Weary Crews Lose Hold on 10,000-Acre Wildfire

Struggling on rugged slopes in triple-digit heat, hundreds of exhausted firefighters Wednesday battled a wildfire that devoured more than 10,000 acres of thick, old brush northeast of Fillmore.

As the wind shifted midafternoon and the fire spread toward the southeast, California Highway Patrol officers patrolled Piru Canyon Road beneath a brown pall of smoke, warning homeowners and ordering 14 campers out of Lake Piru Campground.

Weary fire commanders said their crews’ hold on the fire line remained weak Wednesday evening, and they predicted that they would not have the blaze controlled until this weekend.

They said the wind and speed of the fire wrested control from their grasp about 2 p.m. as they tried to stop it from leaping east across Hopper Canyon and burning toward Lake Piru.

Firefighters hustled over to Dominguez Ranch and hosed down buildings, cleared brush around them and set backfires to insulate them from the coming flames. They also sent five engine strike teams to protect ranch houses and buildings around Lake Piru. Twelve dwellings have been evacuated, said Joe Luna, spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department.

“The original plan was to hold at Hopper Creek,” said the Orange County Fire Department’s Mike Fardig, one of the strike team supervisors. “But it got away from us.”

By nightfall, sheriff’s officials were preparing to evacuate the 1,000 residents of tiny Piru if the spread of the fire made it necessary, although winds were dying and humidity was rising. An evacuation center is being staffed by the Red Cross at the Fillmore Community Memorial Building.

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As winds pick up this morning, the humidity will drop and fire crews must jump on the active parts of the blaze early, said Ken Field, a U. S. Forest Service weather specialist.

With the terrain too steep for bulldozers and most trucks, and smoke too thick for fixed-wing air tankers, the battle Wednesday was left largely to water-dropping helicopters and hard-working hand crews of about 1,000 firefighters.

They labored in 110-degree heat and thick protective clothes, using hand tools and hoses to carve firebreaks that would keep flames from reaching homes.

“You’re wearing safety gear, two pairs of pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a brush shirt and a helmet,” said Wayne Ferber, spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department. “You dress kind of warm. And you just can’t work that fast in that kind of heat.”

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U. S. Forest Service engineer Tracy McGruff, a second-generation firefighter, said wearily: “We don’t pay attention to it and we don’t dwell on it. If you hear it’s 110, you feel worse than if you don’t know.”

Meanwhile, arson investigators combed through an oil well site and the charred brush around it, looking for clues to what sparked the blaze Tuesday afternoon.

Later Tuesday, flames came close to destroying a U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service study center at Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge, biologist David Clendenen said.

The fire killed innumerable songbirds that live in the brush, possibly jeopardizing an avian population study that biologists had been hoping to finish Wednesday, he said.

“Some animals can outrun the flames and some can’t,” Clendenen said. “We’ll go back there in the spring and see.”

Fillmore resident Dan Mathews said he hurried to remove heirlooms and prized possessions from a cabin in Dominguez Canyon, east of the fire Tuesday night, in case the flames came his way.

“I guess our time has come,” he said after emptying trunks, pictures and guest books from the cabin, which has been in the family for five generations. “We haven’t had a major one in a while.”

Although hampered by competition from other Southern California fires in Riverside and Los Angeles counties, Ventura County fire commanders were still able to muster 10 helicopters to drop water on the blaze.

These included smaller choppers with a 300-gallon capacity, plus a massive Sikorsky SkyCrane, which lumbered to and from the fire lines and dumped 3,000 gallons at a time from Lake Piru onto the flames. Six air tankers joined the effort.

But hand crews did the lion’s share of the work.

Strike teams posted themselves near some of the ranches and around oil wells operating on leases in the Sespe Condor Sanctuary, which is no longer open.

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Weary members of a U. S. Forest Service hand crew flopped down to rest around a Vintage Petroleum Inc. well perched on a 3,000-foot peak at the fire’s northwestern--and most active--edge.

They had just finished cutting firebreaks around the well site, scrambling over impossibly steep hillsides, and grubbing chaparral and manzanita out of the ground with steel tools and brute force.

Faces smeared with grime, eyes pouched with fatigue, they awaited their next assignment in the midday heat.

Firefighter Chad Christensen, 21, slouched on the bench seat of a water tender with soot smeared all over his yellow Nomex fire jacket, a day-old beard and the look of a man who has barely napped.

“You sleep the best you can, whether it’s on the [truck] seat or on the dirt,” he said with the tone of a grizzled veteran. “You deal with each other stinking.”

Christensen said he knew at age 15 or 16 that he wanted to become a firefighter and has already tried to discipline the way he thinks about the hardships.

“If you start talking about the heat, you know, you’re dead,” he said. “You’ll beat yourself down. At this point, it’s a mental game.”

Fellow firefighter Lorien Brightbill, 27, slumped beside him, considering his own mud-caked khakis, sooty face and the half-moons of filth beneath his fingernails.

“You don’t pay attention to how dirty you are,” Brightbill said. “You finally realize that when you shower and the water turns black. But we’re a day away from [showers].”

But the two spoke enthusiastically about their work.

The first stages of any fire are the most exciting, Brightbill said. “When you’re just mopping up, it’s tedious.”

For one California Youth Authority inmate, a Compton 18-year-old whose hand crew worked side-by-side with the Forest Service, the work meant even more. “You get to see how freedom looks, the hills and the cactuses,” he said.

Back at the command post in Fillmore, catering companies were already setting up portable toilets and outdoor kitchens to handle the hundreds of firefighters.

Jeff Jones, a trucker for Bishop Services Inc., rested a moment from unloading food crates and slugged down some bottled water, his purple T-shirt almost black with sweat. “I just get excited about how fast I can get the place up and feed firefighters,” he said.

The fire and sweltering heat brought booming business to La Unica market, just down the street from the Fillmore fire command post.

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Sweat-soaked firefighters, neighbors and schoolchildren bought everything from Popsicles to soap for scrubbing off the fine layer of ash that covered cars downwind from the fire.

“We’re selling a lot of beer, soda and ice cream,” said store owner Henry Meza, who stayed open late Tuesday because of the customer overflow. “They’ve been sweating all day and want to cool down.”

Outside the store, Fillmore Junior High School student George Montanez watched smoke from the brush fire rise over the mountains to the north.

“It’s pretty radical,” the 13-year-old said between licks of a rapidly melting ice cream cone. “But I’m not one to get scared.”

As if the fire near Fillmore were not enough, a weed-clearing tractor sparked another blaze about 2:10 p.m. that blackened 15 acres of heavy brush in Oak Park before some 65 firefighters brought it under control within an hour, Ventura County Fire Capt. Tom Kruschke said.

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Fire’s Path

The Hopper fire began about 2 p.m. Tuesday on the edge of Los Padres National Forest northeast of Fillmore. About 1,000 firefighters continue to battle the blaze in the rugged and sometimes inaccessible terrain.