CENTER FOR ORAL AND PUBLIC HISTORY CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, FULLERTON. and TUCKER WILDLIFE SANCTUARY

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1 CENTER FOR ORAL AND PUBLIC HISTORY CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, FULLERTON and TUCKER WILDLIFE SANCTUARY NARRATOR: MARC GROSSMAN INTERVIEWER: Volker Janssen DATE: June 21, 2008 LOCATION: Modjeska Canyon PROJECT: 2007 SANTIAGO FIRE Today is June 21, It is four o'clock. We are in Modjeska Canyon. My name is Volker Janssen, and I'm here to talk with Marc Grossman, volunteer firefighter? Reserve. Reserve firefighter. With Station 16? Mm-hmm. And we are conducting this interview on behalf of the Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary Oral History Project. Marc, let's start talking a little bit about your life. When and where were you born? Born in Chicago. Do I have to tell you when? (laughs) Well, you don't have to if that's a secret. Tell me a little bit about growing up in Chicago. I don't remember much. Of course I was young. And we came out to California, so most of the time was spent in California. How old were you when you came over here? Probably ten. Nine, ten. So, not many childhood memories from Chicago? I just remember the snow. Probably stuck out the most because it was in striking contrast to Southern California?

2 Yeah. I just remember as a little kid playing in the snow, going to school in the snow. Did you live in the city, in the suburbs, or In the city. Right out of Chicago. Um, when you moved to Southern California, where did you settle down, your family? Originally we lived in Gardena. We lived in Gardena 'till I was I think sixteen, moved to the Valley, San Fernando Valley, lived there 'till I was eighteen, nineteen, and then I moved into Orange County. And I've been in Modjeska Canyon for twenty-eight years. Um, what was your life like as a teenager? Was that a suburban life? Did you were you drawn to nature, camping, hunting, fishing, that sort of thing? Yeah. I did a lot of camping when I was younger. Uh, but I was brought up in the city, more so than the country. Were you comfortable with the city? Were you fine with that? Yeah. It's just more fun in you know, in the country than it is in the city. Was your family, were they drawn to nature? No. Did they take you to the Sierras? No. No. Did all that on my own. Um, what were your favorite things to do back then? I mean, was there any way to foresee that you would become, uh, a firefighter at some point? No. It was all by accident. How did it happen? I bought this house back in 1980, and my house, of course, backs up to the fire station. And I moved in here. The first week in the house, some guy stuck his head up over the wall and said, "Do you want to be a fireman?" And I said, "Are you kidding?" You know, I didn't think that that you know, I thought you had to go to school. So he said, "If you join, we give you a badge, you get a uniform, and you could chase the girls." And so I said I would join. It was, of course, many years ago. And in that time there was not training, not as much training as we do have today, so I joined and went through a physical, went to the drills, and you learned as you went. What were you doing at the time professionally? 2

3 I was in sales. I used to work for a company called Prince Gardner Leather Goods, and I was a sales representative. And they were located where? Main office, St. Louis, but we had an office out here in L.A. And so you commuted from Modjeska Canyon into L.A.? Yeah. I had a territory that I would of course drive around the city and go to accounts, department stores. How did you end up moving to Modjeska Canyon? I mean, you said you had lived in the city and you were fine with the city, you weren't, uh, particularly drawn to sort of rural isolation. How did that happen? Again, as a younger person, I did do a lot of camping. I did like the outdoors. When I was young I used to live in a canyon called Box Canyon, which is like near Simi Valley, San Fernando Valley. And, of course, I enjoyed that, the solitude of living in a canyon. As I got older or a little later after that, I lived in Burbank, California, in Griffith Park, and so I had the whole Griffith Park. After Griffith Park, I moved to Orange County, and I lived in Huntington Beach. I did really I did not really like the beach life. It was always cold in the morning and foggy and overcast. And I took a ride out into the canyons one day, and I saw a house out here in Modjeska, and I said, "Oh, I kind of like that." So I bought it. You took a ride, meaning your bicycle? No, I drove, drove in the car. You saw It wasn't this house that you saw, right? No. It was the house that was next door, but it was an old rickety old house, and I put in an offer on that house. At the time I'd asked my parents to loan me some extra money, and they did, and I was so excited I had them come out to take a look at the house. They looked at the house and they said, Oh, my God, this is a barn and a firetrap. I can't believe you want to buy this. But, you know, again, they saw something different than I saw. And that strengthened your resolve to buy it? (chuckles) Yeah, to some degree I guess it could have. And that was back in 1980, you say? Nineteen seventy-nine, actually. 3

