But even as the firefighters recouped, they expressed little relief.

The Hidden Valley fire had reversed itself and was threatening the exclusive Lake Sherwood community. And stiff Santa Ana winds were expected to return today.

Nobody was saying that the end was in sight for any of three Ventura County fires that have already charred more than 50,000 acres.

“Everybody’s exhausted,” Oxnard Fire Capt. Michael O’Malia said Thursday afternoon after working the Matilija fire for 27 hours straight. “And there’s still plenty of fuel up here.”

Yet Thursday was more calm than storm. Dozens of Northern California fire crews--from locales such as Marin County, Twain Harte, Grass Valley and Rough and Ready--relieved bone-tired Ventura County teams on fires north of Ojai and west of Santa Paula.

And at Borchard Park in Thousand Oaks, hundreds of firefighters--called out after the first fire started Tuesday afternoon--grabbed a few hours sleep, ate an egg-and-potato breakfast, and waited for their return to the line.

Several who had struggled to save Santa Monica Mountains houses near Deer Creek and Yerba Buena roads--where two dozen were destroyed--had a chance to recall a long Wednesday of fires like they had never seen before.

“We got into a firestorm,” said County Fire Capt. Steve Francis, who joined his Moorpark neighbors, Firefighter Ron Sandor and Engineer Jerry Vandermeulen, on Engine 41.

Twenty-four hours into their shift, at 2 p.m. Wednesday, the self-dubbed Moorpark Boys parked their fire engine between a large hilltop cabin and a 150-foot wall of flame.

“We spent two hours preparing for it. We knew what we were going to get. But we didn’t know how bad,” said Sandor, 29.

Francis, the crew’s veteran at age 33, said that once the fire started to move it covered 300 yards up the hill in just minutes.

“It was like the eye of a tornado coming at you,” Sandor said. “You could hear it just roaring. . . . When it hit us it must have been going 100 m.p.h.”

Francis recalled hearing other firefighters scream: “They’re in a firestorm.”

“That means it’s all around you,” he explained.

As the fire hit the hilltop, Francis and Sandor manned the nozzle of the fire hose, knocking the fire down at its center and keeping intense heat off the cabin.

“These guys were heroes. I couldn’t believe it,” whispered Vandermeulen, 32, whose job was to back them up by keeping the water supply steady.

But the fire was moving so fast it quickly flanked the crew.

“It hit us from the front and then hooked around and hit us from the back,” Sandor said. “Then it was Jerry’s turn on the nozzle.”

The crew saved the cabin, but on another nearby hillside the firestorm swept over an engine company, burning the arm of one firefighter and sending four to St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard briefly to be treated for smoke inhalation.

After 36 hours, the Moorpark crew rolled out of the flames and into Borchard Park at 2 a.m. Thursday. They were running on empty.

“We just fell out of the engine and went to sleep on the asphalt in the parking lot,” Francis said. They didn’t even bother to walk to the nearby grass.

Refreshed from a few hours sleep, the crew said Wednesday was a day to remember, a true test of their ability. The real thing.

“It’s the most fire I’ve ever been in personally,” Francis said.

“I feel like we worked for our pay yesterday,” Sandor said.

Firefighters who had battled fast-moving blazes near Santa Paula and Ojai on Wednesday--and a one-day flare-up in Box Canyon near Simi Valley--were also regrouping Thursday.

County Fire Capt. Ken Cochran, 47, headed the first of five crews to respond to the fire near Santa Paula’s Steckel Park about 1:30 Wednesday morning.

He quickly ordered 25 more engines, but got only a fraction of what was needed. “We were it for a long time, because they had no more resources,” he said.

The fire grew quickly from five acres to 100, crested a ridge and was on its way west across Wheeler and Aliso canyons. It had covered 20,000 acres of dry, rolling cattle ranches by sundown Thursday. But no houses were lost.

Cochran’s crew caught a few winks next to Ojai-Santa Paula Road late Wednesday night, but otherwise had no sleep until after daybreak Thursday, when they arrived at Arroyo Verde Park in Ventura for breakfast and a nap.

“Everybody’s tired,” Cochran said. “But these guys are now asking for another assignment. They don’t want to be here (in the park.) They want to be out there. We’re begging for it.”

Thursday’s mild winds allowed a couple of out-of-county replacement crews to relieve a few firefighters around the smoldering blaze above Wheeler Hot Springs near Ojai.

They were working Thursday afternoon to cut a ring around that 1,600-acre fire, which briefly threatened homes along the Maricopa Highway on Wednesday and loomed above the rustic Matilija Canyon community.

Also on that fire was the U.S. Forest Service crew stationed at Wheeler Hot Springs, the first to respond on Wednesday. Lance Cross, 31, of Oak View, and his Forest Service crew had worked 27 straight hours with only quick roadside naps by Thursday afternoon.

“The fire’s laying down for us,” Cross said. “It’s looking good. But they’re expecting Santa Ana winds for the next two or three days, so you never know. We’ll be here until the bitter end.”