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Weather is on firefighters' side - for now
Cool, moist air is aiding the battle against the last of the Southern California wildfires, but Santa Ana winds are expected to return by this weekend. More
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Firefighter Josh Balboa monitors the Harris fire in southern San Diego County.
Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times
Most but not all San Bernardino Mountain communities affected by the wildfires reopened to residents at noon today.
Mandatory evacuation orders were lifted for the majority of Lake Arrowhead and the communities of Twin Peaks, Rim Forest, Blue Jay, Agua Fria, Deer Lodge Park, Sky Forest and Cedar Glen. Reentry passes are not required.
A mandatory evacuation order remains in effect for areas of Lake Arrowhead, Running Springs, Arrowbear and Green Valley Lake that suffered extensive fire damage.
Highways 18 and 138 will reopen to traffic in areas where the mandatory evacuation orders have been lifted.
Staff from the San Bernardino County Environmental Health Department will be at mountain fire stations passing out gloves, masks and information for returning residents.
Power was off in many areas long enough to spoil food. Since the power was restored, items have had time to refreeze. County officials warn that these food items are a potential health hazard.
California 330 and roads to Running Springs remain closed.
-- Jeffrey L. Rabin
The Slide fire, which has chewed through nearly 13,000 acres in the San Bernardino National Forest, is expected to be fully contained by Tuesday, fire officials said this morning. They reported that the blaze is 75% contained.
Cooler weather, which has greatly aided firefighters, is expected to continue today, with winds at 5 mph to 10 mph, scattered clouds, temperatures in the low 70s and humidity of as much as 30%.
-- Ashley Powers
Debbie Clevenger, right, and Andrew Plata of the Arrowbear Fire Departement fight a house fire ignited by the Slide wildfire in Arrowbear.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP)
At Snow Valley ski resort, the command post for the Slide fire, firefighters awoke Saturday morning to a hopeful sign: They could no longer see flames licking the ridgeline.
In recent days, many of the engine crews had turned to snuffing out spot fires in Running Springs or were clearing land near Lake Arrowhead in case the wind kicked up and the fire dashed west.
They also surveyed the Slide fire's devastation -- homes hollowed out amid dead trees that turned streets into tinderboxes.
The last few nights, Joe Hatfield, a fire captain for the city of Ontario, has scoured parts of the San Bernardino National Forest for flaming tree trunks and loose embers. Sometimes, his thoughts slowed and his eyes drooped -- but only briefly.
"Sure, this work we're doing isn't glamorous. But if we miss something, someone's house could go up like that," he said.
He was reminded of that Friday morning, when he was on mop-up duty in Running Springs.
A strike team nearby found flames. The fire quickly raced from underneath a deck to a house and into the attic before firefighters put it out.
"Just when you think nothing's happening, something does," he said.
-- Ashley Powers
Firefighters were making headway in efforts to halt the Slide fire's march west toward Lake Arrowhead, fire officials said Saturday morning.
Firefighters were working today to shore up the blaze's northwest corner, which has crept into areas burned by the Old fire, through low grass and tree limbs that remain.
Overnight, hand crews cut a line in the unruly fire's southwest corner amid steep, rocky terrain and near the burned-over community of Fredalba. There is a contingency line to the west.
Hand crews also worked the fire's northern edge, near Crab Flats, said Tom Hatcher, the fire's operations section chief.
Temperatures hovering in the high 60s, light winds and humidity at 18% to 25% should help firefighting efforts, officials said. A dozen helicopters crossed red-tinged clouds, dousing flames with water. The blaze is 25% contained and is the state's No. 2 firefighting priority.
More than 1,900 fire personnel are battling the blaze, a significantly larger force than in previous days. The blaze has cost $4.5 million to fight.
To the west, the Grass Valley fire was 85% contained.
-- Ashley Powers
San Bernardino County officials said late Friday that they're not ready to release a list of homes damaged and destroyed in the Slide and Grass Valley fires. Earlier, they said they hoped to release the list today on the county assessor's site. No word on when the list might be posted, according to a written statement from a county spokesperson.
San Bernardino Mountains:
Firefighters reported 20% containment on the Slide fire, which had bored through 13,700 acres by this evening. Officials said they lost 201 residences and 3 outbuildings. There was only one home lost today, in Running Springs. With resources freed up from other fires, the total number of personnel jumped from 1,359 this morning to 1,964 by this evening.
The Grass Valley fire was 75% contained at 1,140 acres. Twenty homes were damaged and 162 destroyed, according to the new estimates.
-- Maeve Reston
Running Springs:
In the first quiet day in Running Springs, the fire chief who watched his town nearly go up in smoke finally found some quiet moments to sift through paperwork. Chief Bill Smith was up for the first 50 hours of the San Bernardino Mountain firestorm -- among the first to respond to the Grass Valley Fire and then racing back to the Slide when it flared up in his community a short time later.
Firefighters lost the last structure in Running Springs this morning. In the early evening, the fatigue was finally settling in.