4 Nineteen seventy-nine. Uh, what was your first reaction to impression of the people here? The people in the canyon? Mm-hmm. I could say they're a little different, but they're really not different. Uh, I guess in the canyon the people are a little more laid back, but relatively speaking, I would assume people are the same everywhere. Um, did you make friends immediately, or did that take some time? I could imagine maybe, you know, you were starting to fix up the house. Did people come by to offer help? (chuckles) Uh, when I first moved in, there were some other people who were recent, you know, people who also had moved into the canyon. So, yes, we became friends. There was a certain group that lived around me that were all approximately my age, so nice group of people, you know, friends. Did you start to use this area for recreation, to sort of become your your ground? Did you do mountain biking, hiking, that sort of thing? Yeah, again, we back up to the mountains here, Cleveland National Forest, so you could go hiking any time you want. You could walk the street any time in the evening without worrying about somebody driving by and shooting you with a gun. Uh, if anything happens while you're walking down the street it would be a neighbor saying hi. So the whole lifestyle here is a little different. Like I said, the people are a little different, but basically they're the same. Tell me a little bit how they're different. The atmosphere is different. So if we put you in a different atmosphere where it's less stressful, you're going to adapt to that atmosphere. I'm sure if you took somebody who lived in Santa Ana of course, they're not going to like that comment and we put them here in Modjeska Canyon, they would kind of have a more relaxed way of living. Give me some examples about how people live more relaxed. Well, in the evening, if you're in the canyon, you'll see a little later in the evening as it cools off today's a hot day in the evening you'll see people walking down the street. It's pretty common. In the evening, people are going for a walk. During the day, or during the early evening, you might walk over to the park. You'll see a group of people in the park. You'll see them there with their dogs. People will say hi to you. Driving through Santa Ana, you don't even want to roll down your window and say hi because somebody will take it as a bad thing and shoot you. So, again, the life in Modjeska is very pleasant. 4

5 It seems like it's a it's sort of a safe public space when you're out and you're amongst neighbors. Yeah. In a small community, people tend to, uh, to kind of work together more. They're a little more friendly, they work together. If somebody lives in the canyon and they want total privacy, people will give them their privacy. So you kind of have a little more in the way of options here, I think, than you would in the city. You said that you, you know, you had gone to camping, hiking, that sort of thing. Do you think people in this community generally are more bound to nature? I would say that. I mean, you pay a price. You're going to pay more for your house out here. You have to drive another twenty minutes possibly to get to your house. When I first moved in here, people said, Oh, my God, that's such a long drive. I says, "Yeah, my driveway's longer than yours." But once I get to the canyon I'm home, even though I have another fifteen or twenty minute drive. And there are people who have moved here that this is not for them. You know, maybe they have children in school and they're having to run their child from one place to the other. And for them, maybe they say, Oh, you know what, this is too much of a drive, we're too far away, it's too remote, my family needs to be in the city somewhere. So it's up to the individual, or individuals. You mentioned kids, and earlier on the benefit of chasing girls in the firefighting uniform. Is this a good place for chasing girls? I mean, it's a very small community. (chuckles) Terrible place. (chuckles) Terrible place. There's no women here, except for married women. Um, you work as a reserve firefighter. Yes. You said first that there wasn't all that much training in the beginning. It sounds to me like you had to sort of learning by doing. Tell me a little bit about your first firefighting experiences here. Uh, after I joined the fire department, of course it was explained to me that we trained every Wednesday night, and you need to come to our drills, participate, and you will learn as you go. Well, very soon after I was on the fire department, the fire alarm goes off. I respond. I jumped on the back of the fire engine. We responded to what we call a TC, a traffic collision, at the corner of Santiago and Modjeska. I stepped off the back of the fire engine when I got there, and I looked, and I saw a car upside down, and I saw a gentleman hanging out of the car, and I looked over at him, and I could see there was like blood where his eye is. And his friend came over to me immediately, because I was standing there, and he said, "Is my friend going to be okay?" And my initial response was, "I don't know." (chuckles) And I felt pretty inadequate. 5

6 And at that time I realized that I I'm going to have to take it upon myself to learn a little more so I'm better equipped to handle these situations. And I, at that point, signed up for what we call an EMT class, emergency medical technician, and started to get a little more training. Of course, Orange County Fire now, you know, we just don't hire people that put them through extensive training so that when something happens they're better equipped than I was. But when I did this, it was twenty-eight, almost thirty years ago, and we didn't quite get the training we maybe we should have had back then. Did that person turn out to be okay? I have no idea. (chuckles) Were you mostly employed in these sort of accidents, or what other moments do you recall where you were called out that sort of Well, we had a local resident who lived down the canyon, who was a very elderly lady who tended to drink a lot, and she would drink and then she would call 911, and we would have to go put her back to bed. That was kind of one of our everyday calls, you might say. But the call could be anything. It could be anything from the cat in the tree, to the fire, to the shooting, uh, to the you name it. Was that the shooting in Santa Ana? No, no. We don't that's not our area, per se. Okay. And we usually don't have shootings here. Um, and you had your share of firefighting. Yes. What did you learn over the course of the years about firefighting out in these in these hills, then? I assume there's a lot that one sort of learns that's local knowledge here, right? Yeah. Being in Modjeska Canyon, and being here for, you know, thirty years, and participating in the fires, the fires somewhat always do the same thing. There's kind of a regularity, and there's things that we need to look at. We have not had a bad fire back here for over a hundred years, so we had a lot of dead vegetation that was really prime to burn. This last fire, you know, we had a you know, our winds came up, the Santa Ana winds. We were on fire alert, and somebody went out there, set a fire, and all hell broke loose. Um, is part of your job, or has part of your job been to, uh, keep the community, uh, aware about fire hazards? 6

