By Jeff Horwitz
San Bernardino County Sun (California)
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
As the Hopi Indian firefighter climbed to his feet, his knees started to buckle from dehydration, heat and fatigue.
His crewmates grabbed him and soaked the firefighter with a garden hose from a nearby home. He was sidelined for the rest of the day.
The incident was on Saturday, but the situation remained precarious on the front lines of the Sawtooth Complex Fire on Sunday.
A humid 103 degrees doesn’t qualify as temperate. But for firefighters battling the blaze, it was still an improvement over Saturday’s damp 107.
A week into fighting the fire, near-record temperatures and rising humidity have coupled to make for parching — and potentially even more dangerous — conditions for firefighters.
As of 8 p.m. Sunday, the fire was 70 percent contained, but hand crews have been working for days — in some cases around the clock — and are now battling exhaustion.
“It doesn’t get this hot in Northern Arizona,” said Dewayne Quochytewa, squad boss for a Hopi crew brought in to fight the fire. On Sunday afternoon, his squad was napping in the shade of their bus.
On Saturday, he and his crew were assigned to a 16-hour shift mopping up the Sawtooth Complex Fire on the western edge of the Morongo Valley. Around noon, the squad boss said, his crew took a break for lunch but no shade was to be found — the fire had incinerated all of the large vegetation two days before.
“One guy almost went down with dehydration,” Quochytewa said, referring to the Hopi firefighter who couldn’t continue Saturday.
The conditions are more than an annoyance, said Daymond Center, a line-safety officer for the Sawtooth fire. And they come as the work for the firefighters is growing more physically demanding.
“It’s a huge factor,” he said of the heat.
“After a few days, it builds up. Then you add the humidity, the extreme terrain those guys are working on, it starts stacking up against you.”
Although Center did not have the numbers at hand, he said some firefighters had already been hospitalized for dehydration.
“Some guys are seasoned vets. Some guys, it’s their first fire,” Center said.
“They need to understand that it’s not a sprint. We have to pace ourselves, because if you drop, you’re not useful for the rest of the day.”
As much as sun sickness, Center said, he and the Sawtooth Complex’s five other line-safety officers are now inspecting the lines for firefighters too tired to work safely. It’s typically about a week into a fire when crews become more susceptible to accidents, he said.
“They’re not paying attention to their footing, and you see more falls,” he said.
“Anybody getting tired starts making minor mistakes.”
There’s not much point in complaining, said Johnnie Namingha, a line worker in the Hopi crew.
“It comes with the job,” Namingha said. “You do your best to deal with it.”
Jeff Covey and Larry DeSantiago, inmates on a state Department of Corrections crew from Hemet, said they had never cut fire lines under conditions as punishing as those in Whitewater Canyon on Sunday.
Still, both said, they enjoyed the work. “It’s more free than being behind the wall,” Covey said.
“It grows on you,” DeSantiago said on his off day at the staging area. He was wearing flip-flops because hiking across the still-smoldering slopes had given him matching two-inch blisters on the tops of his feet.
DeSantiago said he will be on the inmate fire crew for three more years. Once he’s a free man, he wants to join a civilian crew. Saving people’s homes is ample compensation for the rugged work, he said. “You feel the fatigue, but you also feel the community’s appreciation,” he said.