The Fires of October 2003

This is a relatively short, 12 minute video compiled from videos I had taken during the 2003 "Grand Prix" and "Old" Fires of October in San Bernardino County.

What follows is a repost of a blog I wrote in October 2008 about this topic of the Fires of 2003. I couldn't really go into much more of the story than this post! Then it was 5 years, now it is almost the 8th anniversary of theses events;


I was on the Internet watching with interest about the annual firestorms that have become as normal down in our old area of Southern California, as the leaves turning gold up here.

Rewind to November 1981 and I was a new employee of San Bernardino County Animal Control, and just a little over a year before there had been the devastating Little Mountain fire that had taken out most of the homes in the North end of San Bernardino. So most of the people working there then had their stories of all seen and done during those fires. For many it had been the biggest event to be involved with in their entire lives. Back then and for many years, fires happened in the late summer and while most were quick brush fires, seldom did the fires just keep coming with the mass devastation to San Bernardino County that there has been since the summer of 2003.

Of course many things have changed to make it to get to where it is now. Whether it is due to global warming or the continued evolving of the Earth isn't the topic here.
But the climate had changed in the area. I remember when I was in elementary school we were barraged with the impending ice age that was being predicted.
But I also recall summers that had changed over the years from dry heat to almost always moist and thunder stormy for much of the summer months. I remember winters that went from what seemed like rain at least once a week all winter to maybe a week or less max for all the fall and winter.
So all the trees and plants in the area would be green in the spring and brown in the mid summer. With the change in weather patterns that became green in the winter with the rains and dead and brown most of the rest of the year!
In the mountains the continuing drought caused the forests to be susceptible to bugs and disease. It apparently went on pretty much unnoticed for many years by most people and agencies. Lots of dead trees here and there.

Now we're up to early 2003. The dead trees are noticed. It was estimated back before all the fires began to happen in May 2003 that the forest was as much as 80% dead in sections, with the overall forest health at over 60% dead trees. Jokes were made about the "California Golden Pine" in reference to all the dead trees in the San Bernardino mountains.
So committees were formed, hearings were held, what would be the 'worst case scenario' since so many people were now full time residents of the mountain communities? I attended several of those hearings, the biggest was a day long think and discuss tank at the Lake Arrowhead lodge and was put on by a formed organization called the Mountain Area Safety Task force (MAST). With representatives from local and state law enforcement, fire departments, local and state road and highway departments and community leaders, scenarios were discussed, evacuation plans were devised and everybody mainly hoped for the best.

The scenario that became the 'model' as most plausible to occur was this, mountain resident decides to remove the dead tree in his yard. While cutting it down, since this citizen is not equipped to properly and safely remove a tree, a section of it falls on any nearby power lines and causes the lines to arc igniting the tinder dry dead tree. The fire spreads very rapidly and other nearby dead grasses and trees also ignite. It was anticipated that this scenario would be out of control in less than 20 minutes if there were any breezes at the time. Still handle-able for a few hours with minimal structure loss with no winds. No one was anticipating the annual strong Santa Ana winds in the equations.

M.A.S.T. getting into action, has the four main highways up the mountains closed and they become one way, down, to facilitate evacuations. The mountain school buses would evacuate any and all summer camps in the areas being evacuated, then assist with civilian evacuations of those effected areas.

That was the general plan anyway. Cal-Trans left piles of fold up barriers at all the major intersections to facilitate road closures. People were told via the press, and on local TV and radio stations to be ready 'just in case'. Nobody expected the entire mountains to ever have to be evacuated, just areas at a time with the Lake Arrowhead area as a likely first fire spot.

The first event occurred in June 2003 below the Running Springs area and started almost halfway up the mountain from the Highland area. It was bad but was pretty quickly handled with only some evacuations required. A second fire in the almost same area of Running Springs in early September '03 was MUCH worse with most of the village evacuated and this fire was to be the start of the worst fire season in San Bernardino County for several years.

