A flash flood of flame

‘WHY DIDN’T the firefighters get out while they had a chance?”

I heard the question first from a friend who owns a clothing shop in my neighborhood. But it has been asked repeatedly in the aftermath of the Esperanza fire, which killed five U.S. Forest Service firefighters. The fire blowtorched through their position so fast that they didn’t even have time to deploy the shelters used when escape is impossible.

Firefighters from other units close enough to witness the fatal burn-over described the scene as raining fire, a hellish scenario to which many firefighters in Southern California can relate.

In 1979, I was a 19-year-old reserve firefighter with the Ventura County Fire Department, with just a few significant fires under my belt. I was assigned to Engine 41, a highly experienced crew based in Simi Valley. In mid-September, we were dispatched to a major fire that was threatening homes, schools and businesses along Highway 33 in the Ojai Valley.

After a hard fight by dozens of units, it seemed the blaze was contained by midafternoon. My engine company was “rehabbing” at a local park, anticipating a nightlong fire watch, when a small column of smoke appeared where there shouldn’t have been smoke.

Someone radioed that flames had jumped a road that was the eastern boundary of the fire and that a new finger was burning toward more homes.

Engine 41 followed two other rigs down a dirt road close to where the spot fire was spreading. We pulled hoses off the engines and attacked the fire. Everything seemed fine. The wind was at our back as we put out flames along the perimeter.

Then the wind suddenly stopped.

A look of concern crossed my captain’s face. My partner, a full-time firefighter, was about to say something, but before he had a chance, the wind was in our faces, and then the smoke.

He yelled for me to move back toward Engine 41. The engineer climbed into the truck and steered it into the smoke, dragging our hose line behind it. My first instinct was to run away from the fire, but I knew I had to stay with my crew. The captain pushed me through the blinding smoke toward the truck.

I saw flickers of flame in the smoke. Embers rained down. And then we sprinted through a chest-high wave of fire.

In the next instant, we were in fresh air in a blackened clearing. It had happened so fast, much too fast to have deployed fire shelters or to find a safe zone — except to cross the line of fire into the burned area. I later realized this was exactly what the captain had instinctively done, probably saving my life in the process.

Here’s the thing about being overrun by fire: It is like being caught in a flash flood of flame. Winds flow through winding canyons and mountain passes like rivers, pushing forward unpredictable waves of superheated air that can sear your lungs and roast you even before the flames arrive. Especially in Southern California’s extreme conditions, fire moves faster than any person can run, especially when it’s roaring uphill.

John Hawkins, the highly respected Riverside County fire chief, was visibly angry at the news conference after the fatal burn-over, during which he explained that the Esperanza fire was set by an arsonist. But he also pointed out the conspiring weather conditions. “The enemy blows in our faces right now,” he said. “It’s the Santa Ana wind.”

Firefighters try to learn from each death. Each disaster — and each success — leads to new training and rules about how to engage a fire. But despite what we’ve learned, and the constant attention to safety, 36 firefighters have been killed in California wildfires just since 1990.

As you read this, firefighters are mourning the loss of Forest Service Engine 57’s crew. There is every indication that Capt. Mark Loutzenhiser and his men followed what are known as the 10 Standard Firefighting Orders. They were certainly familiar with the 18 Situations That Shout “Watch Out,” also developed after previous tragedies. They would have been applying a concept known by the acronym LCES (lookout; communications; escape route; safe zone). For one member of that engine company, it was only his fourth fire — much like me back in 1979 — but he too was surrounded by experience. After working through the night into morning, they were making a stand to protect a house in the path of a virtual freight train of fire.

In most cases we get away with the risks necessary to protect life and property. If the crew of Engine 57 had not been felled by that sudden blast of fire, it’s possible they would have saved that house and simply moved on to save others. It would have been just one more of those “miraculous” structures that are still standing in the midst of scorched, smoking moonscapes.