First Brush with Heat

At the time I was employed as a Youth Counselor at a county juvenile rehabilitation facility in Santa Clara County, California. Our camp was situated on property of the California Department of Forestry, which housed the Smith Creek Fire Station. We had 28 juvenile delinquents in our charge and as part of their rehabilitation we were to form fire crews to assist the CDF in fire mop-up duties. Live fire line duties were not part of our mandate. It was May of 1981.

On our first field training date we geared up for participation in a control burn in the San Antone Valley which is within the Mount Hamilton Range East of San Jose. The CDF. Battalion Chief in charge explained that we would follow the burn and simply put out smoldering piles and build a cold trail. The burn was to be in two phases. The early morning burn went according to plan and our kids ate some smoke and seemed generally excited. The burn area was about 40 acres and all went well.

The second phase began mid-morning accross the highway from the first burn. The terrain was steep and the vegetation was thick and dry. The purpose of the burn was to increase grazing capabilities for the land owner. Because the flank was too steep for our bus to climb to the staging/safety zone on the top of the ridge, we loaded onto a CDF model 5 fire engine which had four-wheel drive. Five of us were in the engine and seven others in the crew and my partner, Norman H., walked up to the safety zone.

The safety zone on the top of the ridge was a bulldozed area about 25 feet by 40 feet. The flanks of the prescribed burn were tied in by dozer lines approximately 12 feet wide. The area to be burned was about 30 acres on a 45 degree slope.

Our 15 man crew was just assembling on the ridge, me and one crew member in the cab with a CDF Fire Engineer driving, four of the crew in the open air crew compartment in the back, and the rest of our crew with Norman standing close to the engine. Without notice the battalion Chief who was on the ridge, too, but closer to the edge jumped into his pickup and in a pure panic jammed his truck into gear and in a cloud of dust exited the ridge down the other flank. Before we could figure out why he left so fast we saw a 50 foot wall of flame blow right over our windshield. The fireball flew right over our engine and set itself down on the vegetation behind us and started climbing a ridge behind it. I honestly believed that the crew members on the back of the engine would be burned, and that Norman's group would be toast. When we got out the kids in the back had remembered their training to the extent that they knew to pull the protective blanket over themselves. This saved them. Norman and his kids said they hit the deck and the fireball went right over them. If any of the crew would have run instead of going to the ground, they would have been seriously burned.

A RANCHER with a drip torch started the fire FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE HILL. The burn was to have been started from the top of the ridge which would cause the fire to burn downhill. This was an unintentional mistake that came close to taking 20 or so lives.

The fire went on to take 200 more acres and was controled by mid-morning the next day. Norman and I both changed careers after that--we both became CDF Fire Crew Supervisors. Although my career was cut short due to injuries, I will always be most proud that I was part of the greatest wildland firefighting force in the world.