7 We do every year have a little get-together for the canyon, and we discuss these things. We discuss the fact that where do we live, what could happen? If we did get a fire, what do you need to do? And, of course, my attitude, because I'm the guy who always has to get up and say, Here's what we want. We want you to get the heck out of here. Your life is not worth it. And typically we always have somebody during a fire situation where they think that they could get up on their roof, in their shorts, with a little garden hose, and protect their house. And they're just in a dream world at that point, because when that fire comes through, your little hose on the roof is not going to help you. You're not going to be able to even find your way off the roof if the smoke comes, because it'll basically block everything out and you won't be able to see anything. You won't even be able, like I said, get off your roof. You could get killed up there. If you live in a place where there's a fire and the fire is coming, your place is to be out of that house, out of that area. What other things did you try to teach people? I can imagine that doesn't that that's not easy when it comes to, you know, arguing for defensible space, and keeping the vegetation down, and cleaning up around your property. Are those the kind of things that go down easy with the community or Uh, being a reserve fireman, I don't deal with that myself. The paid people come in and they do the inspections, and I'm sure if you're not legal they'll write you up a ticket and you need to take care of that. But everybody who lives in the canyon understands that if, you know, you don't have a defensible space, that, you know, your house might not survive. Again, this last fire, when we came back in to start putting out the fires that had started, you know, during this event you know, you had to pick a house that you thought you could save. Not only would you you had to pick a house that you think you could save, but you had to be safe, you know, trying to defend that house. Um, how would you judge your own property in terms of fire safety? Well, since I back up to the fire station, you know, again, I've got to be relatively safe. And we do have the hill behind us. But, you know, I'm in a pretty secure spot right here in the canyon. This, um, log house, is this more prone to fire? No. Actually less, in one respect. Again, when you try to get insurance, you tell them I have a log house and I live in a canyon, they're going to say, Are you crazy? You know, fire hazard, fire hazard. We don't want to insure you. But, again, my house is an eightinch log, so it takes a long time for that fire to penetrate an eight-inch log. For safety for safety reasons, whatever, if the fire came and I had to seek refuge, I'd seek refuge in this log house. Some people would think, Oh, my God, the log house is going to burn and I'm going to die. But by being in the house, and the log being eight inches thick, even with fire outside, it would take a long time for that log house, or that log wall, to burn through to the point where I was in danger. 7

8 Your front porches and back porches, though, they might probably be Decks bad problem. You have those. Yeah. I have a deck. And that's what happens in many cases. Your deck will catch fire, and if your deck catches fire, then the rest of the house is going to catch fire. Um (pauses) hold on a second. I think we can start again. Over the years that you've been here, do you feel that the fire risks have increased, that it has gotten worse? No, I would say it's the same. Again, we're in a drought period, so that does make things worse. When you're you're going to have a rain, and you're going to have a lot of, you know, grasses that come up because the amount of rain we get. And then people will go, Oh, my God, all those flashy fuels, the grasses. If we get a fire, those grasses are going to make the fire run real fast. Flashy fuels, you know, more dangerous. You know, it just doesn't make any difference. It just depends on what happens, what time of day, what time of year, what type of weather you have, where the fire starts. All those things you add up, and that's going to tell you what's going to happen. Do you feel that global warming is having an impact on the fire season? I would have no idea. Personal impression? No. I really don't know. Not my field. Um, does the development on the north and south end of the Santiago Canyon concern you, for the encroachment of these tract homes? It does in the sense that it takes things away from us. We live in the canyon, we're remote, we like it that way, you know? Someone says, What's it like living in the canyon? Sometimes I'll tell them, "Well, we have rattlesnakes, we have rocks that fall off the mountain. It's a terrible place. Don't come back here." That's how we keep everybody out of the canyon. But, again, as the development comes, it encroaches upon us and, uh, it takes away that kind of little privacy, the little remoteness that we have, and It's always a shame because we have something that's a big treasure, we're right here in Orange County, and we certainly don't want to lose it. Um, have you seen any development in the canyons that you watch with concern when it comes to housing development or I don't. Other people do. They're more of a more of the activist individual that I am not. We all have our things that we do. My thing is the fire department. How much time does this take of your weekly routine? 8

