36 Historic Indian Sites Saved in Coyote Fire

As firefighters Wednesday fully contained a wildfire that has burned nearly 19,000 acres southeast of Temecula, a group of archeologists wrapped up its own work: scrambling behind the scenes to protect archeological sites.

Despite the fire and the movement of firefighters and bulldozers, authorities said, there was no damage to the three dozen sites -- including Native American burial locations, adobes and villages inhabited by the Cupeno and Cahuilla Indians -- in the area.

Often, the paths for bulldozers to clear brush are laid down right away, and archeologists don’t always arrive in time. “In this case, we were lucky, and we were well prepared,” said Linda Sandelin, an archeologist with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The lightning-sparked Coyote fire, which destroyed parts of a San Diego State University research facility, started July 16 in a remote area along the border of Riverside and San Diego counties.

Just hours after the blaze started, Sandelin, whose office is in Fresno, received a phone call to go to the fire near Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Sandelin grabbed several maps pinpointing archeological sites in the area and arrived at the fire the next day.

There, she met up with a team of archeologists from several agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management and California Department of Parks and Recreation, to share information on the historic sites that were on their properties and around the fire lines.

They quickly set out to “flag off” the sites so that bulldozers could avoid those areas as they built fire-containment lines, Sandelin said.

The bulldozers can “totally obliterate a site,” Sandelin said.

“A village site with house pits or indentations of the individual houses, we could get a general idea of how many people lived there” if the site hasn’t been disturbed.

Meanwhile, researchers at San Diego State’s 1,600-acre Sky Oaks Biological Field Station were continuing their cleanup efforts.

The fire destroyed two residential trailers, a research structure, six environmental enclosures, several monitoring towers, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment and several major experiments on the environmental effects of greenhouse gases.

Sedra Shapiro, the station’s executive director, said she hoped to have researchers running experiments again by the end of the week even as officials continue calculating damage costs.

Officials from the Boy Scouts’ Lost Valley Scout Reservation hope to reopen its campground Sunday, said Brett Beck, a spokesman for the Orange County Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which owns the 1,400-acre site.

The fire forced the evacuation of 600 campers last week and destroyed several canvas tents. The camp’s dining halls and meeting rooms, however, escaped damage.

“No one was hurt, and there were minor damages,” Beck said. “What else can you ask for?”