It started on September 5th and if I'm remembering correctly it began with the classic smoker throwing out a still lit cigarette, it lands in the dry weeds and with the winds from passing vehicles to fan it, starts a fast moving grass fire. This time though, the grass starts the dead trees and between the grass and trees it pretty quickly works its way up the mountains towards Running Springs. With all the dead growth in the areas, no chances were taken. Very quickly mandatory evacuations were ordered. Our department was also mobilized to help evacuate peoples pets and livestock. Minimal staffing was kept in the valley with everyone else being sent to the fire. The staff from the valley met at the first ICP (Incident Command Post) with the two mountain officers already working at the evacuations. As the fire burns through the area of the Command Post, it gets moved up the mountain area to a flat lot in the Running Springs area itself. So up we all went got set up and then start coordinating evacuations with transfers of those pets to the shelter for housing. People were sent out in teams of two per truck to facilitate rapid removal of whatever animals were at the residence they were sent to. Luckily there were only a few large livestock animals that had to be moved.
That fire became a four day event. Staff were assigned for 24 hour coverage although most all animal evacuations were taken care of the first day and a half. The new Animal Control "Command Post" consisting of a 24 foot long toy hauler trailer with a service radio and generator installed, was used for the first time. Before that, all nighters such as these were spent sleeping in the front seat of a standard sized truck cab. NOT FUN as I know from my personal experience! I'll always wish the county had gotten extended cab trucks back then!

So, that fire was a first test of responses, plans and such, and I know a lot of people were hoping the worst had occurred.

Turned out it was only a small taste of what was to happen in the fall, when the Santa Ana winds always blow.

The rest of the summer there were fires all over the area. Some good sized ones but no "big" ones. In late October 2003 just as now, the Santa Ana's were blowing pretty strong. At the bottom of the Cajon Pass wind gusts can and often do, exceed 60 mph. It was a "Indian Summer" warm day with the winds blowing pretty strongly. Early on a Saturday afternoon I heard about a fire that had started in the area of the Old Waterman Canyon road which was the old highway that was bypassed by the new highway up the mountain. Later it came out that it had been intentionally set by a guy in an older Chevy Astro van. People had seen it being started but with the winds it went from small to totally out of control in a about two hours.
Just 6 hours later it had spread and was working rapidly up towards the town of Crestline. By that evening it was mandatory evacuations, and within three days the entire mountain from Crestline to Big Bear was being evacuated. This fire was given the name "The Old Fire" for the point of origin in Old Waterman Canyon. Less than a week later it was evacuations for EVERYBODY that lived in the mountains. Many residents were caught off guard and many more were caught while down in the valley and were unable to return home. People in many areas had just a few hours to pack up and get out. As most thought it would be just for a few hours, they didn't concern themselves with packing up the pets and taking them with them.

As the fire progressed, many areas of the mountains lost all power. Pets were locked up in homes with no food or water available but what was left out for them or the dogs and cats that could drink from the toilets, many exotic fish were lost in tanks with no filters or power. With owners not able to return, calls began to come in with requests to get the left behind pets out. The department had been working 24/7 to evacuate animals, now it was stepped up as much as possible. Prior permission was gotten to as carefully as possible break in to most of the homes to gain access to the confined animals. Of course, some access was more careful than others, the one I remember being told about was the residence where the front door broke free falling into a glass coffee table and glass shelves breaking a lot of items. Then after getting the animals the door was secured as good as possible until a local wandering black bear got into the house through the broken front door.

As the days went on several homes were entered only to find that the pets had died from lack of food and water. The Humane Society of the United States rolled in and with their crews, they helped take up the slack by the now exhausted staff of the department. As the fire had burned through most of the western most communities by now, the mission shifted to getting food and water for house bound pets and no longer removal. So the teams continued to get into homes, and would leave enough food for several days. Although several Red Cross Evacuation Centers were set up in the general area, many mountain residents were being housed at the old Norton Air Force Base facility due to its proximity.
An area was set up for holding owned dogs and cats there also. Many owners were shocked and upset when they found out that Red Cross centers would not accept pets with the owners. So at those facilities there were problems with people keeping pets in their cars while staying there.