9 Uh, being part of the fire department, we train every Wednesday night, okay? You're there from, let's say, 6:30 to about ten o'clock. We have certain drills throughout the month where we do need to attend. There's a lot of training we need to get. I mean, it's not so time consuming that it takes away from your life, but, again, we could in the middle of this conversation, that fire alarm could go off and I'll say, See ya, I have to go. And sometimes it does go off at some very unopportune times, in the middle of dinner, the middle of the night, you know? And you jump up and you've got to go. And you realize when that alarm goes off, it's an emergency. I don't know who has the emergency, I just know it's an emergency. If I don't go, who's going to go? If it was my emergency, I would want people to show up and help me, especially my neighbors. Are these emergencies always in the canyons, or can you also be called someplace else? We could be called someplace else, but basically our role area would be basically within this canyon and a little outside the canyon. But we have certain units at our fire station. We have a patrol that we use for mountain rescues. We have a water tender that we use for everything in the sense that we have a big water truck. What was it? 1994? When was the Northridge earthquake? I can't remember. Nineteen ninety-four. Was it ninety-four? Anyways, the big earthquake in Northridge, they needed our water tender, so we got sent up all the way to Northridge, because they had no water pipes. The water pipes broke during the earthquake. So, again, that unit gets used in many different capacities. You also teach a couple of classes? CPR and first aid, and disaster preparedness. Who takes these classes? I teach doctors, I teach nurses, I teach everybody and anybody. I was at South Coast Hospital earlier this week. I was at UCI earlier this week. I did a drug and alcohol place just before I came in for this interview. Whether it's foster parents, parents, anybody. Disaster preparedness, do you think have you seen an increase? Have you seen that become more popular? You know, it has become more popular, but nothing as to what it should be. In my classes, I do the same thing. I say, "Where do we live? We live in Southern California. Can we have an earthquake? The answer is, well, of course we can. Might it be a bad earthquake? Of course it could be. We just had the earthquake in China just about what, a month ago? And I'm not sure of the figure, I'm guessing. Right now they're up to at least a hundred thousand people died. Could that happen to us? Certainly. Are we prepared? Absolutely not, you know? And I don't mean that as the fire department not prepared, I mean as individuals we're not prepared. If we have this earthquake, and you have no water to drink, what are you going to do?" 9

10 Do you think the biggest enemy here is complacency? Yeah, complacency, somewhat some ignorance. Uh, when they had the hurricane in New Orleans, did these people know the hurricane was coming? The answer is yes. They told them, Go to higher ground. Did people listen? Of course not. They said, Well, we lasted through the last one. I'm sure this one won't be so bad. Well, people died. They died for no reason at all, except for the fact they were not prepared. And, again, they did not listen to the warnings. Do you think complacency is more pronounced in suburban areas of Southern California than maybe here in the canyon community? You know, I would like to think that we in the canyon are a little better prepared for that, but I'm sure the answer's no. Uh, okay. Maybe we should start talking about, you know, the events up to the fire, and maybe in the months before, being in the fire department, you must have well, let's take a break first. [recorder off, then resumes] Let's start talking about the fire. So, talking a little bit about last year. As a fireman, you must have felt somewhat anxious with the coming of the fire season, the drought, the density of the fuel and the heat in summer already? No? I wouldn't use the term anxious. It comes every year, you get used to it. Okay, but you were on the alert then. Yeah, yeah. Especially when this fire started because we were doing patrolling at the time. So at the time that the fire started, you were driving around on the lookout, or Yeah, actually, yeah. When we have a severe weather system come in, where it's really hot, like it is today, and we have winds, Santa Ana winds, then Orange County Fire will have us patrolling, have us watching the canyon, looking for anything that happens. Not only us, but there are certain other individuals within the canyon that are part of the fire watch, and they'll be driving around patrolling, just looking for something that might happen so that if it does happen, that the response that we get on it is going to be real quick and be effective. Um, walk us a little through the events as they happened for you. Um, you were out on patrol? Yeah, I was actually on, uh I was on our patrol. We have a fire engine, we have a patrol which can also put out some fire, we have a water tender. And I do believe all those units were manned at the time. And we were patrolling I think we were 10

11 somewhere near Black Star Canyon, and we heard the call of the fire go down. So immediately, of course, we went as fast as we could to the base of the fire, where somebody had evidently started the fire. I think it might have been multiple fires they started. And that was at the Santiago Canyon Road, right? It was on Santiago Canyon Road, right past Silverado. What did you do then? We got there. As we got there, two or three other units got there at the same time, so we were part of the initial attack. We had some severe Santa Ana winds. I can't tell you how fast they were blowing, but they were blowing pretty hard. And that fire was just traveling, it was just moving. So we were part of the initial hose lay. We got our hose out, and we tried to put the fire out and move as fast as we could to keep putting the fire out. But, again, the winds were so severe that that fire just went flying. I mean, it no way we could And it moved away from you, right? Yeah. No way we could catch it. It was a great attempt on our part, magnificent hose lay, but all in vain because it was moving way faster than we were. And then were you assigned someplace else? That day or that evening, because that started, I think it was four o'clock in the evening, I'm not sure. But, again, we fought that fire until the evening, and once the fire was just gone it went to Irvine within probably minutes we abandoned-ed, I'll get it out here we abandoned our hose lay because it was worthless. We were not doing anything effective at that point. So, at that point, we kind of had to take more of a defensive mode, go into a defensive mode. We kind of took a step back, and we looked at what was happening. And now our new job was to make sure this fire did not jump Santiago Canyon and start going the other way. So that whole night we were out there on Santiago Canyon Road, and as the fire came down to Santiago Canyon Road, our job was to keep it from jumping to the other side of the road. Was it somewhat strange to see the fire come back, even if the Santa Ana winds were really blowing the other way? Again, we had very erratic winds, which was part of the problem we had with the fire. Um, and then the fire did jump the road. Where did that must that could not have happened where you were. Not exactly, but we're getting to the deployment story, per se. But what happened is, I guess it was the next day it's hard to remember what day was which, but I think it was Sunday on the next day. Again, our job all night long was to keep that fire from jumping 11

