Firefighter Battles His Way Back to Health After Brush With Death

With each slow, determined step, William Jensen moves farther from death’s door.

Using his scarred right hand to push a metal walker, the burly Glendale firefighter who was overtaken by flames as he battled the Calabasas-Malibu brush fire last October, shuffles his way down a hospital corridor.

His broad chest is covered in a scarlet dressing that acts as a scab to help healing. His severely burned left hand, still swollen and bruised after surgery that saved his fingers from amputation, remains useless.

His daily regimen is as taxing as it is necessary.

But Jensen, at times grimacing and grunting as he builds his strength, prefers the pain to its ghastly alternative.

“There’s too many things to live for,” he says, choking back tears. “My wife, kids, grandkids.”

Jensen is scheduled to return to his Burbank home today on his 53rd birthday. His gradual recovery since the Oct. 22 fire has been the result of continuous treatment by top-quality medical personnel, devoted support from family, friends, fellow firefighters and Jensen’s own unflinching desire to live.

“I’d just like to thank everybody. Everybody out there who prayed for me,” Jensen said Monday, in his only interview since the tragedy. “Everybody’s been so good to me.”

The 27-year firefighting veteran’s shoulders were covered with bandages. He was wearing pants for the first time since being hospitalized, albeit the loose-fitting green “scrubs” that doctors wear. And he was breaking in a new pair of leather sneakers.

Although he’s much lighter than his normal 250-plus pounds, his healing face looked only slightly different than the mustachioed Jensen pictured on buttons worn round-the-clock by those pulling for him.

Jensen’s wife, Sue, sat nearby. Occasionally, she gave him a sip of water or passed her hand along the wispy gray hair on his balding head.

Signs of support were everywhere in his room at the Grossman Burn Center at Sherman Oaks Hospital. Friends, family and hospital staff popped in and out. A cork board was covered with family pictures. Several stuffed animals recalled his nickname, “Magilla Gorilla,” which he earned for his size, strength and his side job of trimming and caring for trees.

Jensen cannot remember much about the blaze at Corral Canyon, where he and others were trying to protect homes, nor does he care to.

He was operating a fire hose when winds that were pushing the blaze toward the sea suddenly turned.

“I remember being burned,” he said. “I’ve seen fires move fast before. As fast as you can snap your fingers. . . . It happened. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

His mission now--he was about one year away from retirement when he was injured--is to work hard toward being as self-sufficient as he’s always been.

“I’m just going to play it day by day,” said Jensen, a warmhearted but private man. “I gain a little bit each day. I’ve just got to build the strength back up. I’ll stick with it.”

*

Jensen arrived by helicopter at the hospital on a frantic Tuesday afternoon.

The most seriously injured of four firefighters who were hospitalized at the center that day, Jensen suffered second- and third-degree burns over more than 70% of his body. Roughly one in 10 people survive such devastating burns.

“We really, really thought he wasn’t going to make it,” said Helena San Marco, Jensen’s primary nurse who met the helicopter on the burn center roof. “His back was solid third-degree burns. . . . When I looked at his left hand when he came in, I could see his tendon and his bone.”

Besides his wife, Jensen’s family includes sons Scott, 31, and Kirk, 30; Kirk’s wife, Linda, and their children, Kody, 3, Kalie, 1, and Scott’s daughter, Kristen, 10 months.

Dr. A. Richard Grossman, founder of the burn center, was joined by his son, Dr. Peter H. Grossman, on the emergency medical team.

“We knew Bill was the worst,” the elder Grossman said. “Bill had to run up a hill because the fire engulfed him.”

The treatment included pumping Jensen with liter upon liter of intravenous fluids--as much as 15 liters in 24 hours--examining every inch of his body and easing his pain with medication.

“You’ve got a lot of things going on that are just scarier than hell,” Grossman said.

The only areas not burned were the back of Jensen’s scalp, the inside of one thigh and one calf.

His first surgery came three days after the fire.

Doctors were most concerned with his acute breathing problems and the early signs of a blood condition that could lead to internal hemorrhaging. They cut dead and burned tissue from his body and those areas were covered with cadaver skin used as a biological dressing.

More nerve-racking surgeries followed.

*

It would be early December before doctors announced that they no longer considered Jensen’s injuries life-threatening.

San Marco, who became emotionally attached to the Jensen family, said she was impressed with Jensen’s demeanor from the start.

“He just faces things,” she said. “He’s the kind of guy who looks at the problem and says, ‘Let’s do something about it.’ ”

San Marco joyfully recalled Jensen’s thrill at receiving small ice chips in his mouth after weeks of intravenous treatment. And his first lollipop made him feel like a kid.

“He was so overjoyed,” San Marco said with a hearty laugh. “He just loved that lollipop.”

Jensen would undergo a total of 16 surgeries, including extensive work on his left hand.

“I can’t tell you he’s going to fight a fire. Maybe hold a book, maybe write with it,” Grossman said. “He’s not going to play the violin, but he’s also not wearing hooks.”

Grossman said Jensen’s recovery otherwise is even more promising. The decision to send him home depended on when Jensen was well enough to take care of himself with minimal assistance.

“I let somebody go home, like Bill, when he can have his dignity back,” he said.

*

Jensen said he has no memory of his first four to five weeks of hospitalization.

But the days that passed were filled with special events, including Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day, birthdays and the release of other firefighters from the center.

The Malibu fire, which began in Calabasas a day before Jensen was injured and at its peak, was fought by more than 4,000 men and women. It was contained the day after Jensen entered the burn center, thanks in part to a lull in the fierce Santa Ana winds.

As Jensen’s condition remained “grave,” community support poured in by way of phone calls, letters, food and 111 pints of blood.

*

On Oct. 29, Gov. Pete Wilson visited the burn center and presented Jensen and six other firefighters with the Governor’s Fire Service Award. That same day, William Rolland, a retired Los Angeles firefighter who started the William Rolland Firefighters Foundation in 1988, donated $10,000 to help Jensen and the Los Angeles Firemen’s Relief Assn.

And last Wednesday, the Glendale Fire Department awarded its Medal of Valor to Jensen and Scott French, the other Glendale firefighter who was hospitalized after being burned in October. French, 41, who returned to work Jan. 8, said then that he would not feel his recovery would be complete until Jensen left the burn center too.

Scott Jensen said firefighters and others will surprise his father with a series of improvements they have made to his home.

“Everybody has gone out of their way to do things for us,” he said.

The cost of his treatment, estimated at $750,000, is covered by Glendale because he was on duty, fire officials said.

Jensen, lying quietly in his bed, said he will spend the days ahead mostly in private doing the best he can to get better.

“Everybody around here’s been so nice, but I’m ready to go home,” Jensen said. “I’ve still got a long fight ahead of me.”