Firefighters battle fatigue

RUNNING SPRINGS, Calif. — Forty hours after he arrived in the San Bernardino National Forest, firefighter Peter Stanton stepped gingerly over a sleeping colleague and wondered what his next assignment was going to be.

“We’ve been going nonstop. I kind of hope they’re going to send us to sleep, but I’m pretty sure we’re going back out,” he said.

Fire crews, tankers and helicopters poured in to Southern California on Wednesday, bringing welcome relief to firefighters exhausted by as many as four straight days of fighting unusually ferocious blazes that were scattered across a huge swath of Southern California.

Stanton and his colleagues fought to save homes near the mountain resort area of Lake Arrowhead, and dragged hoses and drove fire engines into hellish infernos that only days before had been calm, quiet neighborhoods.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he had spoken with other authorities about “the need to rotate firefighters out,” giving them time to rest and recuperate between battles.

“One of the big hazards is exhaustion, which leads to impaired judgment,” Chertoff said.

In some cases, however, the firefighters called on to relieve exhausted colleagues were just as fatigued.

In northern Los Angeles County, for example, some of the fire crews that had all but contained a 38,000-acre wildfire near Santa Clarita were being dispatched to the Lake Arrowhead area.

“We have no idea how long we’ll be gone for,” said firefighter Al Taylor of the state Department of Forestry. “We just show up and try and have a good time.”

He and his colleagues planned to catch some sleep on the ride to their next assignment, a little more than 100 miles away.

In any case, firefighters are used to working to the point of exhaustion, said Calipatria Fire Chief Chris Hall, who worked 35 hours straight on the Lake Arrowhead fires, got a few hours rest and then was back on the lines, helping mop up hot spots on a narrow street in Running Springs.

“Firefighters are a particular breed,” said California Department of Foresty and Fire Protection Batallion Chief Doug Lannon, a 35-year veteran and a commander of the Witch firefighting effort. “We do not like to lose.”

One frustration for some of the exhausted firefighters has been the lack of people and equipment available to fight the blazes that began breaking out one after another, beginning Saturday.

Over the next few days, about 950 firefighters from the U.S. Forest Service will arrive to help fight fires, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Wednesday.

Some fire chiefs, however, were critical of responses so far.

“We’re not getting a lot of new resources … not nearly what we need,” Coronado Fire Chief Kim Raddatz said Wednesday.

A frustrated Orange County Fire Authority Chief Chip Prather on Tuesday said: “If we had more air resources, we would have been able to control this fire,” referring to the Santiago blaze.

“We’ve just been really, really short on resources,” said Stanton, who arrived in the Lake Arrowhead area Monday with a team of 20 firefighters.

A two-pronged fire in the area has destroyed more than 300 homes so far, and Stanton told of his crew having to simply abandon one small neighborhood in Running Springs when it became obvious that flames were going to overwhelm them.

Hours later, tired and in an almost dreamlike state, he described the scene:

“It was dark, the sky was glowing, the winds were blowing fiercely, and the longer we stayed the smokier we got,” he said. “The embers were getting bigger and thicker. I looked up, the entire ridge was glowing.

“You could tell the fire was coming closer and closer,” he said. “Then it hit the tops of the trees. They were popping, exploding, all in flames. The call went out to evacuate the entire command post.”

He paused for a moment then said, “I really haven’t slept.

“Am I making any sense or just rambling?” he asked.

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