Evacuees Survey Fires' Wrath
BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif., Nov. 3, 2003
(CBS/AP) After days of devastation, California firefighters aided by cooler, calmer weather over the weekend began getting the upper hand on most of the dozen wildfires that have scorched the state.
By early Monday, the Old fire was 78 percent contained after racing across more than 91,000 acres in and near the San Bernardino National Forest. A nearby blaze was 95 percent contained.
In San Diego County, the 281,000-acre Cedar fire the largest individual blaze in California history was 90 percent contained.
Other large blazes included a fire in San Diego County, which was 75 percent contained; and a Ventura County blaze that was 80 percent contained. A fire in Simi Valley was fully contained.
As the flames receded, evacuees returned to their homes, or what was left of them.
The huge blazes that have killed 20 people, destroyed more than 3,400 homes and scorched more than 750,000 acres since igniting around Southern California nearly two weeks ago.
Diana and Larry Thornton were among the homeowners returning on Sunday. They had worked for years for their retirement dream home, a 2,400-square-foot getaway nestled in the San Bernardino Mountains. It took just hours for that house and all those years of hard work to go up in flames.
The Thorntons' home was one of more than 850 destroyed by the Old fire wildfire that burned.
"Everything we've worked for 37 years is gone," said Diana Thornton, who lived in Cedarpines Park, one of many mountain communities ravaged by the flames.
"This was our retirement dream house," said Larry Thornton, a former Navy seal and Vietnam veteran. "All the stuff I went through in Vietnam, and I came back OK from that
this is just about as devastating."
One of their neighbors, Kim Thurman, returned to find nothing left of the turn-of-the-century cabin she had lived in for 22 years but ashes and charred wood.
"I have cried and cried. I go through periods of incredible optimism and so much sadness that it goes right down and it hurts my toenails," said Thurman, 55.
"These are just things. I have all these memories in my heart," she added as she dug through the rubble with her leather-gloved hands. She managed to save some gardening tools hanging from a fence and discovered four ceramic squirrels her mother gave her.
"Your identity, your security, your safety, it's all your home, and when it's gone
" Thurman said, trailing off.
She paused, swallowed hard and shook her head: "All of a sudden, nothing feels real."
Irene Franklin, of Crestline, was one of the lucky ones; her home was unscathed.
"You get so depressed down the hill, watching it on TV," she said. "You're worried your house will be burned down, but at the same time you realize people are losing their lives. A house can be rebuilt."
Residents were allowed back into all communities except Twin Peaks, Blue Jay, Rim Forest, Sky Forest, Lake Arrowhead, Cedar Glen, Running Springs, Arrowbear and Green Valley.
Those towns remained off-limits because of concerns about mudslides, falling rocks and trees, and damage to Highway 18, the area's major thoroughfare. A firefighter was injured Sunday when a tree fell on him along Highway 18 near Crestline, said Richard Wisehart, a U.S. Forest Service fire information officer. He was reported in stable condition at a local hospital.
Meanwhile, an unlikely bunch of heroes is getting some of the credit for beating back the brushfires.
More than half of the state's 3,800 full-time wildland firefighters are prison inmates earning $1 an hour as they work off sentences for nonviolent crimes such as theft and drug possession. About 2,150 offenders either minimum security wards of the California Youth Authority or adults sentenced to the California Department of Corrections have been out battling the flames.
"We wouldn't be half the fire department we are now without them," said Karen Terrill, forestry department spokeswoman. "I could tell you stories that would bring tears to your eyes."
The convicts usually are out of sight as they were Sunday, laying more than a mile of hose, cutting fire lines and grubbing stubborn pockets of flame with shovels, rakes, pickaxes and hoes.
On the day the fire in San Bernadino County flared into a wind-whipped monster, however, residents there caught a rare glimpse of the prisoners in the unusual role of trying to protect houses.
The inmate crews are neither trained nor equipped for fighting house fires. But a 28-inmate strike team happened to be one of the first to arrive. They grabbed garden hoses and borrowed chain saws from homeowners. Burglars and thieves risked their lives to rescue prized possessions from doomed homes.
"The ceilings and light fixtures were coming down around us. You're wondering if you'll have to go out a window" to escape, said Greg Welch, 34, serving seven years for selling drugs. "It was chaos."
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You guys stay safe...