12 the road. And sometime the next day, which I'm assuming was Monday then and, again, please excuse me if I get my days wrong we were part of a group that was burning out on Santiago Canyon Road. What we were doing is letting the fire burn to Santiago so, again, it did not jump to go to the other side. And we were at the corner of Santiago and Modjeska, and that's what we were doing. So you were burning from east to west, towards Santiago Canyon Road? Uh Or were you on the west side of the road? Again, the street kind of turns there, so we could say east to west, that'd be fine. Okay. Uh, so the side where the olive trees are, on that side, you were going towards the road. We were burning away from the canyon, let's put it that way, okay? The fire was in the Whiting Ranch area. It was across from Santiago Canyon. We did not want the fire to jump the road and go into either Silverado or Modjeska Canyon, or Williams for that matter. And I was part of this group there were different groups but I was part of a group and we were making sure the fire didn't jump the road. Mm-hmm. And what happened then? After we got done with the job we were doing, where I was was pretty secure. And we really were not assigned to anything because we were on the initial attack so our job was kind of I don't want to say vague our job was to make sure the fire didn't jump the road. So, since our operation came to kind of a stop, we me and my crew on the patrol decided we would go behind back behind us on Santiago Canyon Road, back towards Silverado to see how everybody else was doing. And as we got, oh, you know, about a mile past Modjeska, we saw a strike team which would be five units, five engines, and the fire had already jumped the road and they were up there trying to put that fire out, that spot that had jumped the road. So when I saw that, we pulled up figuring that we would give them some assistance, and got my crew, we got hose packs on, we went up there to help them. They were having trouble with their hose, so we gave them a hand getting their hoses straight. Me and my crew got up to the top of the hill. There was as little confusion going on. And once we got up to the top of this little hill with this other crew, we were informed that our hose below us, the hose that they had already laid, blew a hole in it. And, basically, the fire was coming back at us from all three sides, and the fourth side was a straight drop-off right to the Santiago Canyon Road. So, again, we had a drop-off behind us, we had fire coming from the left, fire from the right, fire from right in front of us, and the captain on Engine 22 said that, uh, we were cut off, it would probably be a good idea to deploy our fire shelters and get down in our fire shelters to protect ourselves because we were about to be overrun by the fire. Of 12

13 course, at the time, I looked around and I thought to myself, Is he crazy? (chuckles) But, again, you know, you're not going to argue the point. It's not the time to argue. He must see something I don't see. He feels it's not safe. Did it look safe to you? Did it look like it might not be necessary? The fire was coming back at us. Where I was standing, where I was, I was relatively in what I would determine to be a safe area, okay? But there was more than just me there, okay? We had other people involved. And his decision to deploy the fire shelters was an excellent decision, because we were on the top of the hill, we had the fire coming at us, and we had no water, we had no protection. So the best decision would be to get into our fire shelters. But, again, in my situation, just getting there I wasn't part of this initial thing. We just jumped up there to help them. So everything happened so fast, and I looked around, figuring I was in a safe place. But, again, it wasn't as safe as it should have been, and, you know, I'm not going to argue. If he says deploy your fire shelter, the answer is deploy your fire shelter. I turned to the firefighter next to me, who was a girl, it was her first fire. I had told her to follow me, go everywhere I go, do what I do, I want you to stick by me. And here we were on her first fire, and we were just about to get overrun by the fire, which doesn't usually happen, of course. People get killed when they get overrun by the fire. So I had to turn to her and say, "Shelly, I need you to deploy your fire shelter. You know, the fire is going to make a run at us and we need to get safe here." So she did what she was trained. She pulled out her fire shelter, as everybody did. We got in our fire shelters and we got down on the ground. Um, explain this fire shelter to me. How does that work? Uh, sometimes we refer to them as a brown-and-serve bag. It's an aluminum foil type pup tent that you get in, you put it over you and it reflects the heat, and you'll just lay in that and hopefully it won't get so hot that you die. And once the fire passes because usually when the fire comes, it'll come relatively quickly, it'll burn everything around you, and then it will go by you. So, at that point, we had the fire that was making a run at us. We were, as I say, somewhat in a safe place because the fire had already burned there, so we were in an area that was not in a burnable area, but we were not so far away from the fire that we were not going to feel the heat and flames generated by the fire around us. So, because it wasn't totally safe, the captain on Engine 22 said we need to deploy our fire shelters, and then, of course, everybody did. You pulled your fire shelter out, you got in it, you laid on the ground, and you waited for the fire to burn through. Do you sort of hold the hold the tent down with your arms and legs, as opposed Yeah. And if a flame was to hit that shelter directly? Yeah. If the flame hit the shelter directly, again, it's going to be reflected from this aluminum foil tent that you're in. But part of the problem is, you're going to be dealing 13

