CYA Crews Join Perilous Fight in Carlisle Canyon : Fire lines: The 41 youths, all juvenile offenders, struggle in a losing effort to contain the blaze. Traffic jam delays residents’ flight.

Burdened with chain saws and shovels, 41 firefighters from the California Youth Authority stumbled over rough rocks, through a steady shower of ash, on a futile mission to contain the Carlisle Canyon fire thundering toward Thousand Oaks.

With Lake Sherwood and Hidden Valley below, and bungalows and mansions scattered throughout the remote backcountry tract, the firefighters knew they had to act fast.

The dumping of water by helicopters and the spraying of fire retardant by bombers could not contain the blaze, which hopscotched over the craggy cliffs to feed on patches of bone-dry brush.

So, under a sun that glowed a weirdly neon red, the jumpsuit-clad firefighters grabbed their tools and headed for the hills. Nervously.

“I was scared enough sitting over there,” said Greg Gibson, 23, gesturing to a safe spot that already looked alarmingly far away. “But we trust our foreman, and whatever he says, we do.”

Pushing aside brambles as he scurried through an uneven gully, Gibson added, “This is our escape route.”

They would need it soon enough.

Moments after they began hacking away at the brush, trying to clear a tinder-free patch to stop the fire, a commander at the head of the line sounded the alarm. The wind had turned. Sparks were flying. Smoke, brown and heavy, was billowing in thick clouds.

“Let’s go!” someone yelled. “Get out of here!”

“Don’t panic!” another hollered back, sounding more than a little panicked himself.

“You guys are used to hiking--now get the heck out of here,” a third call rang out.

Defeated by the swirling winds, the firefighters--all juvenile offenders trained by the California Department of Forestry--turned tail and crashed back over the unsteady escape route to their camp.

As they regrouped about 1:30 p.m., the fire, roaring ever-louder, began simultaneously jumping toward the canyon floor and sweeping over rock- and chaparral-covered ridgelines, seemingly aimed at the half-dozen ranch houses balanced atop the peaks.

Swinging into a defensive mode, the firefighters ordered two strike crews as backup and began plotting how best to protect the houses. Engines from Los Angeles city and county wound their way up the steep, narrow road to the canyon rim, as the firefighters tried to scale the steep cliffs to reach some endangered residences.

Shouting directions in Spanish a few hundred yards away, four Carlisle Canyon residents hunkered down on a pile of concrete bricks, watching the inferno. Although they called themselves fearless, they left when the fire started to heat the ash-strewn cars parked along the canyon road.

As they drove to safety, the four caught a fearsome sight through their car’s rear-view mirror: a crackling cloud of flames whipping down the canyon bottom and racing toward Lake Sherwood.

Warned about the approaching inferno in mid-afternoon, dozens of Lake Sherwood residents tossed their most precious belongings into their cars and fled. Or, tried to.

Just as residents were frantically leaving, firefighters and reporters were scrambling to get inside the gate. A traffic jam snarled the entryway, and a security guard barred most journalists from the development.

Adding to the confusion, helicopters raced overhead, dipping into Lake Sherwood for water and dumping it on hillsides around the multimillion-dollar residences.

One woman who made it out sat crying in her BMW, parked along Stafford Road. Looking back at the clouds of black smoke obscuring the development, she said she had just moved in four months ago and feared for her home.

“It’s a shame people have to go through all this misery and grief over an arsonist,” said Jackie Vankatwyk, who evacuated from her Lake Sherwood residence Wednesday. “It just doesn’t make any sense. You could almost live with an earthquake, a natural disaster. But this is what a human being did.”

Inside the development, residents were packing their valuables and watching the sky as it shifted from black to orange to purple-brown. Some said they had been watching the fire devour residences elsewhere in the Southland but never expected the blaze to reach their upscale tract.

“You don’t know until you’re in it how humbling it is,” resident Linda Miller said. “If I make it through this, I’m going to take all my best clothes down to Laguna Beach because those people have nothing.”

Others in the area simply refused to leave.

Among the holdouts were a mean-tempered young panther and a fiercely independent lioness from the Animal Actors Ranch deep in Carlisle Canyon. The elephants and other animals had long since been evacuated, but the panther and lion would not budge. As flames scorched the canyon wall, they were shot, according to a fire official at the scene.

Reports from the canyon indicated that one house on the canyon bottom had lost a roof to the blaze, and a motor home was demolished. Backfires deliberately set by firefighters continued to burn on the canyon floor as night fell.

Meanwhile, a few miles away in Hidden Valley, some residents dug in their feet and vowed to protect their property, despite an earlier sheriff’s warning to evacuate.

Homeowner Anne Capri could see blackened hills to the south of her ranch and flames leaping to the north. At one point, the fire even crept to within a few feet of her back-yard play set. But Capri would not leave her $5-million ranch, where she is building a new home that stands half-completed, a vulnerable wood frame.

“The fire that came over the ridge was like the devil,” Capri said in awe. “It was like a smoldering red inferno that you have no control over.”