"When you have homes burning you have enough adrenaline that it kind of keeps you going," said Smith, who spent 30 years fighting fires with the U.S. Forest Service before retiring as the Mountaintop Division Chief. "Once in a while you get to the point where you're exhausted but you just move on."
"The hardest thing for any fire chief is to lose any structures... but especially the impact of losing so many homes is just heartwrenching,"
Smith has been the Running Springs chief for nine years.
"Most of us fight fires a lot of years and go to other people's jurisdiction fighting fires, but it's a totally different feeling when it's your own community."
Not only would he have to contend with residents coming back to homes that have vanished into ash, but fire continues to burn in the steep, inaccessible canyons to the west.
"That will pose a threat possibly until the snow flies," he said.
-- Maeve Reston
Lake Arrowhead:
Deep in the pines of the San Bernardino National Forest, about four miles east of where the Slide fire began in Green Valley Lake, firefighters struggled with exhaustion as they beat down hot spots with shovels and axes.
The goal was to build a containment line around Crab Flats before a predicted wind shift Sunday that could direct the fire toward Lake Arrowhead and possibly parts of Running Springs again. But the adrenaline was gone.
"We're all at a kind of plodding pace, everyone has got blisters on top of blisters and we're losing our voices," said Mike Rigney, a Lake Arrowhead-based fire captain with the San Bernardino Fire Department.
Sleep? "We got four or five hours somewhere in the third day," Rigney said.
Read on »
San Bernardino Mountains:
Nancy Duncan made so many new friends at the Orange Show Fairgrounds evacuation center that she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave today .
“They are having barbecue tonight -- are you sure you don’t want to stay one more night?” she asked her daughter-in-law, Nicole Duncan, 35. “It’s really been wonderful. I got Arnold’s [Schwarzenegger] autograph and played cards with the grandkids in the van. I’ve been on television three times. It’s been really, really wonderful.”
Nicole on the other hand couldn't wait to get home for a real shower. Her kids, however, also wanted to stay.
“I thought there would be more enthusiasm about leaving,” Nicole said.
Authorities today allowed residents of Crestline, Enchanted Valley and Cedar Pines Park to go home, thinning the evacuation center ranks, which numbered about 1,800 Thursday. New numbers were not available.
Chris Navarette, 45, was plenty excited about going home.
“It was nice for awhile but it’s time to go now,” he said. “I feel very fortunate because I have friends who have lost everything.”
Refugees from the Lake Arrowhead, Green Valley Lake, Grass Valley and Running Springs areas remain at the shelter.
-- David Kelly
Running Springs:
Genoviva Bacio is feeling fragile, tearing up as she tries to explain the rain of fire, the Virgin Mary and exactly what happened as her world began to burn.
"I know it was a miracle," she said, wiping her eyes.
As pillars of fire licked the sky around her Running Springs home Monday, Bacio and her husband Carlos, 46, knew they were in trouble. Four-inch pieces of flaming wood pelted their rooftop. Even worse, theirs was the first house on the street and sitting directly in the San Bernardino National Forest. It would be the first to go.
"We packed everything, clothes, insurance policies, pictures," her husband recalled. "Our street was on fire and it was approaching our house."
But they hadn't packed everything.
Genoviva, 47, ran back inside and saw the large portrait of the Virgin Mary staring at her from the living room wall.
"I went in to grab it but something in her eyes said, `No, don't take me,' '' she recalled, sitting at the evacuation center in San Bernardino. "I felt something so strong speaking to me. I left her and asked her to please watch over our house."
Read on »
Big Bear Lake is smoky but open for business, a public relations spokesman said. Two routes are open into Big Bear, Highway 38 through Redlands and Highway 18 through Lucerne Valley, he said.
With the Grass Valley Fire in Lake Arrowhead virtually contained, pressure built for commanders to reopen mountain areas. But firefighters were still a long way off from getting control of the 12,000-acre Slide fire.
They had made great strides building a line around the threatened communities of Arrowbear and Running Springs. But the smoldering fires within Running Springs from the blaze's early runs still posed hidden dangers. Even with dozens of crews doing structure protection, fire ravaged a large portion of a home in western Running Springs early today, though firefighters were able to save a portion and many of the contents by launching an interior attack.
Read on »
Sann Bernardino officials at the Rim of the World command center reported at 8 a.m. that the Slide fire has increased from 11,675 acres burned to 13,378.
"Fire perimeter containment efforts are slow due to rough terrain, heavy vegetation and high-density residential properties intermixed with bug-killed timber," fire officials said.
The Slide fire is only 15% contained, with 1,359 firefighters on scene and 10,000 homes threatened. More structures were reported destroyed, raising the number to more than 200. Officials are waiting to release a number and location on the structures, mainly homes, destroyed.
--Francisco Vara-Orta
Highway 18 reopened this morning, allowing residents in Crestline, Valley of Enchantment and other surrounding communities near Lake Arrowhead to return home, said Deputy Richard Camacho of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.