14 with wind, because the fire creates its own wind. Plus, we had the wind generated by the fire because of the Santa Anas. So one of the key factors is, of course, yes, to hold your fire shelter down and stay in it because it's going to you're going to get a little beating while you're in there. And I had this girl next to me, so, you know, we need to communicate in our fire shelters, so I said to Shelly, "Oh, my God." I said, "Shelly, your dad is going to kill me." And all of a sudden, she started to laugh, which was good because, you know, then the fear kind of goes away. And she said to me, "Well, my sister's going to kill you also." (chuckles) So we were in our fire shelters having a good time. Everyone is in their own shelter, right? Right. Everybody's in their own shelter. It's not like you all you sort of see each other, so you have to yell at each other, but you're looking at the ground really. Um, my face is basically on the ground. You want to stay as low as you can to the ground because you're laying on it, of course. And it's a little cooler on the ground than it is the higher you get up. Because even in your fire shelter it builds heat up in there, okay? Yeah. So, again, we were having a great conversation and laughing and having a good time. But nobody else was making noise, so I felt a little uncomfortable with us joking around, because I'm sure people were a little petrified. So at one point I stopped talking, and there was total silence. And because the silence was too much for her, I all of a sudden heard next to me in the fire shelter I hear this, (singing) "Hand me down that can of beans. Hand me down that can of beans. Hand me down that can of beans. I'm throwing it away. Out the window go the beans. Out the " She starts singing this song, that when we because she's a friend of mine, we would canoe. I would drive her crazy by singing this song. So because there was so much silence and nothing happening, and she got nervous, she went into this song. And of course I started to laugh because it's pretty funny. Did the others join? No, no. You know, we didn't hear anybody except for ourselves. You know, you're going to get some fire noise, uh, and you're in a shelter, so the sound doesn't travel as well as it should. So I she sang it very low, so not everybody heard that, but, you know How many of you were up there then? It was your team and the other team you went to support, right? 14

15 My crew, which I had three people. And then there was a strike team up there, and they had nine people. So it was my nine or his nine, my three, total twelve people. Who was the third person in your It was me, Shelly Parks, and Dave Hunt. Dave Hunt. Bob Hunt's son. Bob Hunt's son. And poor Dave was not exactly next to us, so he didn't know exactly what was going on, which is I mean, he did know what was going on, but he wasn't close where we could converse with him as well. And at one point not to say I forgot Dave, but at one point, you know, Shelly and I were talking and we'd go, Hey Dave! Where's Dave? You know? And then, of course, we heard Dave finally say, "I'm over here." You know. Uh, the strike team, did you know these guys, or Some of them, yeah. I've worked with some of them before. Um, how hot did it get in these things? Uh, good question. After we were part of this deployment, the shelter deployment, they immediately wanted to interview us, you know, later. Everybody had to go in for interviews, and one of the Who's they? Orange County Fire and the state, and I'm sure the producer of the fire shelters themselves. You know, it's very rare when people have to use these fire shelters, and they certainly wanted to know from people who were alive, did they work, and what did you experience. So we had to go in for some interviews. They wanted to know what happened and what we felt, as you're asking. And, uh the first one of the questions that was interesting is they asked us, How long do you think you were in the fire shelter? So in the interview I was with Dave Hunt, and Dave said, "I think we were in there five minutes." And I said, "Naw, Dave, it was longer than that. I'm guessing it was ten minutes." And then they looked at us and they said, No, it was eighteen minutes. So we were actually in the fire shelters for eighteen minutes. That means that you really had to, you know, make do with the little air that you had in there, right? I mean Well, again, there was air in there. It's not like I'm going to breathe up all the air, because you could just go like that and lift your fire shelter. Air is going to come in, but it could be smoke, too. Like I said, we were relatively safe throughout. And you asked me about the heat. Both Shelly and I, when we were interviewed, we said we did not feel any heat. Because, as I said before, I would tell you we were in the best place. We were definitely in a safe place. Dave, on the other hand, was a little further away from us, and he was 15

16 closer to the fire area, and he said it was very hot in his fire shelter. And other people said it was hot. But, of course, Shelly and I really didn't feel any heat. Were you ever afraid at that time? You know, I was no. No, I was not. I would like to know how long it took for this entire sort of crisis scenario, and I guess that's what it is because otherwise they wouldn't have to call you in for an interview, because that may indicate that, you know, that wasn't ideally that wasn't the plan, that you would deploy these fire shelters. It's never the plan. From walking up from the road to help out that strike team up on the hill to the deployment, how many minutes was that? I'd guess twenty-five. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. From the time we walked up there to the time the incident took place? Yeah. Five minutes. It was pretty quick. We helped we got there, they were having a problem with the hose, we were helping them with the hose, and by the time I got from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill, which is probably maybe a hundred feet up, okay? that's when everything went wrong. That's when the fire burnt out below us and we lost our water and the fire was coming back at us. It's probably hard to believe you could just walk up the hill and all of a sudden you find yourself in this crisis situation, right? It was a little hard to believe, okay? Which I said, I was, you know, I was very surprised that that had happened, and I didn't see the immediate danger. But, again, when they say fire shelter, it's time to do your fire shelter. And he was right. It was a good call. But they saw you from the bottom. I mean, they were watching you, I'm sure. Yeah. There was actually a Times photographer who was down below us, and she was in a good place, and she got that excellent photo. The strike team was down below us. I can't tell you what happened exactly there because I still don't know the exact details, which I will find out some day in the near future. But we got stranded up on top of a hillside with the fire coming at us from three sides. And the canyon was really that steep on the other side towards Santiago Canyon Road that you couldn't get down there? Uh, you might have got you probably could have got down, but you probably would have got injured getting down. It was pretty vertical straight down. 16

