29 die fighting Griffith Park blaze

Oct. 3, 1933: When a brush fire broke out in Griffith Park, foremen supervising several thousand laborers at work on the park’s roads ordered them to help put the flames out.

Recruited by the county to reduce unemployment, the workers had no training. That afternoon, 29 of them died in Mineral Wells Canyon.

“Death rode a twisting wind into a canyon of Griffith Park,” The Times reported.

“ ‘Smack it out with your shovels and cut a fire break!’ was the order ringing in the ears of the more than 1,500 men, all of them unskilled at brush fire fighting, as they entered the peaceful canyon which was soon to become a hissing, crackling death scene for some of their number,” the newspaper said.

“The screams of the dying, when the flames, leaping almost 100 feet at a time, caught up with the yelling, struggling welter of humanity on the slope of the valley of death, were too horrible for even the stoutest of the survivors atop a hogback ridge forming the south wall’s top, to hear without weeping or shuddering.”