Glen Helen, a county park most famous for concerts and for having the US Festival in the 1980's, is at the intersections of the freeways I-15 and I-215 at the base of the Cajon Pass. This became the main "Fire Camp" and became the joint command post for most all the involved agencies. It was an impressive site seeing hundreds of tents, thousands of firefighters, as well as a city worth of trailers, motor homes and equipment for the fighting of the two giant area fires. The Sheriff's department rodeo grounds at Glen Helen became the area for storing livestock from Devore to Big Bear, about 60 miles of communities. Even a Zoo from Big Bear had several of their large animals stored for a time during the fires when Big bear itself was evacuated.

In the end it was the weather that stopped the fires. It lasted until just after Halloween a little over two weeks if I'm remembering correctly. I do remember being told by a Fire Commander that if the weather hadn't gotten colder and rainy and the winds had not died down, they were not going to be able to stop it until it burned all the way to Big Bear. It was a fire so big it couldn't be stopped by all the people and technology they had for fire fighting.

For us, well Stacy started out with the rescue teams then was sent to the livestock holding facility at Glen Helen as it was being set up. There she was in charge of the facility. I was on some of the rescue teams in the Big Bear area, transported supplies to staff in the valley and the mountains, transported livestock to Glen Helen. I worked the Com Center emergency response command center which was a room with representatives from all the area agencies each with a desk and a phone to take calls or questions from the public or the media, answered many, many phone calls from concerned people from wanting to know about their pets to people from all over the state and country wanting to volunteer or help.

Our daughter Laura was working at the Rancho Cucamonga shelter then, so she was working there and transporting animals.

It was over 6,000 animals that were taken in for the fires. Over 150 large animals and goats were kept at Glen Helen, with many more sent as far as 100 miles away by their owners through private transports.

Yes it was lots of memories for us and everybody involved. Would I say it was our shining moments that defined us in the department? I wouldn't, as it was just a few weeks out of my 25 year career there, and I had a lot of 'adventures'!

Yes there was excitement, a lot of aggravation with our own department, a lot of lost sleep, and a lot of money made with all the mandatory overtime. I have video I took, news stories I recorded on the VCR at home, and several people got together photos of what they'd seen and people that wanted those got them.

I'm sure with the almost every year fires and evacuations new employees are getting their chances to have their memories to talk about a few years after.

Very Short Video of working at a call

It has been a while! All I can say is it got very busy the last couple of months and a very important relative passed away.

So, back to posting these videos and descriptions.

This very short video was taken in 2002 or 2003 I believe. I was called out to assist on this call since I was by now a supervisor and had a pick up truck instead of a 'dog truck' and carried cages and traps. I took the video at a house in Yucaipa, California, which was (and still is last time I checked on-line) a contract city.
It was the all too common call of too many cats in too small a house and family members were concerned to the point that they too action themselves.
The video is pretty self explanatory as videos go like this, I arrived and the guy was just going to catch and hold the cats. That NEVER worked because the cats would know 'somethin's up' and would scratch and bite to keep the person (or you) from from taking or putting them someplace they DO NOT want to go!
And when we got there we were to try and take 'charge' of the call and try to prevent the people from getting hurt too much. Situations like this one though, also common, were when citizens wanted the problem taken care of without ever going in their house.

Although not in the video, another ACO arrived and also helped take the cats from the house to the trucks. Bad part for the cats like these was that since they were almost all kind of 'wild' and in this case were picked up as "owner release" which meant they would generally be 'toast' as soon as they got to the shelter.

But this was the average kind of call everybody got every week, sometimes several times a week!