By Beth Bragg
Anchorage Daily News

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — As one of the worst weeks in Southern California history was winding down, Danny Hagan started to feel normal again.

He had spent 38 hours during a 40-hour stretch early in the week fighting a wildfire in Riverside, while his brother Jeff had been sent south to battle the Rice fire, one of the worst of the blazes that strafed San Diego.

The Hagan brothers, both graduates of Bartlett High who now live in California, know better than most how fire can savage a land best known for its glamor and glitter.

Before he took a break to take a telephone call from a reporter Friday afternoon, Danny Hagan took part in a brief ceremony with firefighting colleagues in Riverside.

"We just had a moment of silence," he said. "Five firefighters died one year ago today."

The five died in the Esperanza fire in Riverside, where the Hagans both work as firefighters and paramedics.

Twelve months later, the brothers were back in the heat of things. By the end of the week Jeff was enjoying some time off, while Danny was standing guard as smoke from the south grew closer and more ominous.

"I'm standing in the parking lot of the station looking at smoke right now," he said.

Farther south, a number of Alaska firefighters and eight volunteers from the Red Cross of Alaska had traveled to San Diego and Lake Arrowhead to offer what help they could.

Alaska Red Cross spokeswoman Kelly Hurd said several volunteers are working at evacuation centers, where thousands of people have found shelter after fires chased them from their homes.

Five people from the Alaska Division of Forestry are in the San Diego area. And Tom Kempton, spokesman for the Anchorage Fire Department, is shooting photos and video for the news media and escorting reporters to the fire line at the Grass Valley and Slide fires near Lake Arrowhead.

"There's 3,000 people in a shelter just down the hill from here," Kempton said. "Three hundred to 350 homes are gone."

He said the fires are small by Alaska standards — the Grass Valley fire burned 1,140 acres and the Slide fire burned 13,700 &mdashl; but the damage to property has been enormous.

Kempton said he's seen million-dollar homes reduced to nothing but chimneys.

The Santa Ana winds gave the fires frightening power early in the week. Firefighters went into the teeth of the winds and fought from house to house, Kempton said.

"The losses would be much higher if not for their efforts," he said.

As of late Saturday, three dozen blazes had torched more than a half-million acres, killed seven people, and injured at least 70 firefighters, according to news reports.

Hundreds of birds and small animals were evacuated from San Diego's Wild Animal Park and the San Diego Chargers football team bolted from Qualcomm stadium, which became an evacuation shelter for thousands.

Fifty miles north in Riverside, Danny Hagan waited to see if the flames would find Riverside again.

He joined the fire department two years ago, a year after his brother. He's been following Jeff's path for several years now.

Jeff, 27, went to the fire academy at the College of the Siskiyous in Weed, Calif., after graduating from Bartlett in 1998.

"He knew he wanted to be a firefighter since he was little," said Danny, 25, and a 2000 Bartlett grad. "When I graduated, I figured I might as well too."

They spent a couple of years as seasonal firefighters in Shasta County for the state of California. When they heard there was a need for paramedics, they returned to Siskiyous to get their paramedic licenses. Now they work in Riverside, although they're seldom on the same engine.

Danny says their jobs keep their mother, Pat Barstow of Anchorage, on edge. When news of a California fire reaches Alaska, "we get lots of voice mails and text messages," he said.

Friday's moment of silence -- noted by crews throughout Southern California, not just Riverside -- was a somber moment, Danny said, but it didn't make him second-guess his choice of careers.

"It reinforces your will to be smart about things, to make sure you're aware of what's going on," he said.

If anything, it made him eager to return to work.

"It's frustrating sitting up here when you're hearing about all those homes that are burning in San Diego, but they have to keep some of us here," he said. "I'm looking at smoke right now as it's coming this way.

"You don't want to say that hopefully (the fire) moves here, but it would be nice to do something. Everybody I know wants to be down in San Diego where all those houses are being lost."

Copyright 2007 Anchorage Daily News
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News