GILROY
– Four city firefighters are coming home after more than five
days of saving homes from the so-called
”
Old fire,
”
which has already consumed about 850 houses in San Bernardino
County.
GILROY – Four city firefighters are coming home after more than five days of saving homes from the so-called “Old fire,” which has already consumed about 850 houses in San Bernardino County.
Gilroy Fire Department Capt. Josh Valverde, Engineer Colette Harmon and firefighters Bernhard Szilagyi and Shaun Peyghambary were among nearly 3,000 personnel battling the Old fire and nearly 13,000 fighting the seven or so wildfires that remain out of control in Southern California.
They couldn’t work the backcountry with their heavy, two-wheel-drive fire engine, so they worked in towns in the fire’s path, where their job was structure protection. First, they removed combustible material from homes. Next, Harmon said, “We let the fire come to us, and we direct it around the house. We’re not actually trying to put out the fire because you can’t.
“It is literally a wall of fire,” Harmon said. “It’s actually quite beautiful and intense at the same time.”
The team has been working 12-hour shifts, including a set of three consecutive shifts Tuesday and Wednesday. They’re beginning to lose track of the days; Harmon admitted this morning she wasn’t sure what day it is.
“We’re feeling it,” Valverde said this morning, just after getting the order to head home. They were in the town of Devore Heights.
Not only is it hard work, it’s potentially deadly. Of the 20 people the series of Southern California fires have killed so far is Steve Rucker, a firefighter from Novato, in Marin County. Rucker died Wednesday when a sudden flame movement overcame his crew of four near Wynola, in eastern San Diego County. One of his crew members received severe burns and the others suffered minor ones.
Many firefighters around the state are wearing black shrouds or bands on the badges in recognition of the Rucker’s death.
The Old fire is one of about a dozen in Southern California that have burned a total area roughly the size of Rhode Island. Along with the Cedar Fire in San Diego County, it is one of the fiercest, having killed four people, according to The Associated Press. It is about 15-percent contained and was threatening another 50,000 homes.
“The weather has gone through some amazing changes,” Valverde said. Where they were, in the towns, the winds gusted up to 40 mph on Thursday. Amid the burning San Bernardino Mountain highlands, winds reportedly reached 60 mph. Sixty-degree temperatures dropped to 35 with the wind-chill factor, Valverde reported.
“Believe me, all the training in the world couldn’t prepare you for this kind of wind conditions,” Valverde said. Instead of fighting a fire moving in one direction, he said, swirling winds can make it move haphazardly.
“It adds a little bit of concern,” he said.
Rain, already felt elsewhere in Southern California this morning, is expected today in the Old fire area.
This is action like Gilroy firefighters haven’t seen since some were sent to help handle the Oakland Hills fire of 1991, which destroyed roughly 3,000 buildings in little more than a day – compared to about 2,600 in Southern California this past week.
Last year’s Croy Fire was also intense, to be sure, but at 3,127 acres and 34 homes lost, Bozzo says it doesn’t compare.
GFD Capt. Art Amaro remembers the Oakland Hills fire vividly.
“We left Gilroy at 3 (p.m.), we got to Oakland at 5. … By 6 o’clock we were on the fire line,” Amaro said. “When we finally got there to our assignments, there were fires on three sides of us, and the only way out was the one side we came in from.”
The burning neighborhood trees, some as tall as 200 feet, made a towering wall of flame, Amaro said. The wind, spreading the fire, was so strong “you couldn’t even stand up straight. You had to lean into the wind.” The crew held their ground, but the fire claimed “all the blocks in front of us and to the sides of us.
“At 7 in the morning, we were relieved,” Amaro said. “At 7 that night, we were assigned to mop up.”
Gilroy firefighters are far from the only ones in this region battling the conflagrations down south. The California Department of Forestry’s ranger unit for this region has sent 90 people, 13 fire engines, two bulldozers and more than one helicopter. Due to this exodus, six CDF stations in this ranger unit have been left unstaffed.
The ranger unit, 1.3 million acres in size, includes all of Santa Clara, Alameda and Contra Costa counties, plus areas west of Interstate Highway 5 in Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties.