17 Yeah. Well, and then there's not telling that the fire won't, you know, catch up with you possibly? No. I mean, if you would have jumped off the side of that hillside, it would have been kind of straight down and you could have been injured. But the fire would not have come, you would have jumped down right to the road. We were right off the road, okay? Yeah. Um, you pull off your shelters, and around you is a moon-like landscape, all burned down? Yeah. Everything was black around us. The fire had basically come through, burned everything up. We were in there, as I said, for eighteen minutes. Towards the end well, in the beginning they did ask for air support. They wanted to get a helicopter to drop water around us to knock the fire down. And it took a while. I think we were probably in there for for fourteen or so minutes before we got our first helicopter drop of water to knock the flames down around us. And, uh, after eighteen minutes we were getting out of our fire shelters. And you walked down the hill and the people down there must have been I mean, quite I mean, this is quite the unusual event. Yeah, quite unusual. What kind of a, uh, reception did you get there? It was kind of interesting. Again, I don't want to make it sound like it was nothing, but to us, it's just kind of like part of the job. It's not to say you get overrun by fire every day, but, again, I never felt that I was totally threatened. You know, I always felt I was safe. But it is a big incident as far as what happened. We walked down the hill as a group, and immediately there was a lot of people down there because, again, it was already eighteen minutes later, so everybody in the world was there, kind of. And the big concern was, on, uh, the fire department's behalf was, Let's get these guys. Don't let them wander away. We went to check these guys out, make sure everybody's okay. Our safety was their big concern. So (chuckles) it was kind of interesting, because everybody was starting to mill around, and they were trying to corral us so that they could get us all checked out. And they had a bunch of paramedics there, and other fire individuals, and we all had to be examined on site. They certainly asked, you know, How do you feel? You know, How's your breathing? You know, Do you have any burns on you. They took our blood pressures, they took our pulses, they wrote it on our arms, and then they told us that we have to get in the ambulances and we're going to be transported down to headquarters for more, you know, interviews and see what the heck happened there. And, uh, again, it was a big caravan. I don't know how many vehicles. It must have looked like a presidential parade or something. Because we had let's see. There's twelve of us, there were at least six ambulances, there were battalion chiefs, there were 17

18 other vehicles, and it was a big parade down to Orange County Fire headquarters with everybody. Um, for you you know, you said it didn't feel like such a big deal and, uh, you know, you're somewhat experienced, but have you had a shelter deployment before? No, of course not. It's a big mistake. How about Shelly? Was there some point afterwards where maybe the, you know, the nervousness subsided that sort of creates some of that sense of humor that's so necessary in a crisis situation. Did it ever hit you guys? You know, what kind of a critical moment that was? No. No, never? No. We joked through the whole thing, from beginning to end, which, you know, of course, in retrospect that was excellent, the fact that we could, you know I mean, if you didn't know I mean, I had participated in fires before, and really I did feel that I was safe. I wasn't that worried. But dealing with Shelly, this was her first fire, so it was very important for me to make sure that she was not getting panicky. And she handled it excellent, excellent. Better than most. And, you know, again, good conversation back and forth between her and I. We were joking. I mean, it worked it was perfect. Did you get in trouble with her sister and father afterwards? (laughs) No, not really. I did not. I did not. But, again, we have a lot of jokes now, you know. One of the jokes is because I told Shelly, "Follow me wherever I go." So now it's a joke. If you don't want to follow me wherever I go, I'll get you killed if you're not careful. So, yeah, there's a lot of jokes after that incident that there's more of them I'll probably tell you. Um, you went and got interviewed and tested and examined and handed around and was that the end of the event for you? Oh, no, it wasn't the end. A couple of things. One, after, you know, we got interviewed by everybody, they said to us, You know, this was a big experience to you guys. We're going to put you all up in hotels, you know, make sure you guys are okay. Well, the other people were all paid individuals. We were reserves. So I had to raise my hand and say, "Excuse me. You know, we're reserve. We just want to go back home. We want to go back to the fire, okay?" And, of course, we kind of got stared at just a little bit by some people. Nothing bad, you know. And they said to everybody, they says, How do you guys feel? What do you want to do here? You know. Because they were offering to send us to a hotel. And we all said the same thing, pretty much, We want to go back to the fire. 18

