THE SOUTHLAND FIRESTORM: A SPECIAL REPORT : EYEWITNESS : JEFF BAUGH: Helicopter pilot : ‘I Can Feel It in My Stomach. I Can Feel It Throughout My Body’

From first flares to cautious containment, KFWB reporter Jeff Baugh in Jetcopter 98 was an inexhaustible voice of the fires. Baugh, 51, an ex-Marine and a Vietnam veteran, flew 16 hours a day. Sights of the last two weeks, he says wearily, have changed him physically and emotionally.

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I’ve lost 10 pounds this week, at best from not eating, at worst from not drinking enough water in view of the stress we were working against. I can feel it in my stomach. I can feel it throughout my body.

At first, you get caught up in the urgency of a breaking story, a fire raging out of control. I’ve got the headphones on and there is so much information coming into my head . . . three different radio (stations), plus coming in from the other side are all the aircraft radios with talk between firemen and police. So you’re trying to sort all that out, plus looking down and frantically figuring out what is going on while putting it into words.

But after three or four reports, it hits you that you’re really not looking at just a house that’s burning, but at someone who is losing all their worldly possessions.

I went home last night and got into my bed and started thinking: “Gosh, there are people out there who don’t have this any more. People who have lost everything they had, everything they have ever worked for.” That’s what really brings it home.

There was one cul-de-sac in Altadena hit by the firestorm. As soon as it broke we flew over the zone. I looked down and saw 15 homes burned down to their slab foundations. But one home was intact and the owner was standing outside with a small child.

As we went over, he looked up at us, put out his arms and shrugged like he couldn’t believe it himself.

I had this feeling all the time of wanting to go down and help these people. But we just can’t because it’s not a safe thing to do. If I saw somebody drowning in a flood, or standing helpless on a burning building, we would go down. But only as a matter of life and death.

Every moment we were seeing people of great courage. In the Malibu fire, or in Topanga Canyon, people who had been asked to evacuate their homes just chose to stay with their property and remained up there with their hoses and buckets of water. That’s someone taking a stand and saying: “Wait a minute, this is mine and I want to protect it and I’m going to keep it.” That, to me, is amazing.

I was also impressed by the relentless nature of the fire. But also confused by it. Going back to Altadena . . . I remember a moment where the flames climbed back into the San Gabriels, marched right up the mountains while the wind was blowing down the mountains in complete contradiction. You can never figure it. It made no sense.

But now that it’s all over, my personal relief comes from knowing there’s an end to the anxiety and the human suffering.