By Andrew Silva
San Bernardino County Sun (California)
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
The Big Blowup of 1910. Mann Gulch. Storm King Mountain. Thirtymile.
For any wildland firefighter, those names denote disasters as well-known as the Titanic or the Hindenburg.
And now, the Esperanza Fire joins that heartbreaking list.
It was the worst single incident in wildland firefighting in more than 12 years. This year, 22 firefighters, pilots or volunteers have died in wildland blazes throughout the country.
Each disaster is examined, studied and analyzed to determine what happened, and to see if firefighters can glean any lessons that may save lives in the future.
“Being in the (U.S.) Forest Service and working with other scientists, there’s always the effort and hope that at least a small bit of good can come out of these tragic events,” said Bret Butler, a researcher with the Fire Science Laboratory in Missoula, Mont.
Butler worked on the investigation of the South Canyon Fire on Storm King Mountain near Glenwood Springs, Colo.
On July 6, 1994, 14 firefighters were killed when fire got below them in a drainage area and then exploded up the slope as a late afternoon cold front kicked winds up to 50 mph. The firefighters were overtaken as they tried to scramble up the steep hillside.
In each of the cases studied by generations of firefighters, the worst possible conditions — tinder-dry fuel, low humidity, powerful winds — combined into a lethal mix.
Human error also plays into it.
It’s from those disasters that the 10 Standard Firefighting Orders were developed, the unbreakable 10 commandments of wildland firefighting.
Among them: Keep informed on fire-weather conditions and forecasts; know what the fire is doing at all times; identify escape routes and safety zones and make them known.
In some of the infamous cases, some of those rules were ignored, and firefighters paid with their lives.
For example, on Storm King Mountain, the investigation found that firefighters weren’t informed about the approaching cold front and didn’t ask. Eight of the 10 standard orders were compromised.
It won’t be known for some time exactly what happened to the five men who died on Gorgonio View Road near Twin Pines on Oct. 26 in the Esperanza Fire.
Pushed by howling Santa Ana winds, a raging firestorm snuck up and engulfed them so quickly they couldn’t make it to their fire engine or even deploy their fire shelters.
The captain of U.S. Forest Service Engine 57, Mark Loutzenhiser, 44, was a 21-year veteran with a wife and five children. Jason McKay, 27, had nine years of experience and was a devoted family man looking forward to getting married.
They were men who took great pride in their training and wouldn’t put themselves or their colleagues at unnecessary risk, friends and family said.
“This just had to be a horrendous wall of flame,” said Bob Tinker, a retired battalion chief from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection who now teaches in Riverside Community College’s fire technology program. “For highly trained and experienced firefighters to not be able to deploy their fire shelters, it had to be fast.”
In 1910, the still-new U.S. Forest Service got its first and worst lesson in the dangers of wildfire when a scattered group of fires in Montana and Idaho merged into a still-unmatched holocaust that torched 3 million acres.
Poorly trained firefighters scattered through the forest, and 78 died.
Edward Pulaski became a legend when he herded 35 of them into a mine shaft, some at gunpoint, after the Big Blowup. Thirty survived, and Pulaski suffered burns trying to keep the mine shaft timbers from igniting.
California has had its share of firefighters killed in burnovers, including 25 in Griffith Park in 1933, 11 in Cleveland National Forest in 1943 and another 11 there in 1956.
The most recent previous fatality in San Bernardino National Forest was in 1971, when a firefighter was killed not far from where the men of Engine 57 died.
One of the most-studied disasters occurred on Aug. 5, 1949, on a slope rising from the Missouri River in Montana called Mann Gulch.
It was an eerie predecessor to Storm King Mountain, 45 years later.
Sixteen elite smokejumpers parachuted into a small gulch near the fire, and swirling winds ignited fires below the men. The blaze then raced uphill, reaching speeds that would cover the length of two football fields in a minute.
Three men survived; the other 13 died within two hours of the jump into the gulch.
Environmental factors are studied meticulously, including fuel types, slope and wind, but recent years have seen commanders held responsible for deaths.
On July 10, 2001, four firefighters died during the Thirtymile Fire in Washington. They were killed after they climbed into their fire shelters on a rocky slope. The shelters could not be closed properly, said Ken Frederick, spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
It appears a sudden downdraft, which can spread the fire outward like a hand slapping a puddle of water, pushed the fire faster than expected, Frederick said.
Still, the investigation was damning.
“Leadership, management, and command and control were all ineffective due to a variety of factors, such as the lack of communication and miscommunication, fatigue, lack of situational awareness, indecisiveness, and confusion about who was in control,” a report into the fire stated.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the Forest Service for five violations because of the deaths in the Thirtymile Fire.
Two years later, two firefighters died while clearing a helicopter landing area during the Cramer Fire in Idaho. Six Forest Service employees were punished, including a commander who served 18 months on federal probation for failures that led to the deaths. It is believed to be the first time a fire commander faced prosecution.
Experts are cautious about assigning blame, especially to men who died trying to protect the lives and property of others.
Wildland fires, especially with chalk-dry fuel and high winds, are a crapshoot of danger, despite the high level of training firefighters receive, the experts warn.
“One moment it can be calm, and the next minute it explodes,” said Tinker, of Riverside Community College. “When Mother Nature turns it into a blazing inferno, you may not have time.”