19 So, then we actually had to almost hitch a ride on an ambulance to go back to the fire, to find our unit, to get back on our unit to play firemen Because they totally hadn't planned that, right? That you would go back. They thought you would Yeah. They were going to take us somewhere else, and we told them, We don't want to go somewhere else, we want to go back to the fire. We have no and we have no other choice, you know, we need to go back anyway. We didn't want to be put up in a hotel, we wanted to get back to the fire. So, as the meeting, or whatever it was, the interviews, were over, we found an ambulance driver who was going back to the fire and we hitched a ride with him. I'm just thinking now. Do you think part of this attention that you got, or this careful examination and these interviews, that maybe the reluctance to let you go back to the fire line had something to do with the fear that maybe, uh, someone would get in trouble for this? No. No, I don't think so. Because, you know, as you said, you know, when there's a shelter deployment it usually indicates that somewhere Something went wrong. Something went wrong. And something did go wrong. The hose. Yeah, the there was more than just the hose, but yeah. Some things did not go right. That's why we had to deploy our fire shelters. It should not have happened, okay? But things happen. And that's why we carry the fire shelters, just in case. Uh, so you hitched a ride with the ambulance back. You found your unit? Yep. Um, and what was your operation then? Uh, it was more of the same. You know, we went back, uh, found our unit, found the rest of our personnel, and went back to work. Well, that makes it sound like this is the most ordinary work well, and for you, maybe it is. But where did you fight the fire then? Uh, at that point, the fire in the short time we went down to headquarters, maybe let's say three, four hours, whatever, and we got back, by that time that fire had jumped the 19

20 road everywhere. They just had lost that fire. And basically we went back and we were just part of the big group trying to put out some fires, along Santiago. And specifically, where did did you end up fighting for any structures? When did that happen? Then the next day and, again, excuse me because I don't know my days here. Well, I'm sure this had something to do with the fact that this whole this whole period, uh, that this is just one wash, right? I mean, there's no regular schedule (inaudible). No, no, no. It's just continuous. Yeah. It just went on and on and on, day after day. But the next thing that happened is then, because the fire had jumped the canyon, and this I think was the next day, now the fire was coming into the canyon. I'm sorry. It jumped Santiago Canyon Road, and now it was making a run into Modjeska where all the houses are. So that day, we were all in Modjeska, okay? That morning I think it was, and we were kind of preparing for the fire to come back down at us. Because now it was going to come down into Modjeska. And at a certain point in time, as we're waiting for this to happen, the orders came that we need you guys to get out of the canyon. The fire's going to make a run in the canyon, and we don't want anybody in the canyon. We think it's going to be a blow-up type condition. We don't want to get anybody trapped in this canyon. We want everybody out. So at that point, we were ordered out and we were ordered to get everybody else out. So my job was to make sure that everybody was getting out of the canyon, everybody we could find, because they shouldn't have been in there, but anybody that was in there had to leave the canyon. Did you know of a number of people who were still in there? I knew of some people who had kind of like hidden away. Did you know of Steve Hand being hidden away? I didn't know Steve Hand was I would have guessed that, yes. But did I know he was exactly no. And I knew there was no way to get Steve Hand out of there anyway. But we were all ordered out of the canyon for safety reasons. And, again, they're making these decisions and we go by what they Who made that call to One or some of the chiefs. I'm not sure who the individual was. But the order was given to evacuate the canyon with everybody because when the fire comes into the canyon exactly, or comes back down the hill, being a narrower type canyon, there was a fear the canyon would just blow up, you know, due to what was going on. So everybody then left, and we went to the mouth of the canyon, where Modjeska and Santiago come 20

21 together, because there's a big wide open area there where everybody could be and be safe. And we sat there for a while, while all the chiefs were deciding what the next step was. During that period of time, another chief took a ride into the canyon, and he said that, "I'm in the canyon. It's really not blowing up like we had envisioned," and he suggests that we send units back into the canyon because at this point the fire was burning back down in the canyon and we were going to lose the whole canyon unless we got in there right now. Was that Bruce Newell? No, no, no. Bruce is would not be able to make those decisions. Not his job. Because he's a reserve. He's a reserve. But the paid guys, the people we work with, the chiefs, this was their decision. Their decision was now to they decided, Let's go back in the canyon. Let's put out these fires. Let's we believe it's safe. Let's get people in the canyon, start putting out this fire in the canyon. So, they had a little briefing that was very short. They said, Look, we're going back in the canyon, you know, and everybody was pretty excited. Because the worst thing in the world was knowing at that time because when I was in the canyon, they told us we were going to have to leave. They said, Hey, look, we want you guys out of the canyon. The canyon's going to blow up and we want you out. Well, at that point, since I live in the canyon, I went to my house for just a second. I looked around and I thought, Oh, my God. I'm going to lose everything. I'm going to lose my house, you know, I'm going to lose my big screen TV. (laughs) You know, and I thought, Oh, my God. What am I going to save? So in my case Did you have any time, by the way, for some personal evacuation here to remove any of the important things in your house? You know, we had all the time prior to this, but I was busy fighting the fire so I didn't really have that time. I was busy doing other things. So when they said to us at that last minute, Here comes the fire, evacuate the canyon, we're pulling everybody out. I had a moment to go to my house, take a look, and decide what I wanted to pull out and get it out of the canyon to the end of the road. So I walked in the house, I looked around, and I saw this beaver pelt that's sitting on my chair and I said, "I'm going to take that." I had a canoe paddle sitting around that I had just refinished. I didn't want to lose that. So those were the two items at the last minute that I threw in my truck, and I drove my truck to the end of the road, to the safe area, and that's when, again, we all stood there and waited to find out what was going to happen. But that was pretty much it? The beaver pelt and the 21