Article Published: Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 5:23:44 PMBe prepared, agencies advise Forest public safety crews make battle, evacuation plans
By ANDREW SILVA, Staff Writer
Smoke will sting your eyes and burn your throat. The panic wafting among the bumper-to-bumper line of cars will be palpable. The pulsing blue and red lights of fire trucks and police cars will accentuate the surreal and disorienting chaos. At that moment, a life or death question could be: Turn right or left?
Thousands of standing dead pine trees, killed by a combination of drought and bark beetles, have created the potential for a swift and deadly inferno in the San Bernardino National Forest.
Should such a blaze erupt, how will officials get people off the mountains, through the twisted maze of narrow mountain roads, which often loop back on themselves or come to a dead end?
"Getting a lot of people out of a small community on narrow roads is a big deal,' said county fire Division Chief Thom Wellman.
County Fire Marshal Peter Brierty demonstrated the evacuation dilemma during a recent tour of areas around Lake Arrowhead that have been hardest hit by the expanding swaths of dead trees.
Which way? At an intersection just outside Lake Arrowhead, he pointed to his left.
"If the fire is over there,' he said, "which way do you go?' Going right, seemingly away from the fire, would send a fleeing motorist looping around back into harm's way, he said.
It seems counter-intuitive, but on that particular street, he said, the correct answer would be to go left toward the fire, which would take you to a major road and a likely escape route.
Officials are encouraging mountain residents to drive around their neighborhoods now to learn where the streets lead and to become familiar with alternate routes to the major mountain highways.
"People have to know how to get the heck out,' said Capt. John Hernandez of the sheriff's Twin Peaks station.
Although mountain residents may have to rely on their own sense of direction in the early part of a fire, officials do have a plan for evacuation. Few major roads With only a handful of roads off the mountains Highway 18, Highway 38, Highway 330 and Highway 138 officials will have the conflicting task of getting civilians down the mountain while trying to get emergency crews up.
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) - As wildfires grew to epic proportions along Southern California's mountain crests, so did a network of displaced residents hungry for detailed information about their homes, friends and family.Many turned to the tools of technology and found community through Internet message boards, e-mails and online emergency scanner traffic.
Fire victims say they grew weary of breathless television reports that provided little information about their specific homes, streets and neighbors. Networking online and milking authorities in the mountains for details gave them crucial "locals only" information that they quickly passed on.
"It gave the village a set of drums to get the message out," says Gary Stebbings, a project manager for Russell Crane Builders and a resident of Lake Arrowhead... [snip]
Full containment of California wildfires near; two new deaths --- by Brian Skoloff, Sacramento Bee, Nov. 3, 2003 --- posted at Free Republic, Nov. 3, 2003, by NormsRevenge :
BIG BEAR, Calif. (AP) - Firefighters doused hotspots and watched for new ones Monday as persistent damp weather brought Southern California's vast wildfires to near full containment.The positive developments were tempered by a rise in the death toll to 22 as San Bernardino County authorities added two more suspected heart-attack fatalities, and thousands of people remained displaced by the fires ... [snip]
"The weather continues to be healthy for us," said Andrea Tuttle, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, in a conference call with reporters.
All fires were expected to be surrounded by Tuesday, if not as early as Monday evening, Tuttle said ... [snip]