Youth Authority Efforts Futile Against Lake Sherwood Blaze

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 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 weird neon red, the jumpsuit-clad team 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.

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 on 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 was 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.”