The Southland Firestorm: A Special Report : The Firefighters : On The Fire Line : THE OUT-OF-TOWNERS : ‘We Were Put on the Fire Line and Pulled 36 Hours Straight’

Orville Sprengeler, a 26-year-old member of the Ft. Apache Hotshots from Arizona, rested his tired body and sore feet on a cot and cracked a book.

“I don’t know what kind of book it is, I just wanted something to read,” Sprengeler said, daubing soot from his ears with a cotton swab.

He and 18 other crew members had flown from Arizona to Ontario, Calif., hurriedly been put on buses and then taken to Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park on the southern fringe of Orange County. They were rushed in to battle the Ortega fire, which in one week destroyed 21,384 acres and 36 homes, and damaged 16 other structures.

“When we pulled in here, we were put on the fire line and pulled 36 hours straight,” Sprengeler said wearily.

Firefighters were called from faraway places such as Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado by the U.S. Forest Service, which quickly erected an enormous camp at Caspers Park to serve as home for 2,100 firefighters.

At the camp, hundreds of firefighters bivouacked in what looked like something from the TV show “MASH.”

Firetrucks, buses and heavy equipment rumbled through the camp on dirt roads more accustomed to families in minivans. Three trailers served as a communications and operations center.

The camp functioned as a miniature city, with its own postal service, laundry, medical unit, mess halls and outdoor entertainment areas that included two large-screen televisions. “This is like Disneyland,” one firefighter said.

Sue Warren, a Forest Service ranger from Fresno, was in charge of the medical unit, at which 46 firefighters were treated for minor injuries such as sprained ankles and bee stings.

“We did get one firefighter who got poked by a stick near his eye,” Warren said.

Otherwise, Warren said, the biggest nuisance were the bees in camp.

“People would be eating sandwiches while talking to someone and a yellow jacket would sting their lips,” Warren said, adding that poison oak was another common complaint.

Mike Kane, 31, Sprengeler’s crew boss, said he had never encountered poison oak quite like California’s. Both of his arms and the skin under his neck were white from dried calamine lotion.

“This stuff is deadly,” Kane said of the poison oak. “It must be the oils in the oak or something. I had my Nomex (fire retardant) long-sleeved shirt on and gloves, and it still seeped through.

“Other than that, the only thing that bothered us was the baby rattlesnake we found in our camp,” Kane added.

Food was prepared by a company from Utah. Joe Houston, 38, who owns the company with his brother, got a call at 6 a.m. Oct. 28 with the work order. That morning, they left with a caravan of a dozen trucks carrying tents, tables, refrigerators and a mobile kitchen, arriving in the Southland the next morning.

“We need a 40-foot trailer of food every day to feed this camp,” Houston said. Firefighters are fed a large breakfast, then given sack lunches for the field. On Tuesday night, crews were fed salad, roast beef, mashed potatoes, corn and strawberry shortcake.

The large contingent of firefighters attracted Rick West, 43, from Reno, Nev. The T-shirt entrepreneur parked at Caspers Park and sold shirts that read, “The Battle of the Santa Annas,” and “Southern California’s Autumn Glow.” Each shirt included a list of the recent California brush fires.