Prayers and Mourning in the Fire Family

Today was not a crummy day--wasn't really too bad, just annoying--and I fled the office early. I came home, let the cat out, watered the yard, and then headed upstairs to check my email. I logged into my Yahoo account... and you know how they have the little headlines? My heart stopped when I read the little link about four firefighters killed in Cabazon.

Normally it doesn't, but today it did; call it intuition. I stopped there and called my sister, who is a chief officer on the San Bernardino National Forest, where I used to be a firefighter. I had a bad, bad feeling.

Sis: "(chief officer title)"
Me: "You have a sec?"
Sis: "Who's this?"
Me: "Your sister. Are you OK?"
Sis: **bursts into tears**

Through her tears--and my overwhelming relief that she was OK--she told me about the horrifying events. She was on her day off, and she learned it from the news. She immediately Called another chief officer that I knew well, who told her that four of the five engine crew were killed, and the fourth has burns over 95% of his body.

The sketchy details are that the engine crew had been doing evacuation and structure protection, and the winds apparently gusted and blew the wind just so. It is Santa Ana season, the most treacherous and dangerous winds out there. Poppet Flats is in a narrow little valley, the home on somewhat on a knob and therefore more exposed to wind shifts, and whammo....

My relief that my sister was safe was hollow. Everytime I hear of entrapment and/or death, I selfishly pray that it's never someone I know. Fire deaths are horrible enough; it potentially being someone I used to work with makes it intolerable.

Today was intolerable.

The hardest thing to take was the loss of engine captain Mark Loutzenheiser, a very experienced wildland firefighter. When Sis said, "We lost Lotzi!" I cried, "No! Not Lotzi!" And No! to the loss to the whole wildland family, especially on the Berdue, especially on the San Jacinto Ranger District. It just doesn't seem possible.

As I write this, his name was quietly released, and just beginning to be splattered across the media. Sis has known Lotzi for 20 years; he was on the VG Shots when I was on DR. He'd come across the Forest for the Front Country's Sunday night softball games with some of the other VG folks. So I knew Lotzi, my sister knew Lotzi, and it was a very hard conversation at 3:00PM or so. I called her later this evening, and we talked a little more... I don't think it's hit yet, but it will.

As only firefighters can, I wept for the loss of Mark and for his three other crew, and prayed for the fifth crewmember, who at this time is still fighting for his life.

Pray for them and the firefighting community, who is devastated.

Please help, and donate to the Wildland Firefighter Fund: http://www.wffoundation.org/ to help defray the costs of the funerals and assist the familes.


~~

I have spent time in a burn ward--I have the scars from a fire to prove it. I do not wish it upon my worst enemy. However, burn wards are also a place where some very rare people do very special work. Pray for them too, to carry out the work of mercy that they do.

~~

People are already looking for someone to blame. In one place it is posted: "I think IT'S TIME FOR EVERYONE TO LAWYER UP. Firefighters, management, USFS, CDF, CITIES and TOWN agencies on the fire. Do not speak to anyone involved in ANY investigation without your lawyer present." This posted this evening already on a wildland message board.

Dear God...

~~

I have been in a burnover incident. If my captain had made his decision five seconds later, we would have been caught with the Sycamore crew back in 1995. As it was, we had blown through a closing wall of fire before we made it safely to the safety zone.

Thank God, thank God, nobody was hurt that day. Those excruciating minutes that passed when there was no response from Buzz or Steve with the crew, and knowing there was a helitack crew in there too that wasn't responding, was an infinity I will never forget.

It is like yesterday: I see the safety zone in a big, fuel-free turnout, overlooking a wash, watching with the rest of the district initial attack engine crews a wall of fire engulfing everything in that high desert community we responded to. The division chief calling on the radio, my captain with breaking voice calling, others calling with no response, the growing silent dread. Tears beginning to brim as minutes passed, silent prayers.

Then: "We're OK," from Buzz, who had the three crew with him in an impromptu safety zone. The deafening, incredulous silence and then the choruses of "thank God, thank God;" but where was Steve? And the helitack crew? Finally, it was discovered that he too was all right: Stevie had crammed the whole helitack crew into the engine, and sweated as the fire ran over them.

Poor Conrad not being able to talk for an entire five minutes; everyone weeping and laughing with relief, and when the scorched truck with its melted light bar emerged from the carnage, we all cheered, with Steve saying a little shakily on the radio, "I think we need a new paint job...."

As far as I know, the melted light bar is still at Sycamore, a reminder of how close we all were.

[How close was I, other than my actual near-miss? If I hadn't switched stations that year with "D," I would have been on that day. I would have been with Buzz in the safety zone, instead of at the turnout with everyone else.]

It was nerve-shattering. It spooked at least one seasonal firefighter into quitting, and an engineer seriously considered abandoning his career. The district and the Forest went into a period of shock... what if?

We too had been pulled off the fire, as all the Berdue folks were today. But where we only had to wrestle with our eventual mortality, the families and friends of poor Lotzi and the guys, and the entire Forest Service family, have to deal with the worst that can ever happen.

~~

All I have been able to say all night is "the poor darlings," reliving my close call, and the separate incident that landed me in the burn ward, only imagining what they went through, tears brimming.

~~

Lord, be with them in this time of sorrow.