Firefighters in West ‘give up our whole life all summer’
ANDERSON, California — Exhausted and hungry, about 12,000 firefighters are working 24-hour shifts battling deadly California wildfires and becoming resigned to fire seasons that start earlier, burn longer and unleash increasingly unpredictable blazes.
“There’s a lot going on up here, endless fires, and they’re all characteristically pretty much the same — windy, hot and dry,” firefighter James Sweeney said before heading out for a meal and a nap.
Sweeney, from St. Petersburg, Florida, is a “hotshot,” part of an elite team of highly trained wildland firefighters who spend fire season battling the fiercest blazes in the country.
Weary after more than a day on the fire lines, the 43-year-old said that when his Gila, New Mexico-based crew does leave California, he expects to go north into Oregon, where new fires are kicking up.
“These days, it’s crazy,” he said. “We give up our whole life all summer.”
Crews made progress over the weekend on the Carr Fire near Redding, about 230 miles north of San Francisco. But it was still threatening thousands of homes and was not expected to be fully contained until mid-August at the earliest.
The fire, which has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes, burned virtually unchecked Sunday as fire crews surveyed a small town that was reduced to an ashy moonscape of blackened trees and smoldering rubble.
The death toll climbed to six — the latest victim, who was not identified, did not evacuate despite receiving a warning, Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said Sunday.
Authorities worried that another forecast for high winds could fan the flames.
“Right now, it’s going everywhere. We still have a lot of open line,” said Anthony Romero, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “Any event could bring this back up again.”
Keswick, a mountain town of about 450 people, was almost wiped out. The San Bernardino County Fire Department was called in to tamp down smoking piles of debris amid downed electricity lines.
The flames laid waste to about 25 blocks, and the “mop up” work was likely to take days, Capt. Doug Miles said.
The latest tally showed at least 517 structures destroyed and 135 damaged by the fire, Romero said. A count by The Associated Press found that at least 300 of those structures were homes.
For many of the firefighters slamming down 9,000-calorie meals between shifts, the nonstop effort has become routine.
Last year, a fast-moving series of fires in Santa Rosa, just north of San Francisco, and elsewhere in Northern California killed 44 people and destroyed more than 8,000 structures. December’s Thomas Fire near Santa Barbara burned almost 440 square miles, becoming the largest wildfire in California history.
In his 19 years on the job, Cal Fire Capt. Chris Anthony said the most significant change is that hotter, drier conditions now mean that firefighters are trained to take a “tactical pause” to reconsider before charging in against the flames.
“Fire has become a lot more unpredictable,” he said. “In the past, we could plan, but these days, a fire can take a sudden and deadly turn.”
That’s what happened Thursday, when the fire near Redding pivoted and exploded in size, taking down hundreds of homes and killing five people, two of them firefighters. Another firefighter was killed earlier in the month battling a giant fire near Yosemite National Park, and a second firefighter died there Sunday while part of a crew removing brush and other fuel near the fire’s front lines.
Firefighter Jason Campbell was on the front lines Thursday near Yosemite when the Carr Fire destroyed his home, an RV and a boat near Redding. Redding Police Chief Roger Moore also lost his home.
Capt. Jarrett Grassl, a 19-year veteran who works for the Higgins Fire District in Northern California, said his crew ran into homeowners trying to save their properties. The threat to homes reflects the shrinking divide between wilderness and urban areas.