By Demian Bulwa
The San Francisco Chronicle (California)
Copyright 2006 San Francisco Chronicle
All Rights Reserved

"Burnovers" such as the one that killed four firefighters Thursday near Palm Springs should never happen, according to those who train for and fight wildfires.

But they will happen, because wildfires are unpredictable.

"We train and train that if you are entrapped, you messed up — that situational awareness failed somewhere," said Rose Davis, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, a support center for those fighting wildfires around the country.

However, Davis said, "the problem with being an armchair quarterback is that we can't see through their eyes. We can't see the decision-making process. There really are situations that happen too fast."

The firefighters were killed, and a fifth was critically injured, when flames pushed by hot, dry and unpredictable Santa Ana winds swept over them near their engine and a home they were protecting, the U.S. Forest Service said.

News of the deaths spread quickly among firefighters in the Bay Area. It hit especially hard in the Novato Fire Department, which on Sunday will mark the third anniversary of the death of 38-year-old firefighter Steven Rucker, who was killed when a wildfire swept over him in San Diego County.

"It's really opened up some emotional wounds," said department spokeswoman Sandy Wargo.

"It's like someone punching you in the stomach," said Ron Gesner, a battalion chief with the Contra Costa County Fire District and a member of on-call teams that can be dispatched to fires around the country. "Because you know it could be any one of us. We just remind each other, 'Keep your guard up. Be on top of your game.'"

Gesner recalled that he was the safety officer at a fire near Susanville (Lassen County) in 1999 that blew up. In five minutes, he said, flames that had reached four or five feet off the ground became a 150-foot wall that blasted across Highway 139, melting the asphalt along the way.

Caught off guard, Gesner and other firefighters sprinted to a safety zone — something everyone who battles wildfires is taught to establish ahead of time.

"This is a dangerous business, and we will never be able to make this business 100 percent safe," Gesner said. "All firefighters know this. We try to learn lessons that will make us incrementally safer."

Deaths of firefighters overtaken by flames have steadily decreased over the years, according to a U.S. Forest Service study in 2004. The agency found that an average of more than six firefighters a year were killed by flames from 1933 to 1956, while two per year died from 1995 to 2003. These so-called entrapment deaths accounted for 35 percent of all fatalities from 1933 to 2003 among all wildland firefighting agencies combined.

The reasons for the decline, experts say, include better training and tactics; advancements in protective equipment, such as heat-deflecting personal shelters; and better technology, such as satellite mapping and the use of remote meteorological stations to track the course of a fire and the weather that might affect it.

Wildfire training relies heavily on learning from past incidents. The results of investigations into incidents such as the one near Palm Springs are distributed around the country. More informally, those on the front lines trade stories on a Web site, firefighterclosecalls.com.

The training concentrates on managing risk. Firefighters are taught to consider every factor that might affect a wildfire — from the type of vegetation that is burning to the weather, from the fatigue of crew members to the condition of their tools. Fire crews must always choose safety zones — a body of water or a parking lot, for instance — and escape routes.

But fires are unpredictable. They even create their own weather.

"Ultimately, the fire is going to do what it wants to do," said Chris Morgan, a fire prevention specialist at the Morgan Hill headquarters of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

"Today it's phenomenal what's out there in terms of technology and equipment," he said. "The bottom line is, people still get killed."

Deadly wildfires

Here's a list of the nation's deadliest wildfires for firefighters:
-- Griffith Park Fire, Calif., 1933, 47 acres, 25 firefighters killed
-- Rattlesnake Fire, Calif., 1953, 1,340 acres, 15 firefighters killed
-- South Canyon Fire, Colo., 1994, 1,856 acres, 14 firefighters killed
-- Mann Gulch Fire, Mont., 1949, 4,339 acres, 13 firefighters killed
-- Hauser Creek Fire, Calif., 1943, 13,145 acres, 11 firefighters killed
-- Inaja Fire, Calif., 1956, 43,904 acres, 11 firefighters killed

The CDF said it does not list fires prior to 1932 because records are unreliable.