Winds shift; fires threaten alpine resort
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An unrelenting wildfire jumped a fire line yesterday in the San Bernardino Mountains and headed toward Lake Arrowhead, devouring homes and disease-wracked forests in its path. Downcast fire officials said they appeared to be losing their battle for the alpine resort region.
Associated Press
The blaze, potentially catastrophic, was just one of several major fires that have burned close to 900 square miles of Southern California in the past week, leaving 16 people dead and destroying at least 2,000 homes. Others raged from Ventura County to Mexico, forcing tens of thousands of additional evacuations and threatening communities.
U.S. Forest Service firefighter Brian Theler from the Cleveland National Forest battles the Cedar Fire late yesterday in Descanso, Calif. The Cedar Fire is the most destructive of four large fires in San Diego County.
Fire officials fear the death toll will rise as crews begin inspecting the remnants of charred homes and vehicles.
"This fire was so fast," said Glenn Wagner, San Diego County's chief medical examiner. "I'm sure we're going to find folks who simply never had a chance to get out of their houses."
Low on water, fuel and sleep, exhausted firefighters were pulled off fire lines yesterday in San Diego County, even though raging infernos destroyed hundreds more homes.
Fire destroyed most of the hamlet of Cuyamaca in the Cleveland National Forest east of San Diego, authorities there said.
A shift in the weather brought cooling marine breezes to help arrest some fires, but fanned others in new and treacherous directions.
Firefighters worn out
The American Red Cross and Salvation Army are accepting donations to help the victims of the California wildfires. Donations to the Salvation Army can be sent to: California Wildfires, The Salvation Army, P.O. Box 620, Honolulu, HI, 96809. Donations also will be accepted online at www.salvationarmy.usawest.org. Donations to the American Red Cross can be sent to: American Red Cross, O'ahu Chapter, 4155 Diamond Head Road, Honolulu, HI, 96816-4417. For information, call 734-2101 on O'ahu or 244-0051 on Maui.
As exhausted firefighters struggled to gain some measure of control over the fires, the head of the U.S. Forest Service sounded downhearted.
How to help
"It isn't getting better yet," Dale Bosworth said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times in Sacramento. "It's pretty grim."
While the hot, dry weather finally broke, many of the men and women battling the San Diego fires reached their breaking point after 55 non-stop hours on the front lines. Firefighters drove to nearby towns to gas up their vehicles and buy fast food.
"They're so fatigued that despite the fact the fire perimeter might become much larger, we're not willing to let the firefighters continue any further," said Rich Hawkins, a Forest Service fire chief. "They are too fatigued from three days of battle.
"There's blocks of homes that are going to burn to the ground. My objective is to make sure there's nobody in them."
Residents of threatened communities, many of whom moved to the fringe of wilderness to escape urban stress, were confronted with life-and-death decisions and wrenching heartache.
In the town of Running Springs, along Rim of the World Highway between Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear, local fire Battalion Chief Ben Wilkins was besieged with telephone calls from anxious residents who had evacuated and wanted status reports on their homes and properties.
Wilkins, who recently bought a three-story log home in Running Springs, was sympathetic but frank.
Associated Press
"I fully expect to lose my home today," he told the callers.
People evacuated from areas threatened or destroyed by the fires in San Bernardino County take refuge inside a Red Cross evacuation shelter in a hangar at San Bernardino International Airport as a firefighting tanker takes off. More than 500 homes in the area have been destroyed.
"That's the reality of the whole thing," he said. "But I've got insurance, and I'll rebuild. Our main concern is that no one loses their life here."
In Washington, House and Senate negotiators tentatively agreed to provide $500 million in emergency money to help the Federal Emergency Management Agency respond to the California wildfires, as well as to Hurricane Isabel.
The spending was proposed by Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., who called it a "down payment" on the amount that will be needed to repair and rebuild.
He estimated the cost at more than $4 billion — more than twice the losses incurred in the Oakland Hills fire of 1991, which until now had been considered California's most expensive.
"This is, without question, the worst fire event in California's history, and one of the worst in the nation, and we must be ready to help those who need it," said Lewis, whose son's home in the San Bernardino foothills was among those destroyed by one of the fires.
Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger arrives in the nation's capital today to meet with members of Congress. A Schwarzenegger spokesman said the governor-elect planned to meet tomorrow with FEMA officials.
Fire officials took some encouragement yesterday in the shift from hot, dry, Santa Ana winds to cooler, moister offshore air flows. However, the National Weather Service warned that the moisture in the air would not penetrate very far inland. And the trend alarmed firefighters around Lake Arrowhead, who had considered the Santa Ana winds their ally in pushing the fire down the south-facing slope of the mountains and away from centers of population.
Fire officials have worried for years about the explosive combination of brush-choked hillsides and pine forests that have been ravaged by a bark beetle infestation in the mountains.
'Worst fears' realized
• CEDAR FIRE, San Diego County: 10 people dead, 206,664 acres burned, 881 homes destroyed. No containment. • DULZURA FIRE, San Diego County: No deaths, 45,291 acres burned. 90 percent contained. • PARADISE FIRE, San Diego County: 2 people dead, 57 homes destroyed, 37,000 acres. 15 percent contained. • GRAND PRIX FIRE, San Bernardino County: No deaths, 77 homes destroyed, 57,232 acres. 35 percent contained. • OLD FIRE, San Bernardino County: 4 people dead, 520 homes destroyed, 26,000 acres. 10 percent contained. • SIMI VALLEY, Ventura County: No deaths, 16 homes and 64 outbuildings destroyed, 92,000 acres. 5 percent contained. • PIRU FIRE, Ventura County: No deaths, one outbuilding destroyed, 30,500 acres. 17 percent contained. • MOUNTAIN FIRE, Riverside County: No deaths, 21 homes destroyed, 9,742 acres. 75 percent contained. Source: California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and local fire officials.
As an estimated 20,000 mountain residents joined in a mostly orderly evacuation, fire roared through forests and homes in a line that roughly paralleled Highway 18, the Rim of the World Highway, and was moving north toward Lake Arrowhead.
Major fires:
"We're absolutely heartbroken," San Bernardino County Supervisor Dennis Hansberger said. "We tried our best to prevent this, but it appears our worst fears are being realized today."
Hansberger joined several fire and law enforcement officials at a news conference dominated by fears that the dry, vulnerable San Bernardino National Forest is doomed. Officials said 50,000 residences and 2,000 businesses in the mountains are threatened.
"The chances of preventing it from going into the communities on the mountain top are very low," said Hal Mortier, U.S. Forest Service fire incident commander.
Mortier conceded there may come a time when the flames could prove overwhelming to fire crews on the ground, leading to a retreat and a resigned decision by fire officials to fight the fire exclusively from the air.
"We're at the mercy of Mother Nature right now," said Tim Sappok, division chief for the California Department of Forestry. "We face devastating fuel conditions, devastating weather. This fire hasn't done what we want it to do. Its intensity has been surprising."
Four people have died in San Bernardino County, and sheriff's spokesman Chip Patterson said the deaths could elevate charges against two suspects who are being sought for setting the fire. "We consider all four of these deaths homicides," Patterson said.
As the destruction toll from the Cedar Fire, the most destructive of four large fires in San Diego County, continued to mount, fresh outbreaks of fire forced evacuations in several mountain hamlets, including the isolated communities of Julian, near Palomar Mountain, and Descanso, south of Interstate 8.
In between those towns is Cuyamaca, where authorities said hundreds of structures were incinerated yesterday. It was unclear how many of those were homes.
As 11 damage-assessment teams fanned out throughout the county to record the destruction, officials said the number of homes destroyed by the Cedar and Paradise fires may exceed 1,200. Some areas still were considered too unsafe for damage assessment, officials said.
Much of the San Diego area continued in a kind of voluntary lockdown mode. Schools and businesses were closed. The county Health and Human Services Agency redoubled efforts to get meals to elderly people trapped in their homes. Thousands remained in temporary shelters.
The Navy ordered the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis back to port so that sailors could return to their homes; another 800 sailors have volunteered to assist the firefighting effort, officials said. The guided missile destroyer Mustin was ordered to return at top speed from Pearl Harbor.
The Los Angeles Times and San Jose Mercury News contributed to this report.
