The homes may burn, but he turns off the water

San Bernardino:

As manager of the Green Valley Water District, in a rural mountain village of 750 that has lost at least 55 homes, Rick Mull took upon himself one of the most unassuming but critical jobs.

As homes burned around the town's picturesque Alpine lake, he was close behind to turn off the water.

"Many folks took up and left in a panic and forgot to turn their water off," Mull said.

Mull, 51, has spent his whole life "on the mountain," and while his home was safe from the fire, many of his friends' and neighbors' homes were now burning piles of rubble.

They left in a panic, and did not turn off the water in their homes. Therefore, when the property burned, water that supplied the communal tanks was flowing freely on these burned homes, taking water away that could have been used by firefighters.

"In the last few days, we've gone through 400,000 gallons of water on just one neighborhood street because of leaking pipes," he said.

Mull's job has been to go to burned property and lift the heavy lids off water meters. He then probes several feet down into the hole with a 4-foot-long steel rod with a key at the end, turning each home's water system off.

His mantra: "If we don't get the water turned off, the fire department won't have water for their hoses, and we'll lose more homes."

But it was rarely as easy as that. In one case he had to walk into a pile of burning rubble, at the edge of a 3-foot jet of flames spewing out of a broken gas line, in order to turn off water gushing out of a broken pipe a few feet away .

As he walked back to the street he said: "Well, that wasn't exactly the safest thing to do, but hey, it's not draining our tanks anymore."

-- Louis Sahagun