-- David Kelly
Lake Arrowhead:
Cooler temperatures and lighter winds helped firefighters make progress on the Grass Valley fire near Lake Arrowhead and the Slide fire near Running Springs and Arrowbear. By Thursday evening the Slide fire was 15% contained at 11,675 acres, though about 10,000 homes continued to be threatened.
Throughout the day, water-dropping helicopters and tankers focused on knocking down the Slide fire's southwestern flank to keep the fire's edge from moving north into the community of Arrowbear or back into Running Springs.
No additional homes were lost to either the Slide or Grass Valley fires, according to Mike Dietrich, fire chief of the San Bernardino National Forest. The Grass Valley fire did not grow in size Thursday.
But firefighters on the Slide fire were still focused on preventing the fire from consuming homes and creating anchor points to begin a containment line around the fire.
"There's still a lot of problems," said Randy Clauson, division chief on the San Bernardino National Forest, who headed the initial attack.
"We know the winds are going to switch and start coming from the other direction."
"It's still Southern California; it changes rapidly," Clauson said.
As they made progress on the Grass Valley fire, Clauson said commanders hoped to continue moving engines and crews to fight the Slide fire. Efforts to contain that blaze were complicated by a shortage of hand crews, bulldozers and air resources because of the competition from the fires in San Diego and Orange County. In the late afternoon, air-operations officials were also forced to ground several air tankers because of the dense smoke.
U.S. Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell visited devastated areas of Lake Arrowhead on Thursday afternoon after a trip to San Diego with the president. Standing on a hilltop surrounded by rubble, she praised the fuel-thinning efforts that fire officials say helped save thousands of homes.
"I'm very proud of the work our folks have done," Kimbell said.
As gas and power-line crews worked the mountain areas, San Bernardino sheriff's officials still had no estimate of when all residents might be able to return. People who live in Cedar Pines Park and Valley of Enchantment were allowed to return if they showed proof of residency.
-- Maeve Reston
San Bernardino:
They weren't handing out energy drinks, offering massages or directing evacuees to self-help classes at the Orange Show Fairgrounds on Thursday.
This wasn't San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium -- the Ritz of evacuation centers. This was its more spartan, less genteel cousin, a place packed with tough mountain people not always comfortable in the flatlands.
Not that they were complaining -- much.
"It's too freakin' noisy, too many kids. But what can you do, they have a lot of energy," said 54-year-old Joe Cote, a refugee from Green Valley Lake, one of the mountain communities that has seen dozens of homes burned to the ground. "The food isn't the greatest, but it's wholesome."
On Wednesday night, more than 1,800 people slept in the two enormous aircraft-hangar-like buildings. Row upon row of cots filled the vast rooms. Lines snaked toward the hot food stalls. Tables were set up by medical personnel checking for everything from asthma to head lice.
A chain-link fence became a makeshift day care center for the hundreds of children here. Once inside they played with balls, balloons and watched repeated showings of "Happy Feet."
Read on »
San Bernardino:
San Bernardino County officials are not immediately releasing a list of homes destroyed in the fire. County Assessor Bill Postmus announced the decision, saying fire and law enforcement agencies had asked him to refrain because roads into the destruction zone remain closed.
Running Springs:
Relief came today for many of the firefighters who had raced from house to house in the Slide fire in Running Springs. After nonstop action, the young five-man crew of U.S. Forest Service Engine 12
faced a new predicament -- idle time.
They fanned out on foot with shovels along a stretch of Highway 18 between Arrowbear and Snow Valley to serve as lookouts -- primed to keep an eye on the fire smoldering among the oaks and pines on the northern side of the road and to pounce on any flying embers that leapt to the other side. But things were pretty quiet.
They were a rare hometown crew among the hundreds of engines arriving from all over the state and the West. Based at the Deer Lick Station in Running Springs, four of the five firefighters had homes near the heart of the fires and were far from home -- working the Ranch fire -- when the Slide fire began Monday.
Read on »
Redlands:
At least two vegetation fires set within minutes of each other in Redlands earlier this week were the work of an arsonist, San Bernardino County authorities said today.
In the first incident, firefighters were called to a reported fire around 7:30 a.m. yesterday in vegetation near Helen Drive and Kristin Court. They quickly extinguished the blaze before it could spread to a brush-filled canyon area.
Minutes later, another fire was reported blocks away on Miradero Drive. An off-duty Redlands police officer quickly extinguished that fire too.
Redlands fire investigators determined that both blazes were intentionally set.
Authorities said witnesses at both fires reported seeing a silver or light gray pickup truck with a large spare tire in the area. The driver is described as a white male in his 20s, with short, sandy blond hair and dark clothing.
Redlands officials ask anyone with information to contact Redlands Fire Department arson investigators at (909) 798-7600.
--Andrew Blankstein
Rancho Bernardo:
At a cul-de-sac turnaround, Bush told reporters that he was visiting "to survey first-hand the terrible devastation done by the fire."
He had his right arm draped over the shoulder of Kendra Jeffcoat, who lost her home. Her face alternated between grimace and smile as she struggled to hold in her emotions.
"To the extent people need the help of the federal government, we will help," the president said. He said what he liked about Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the attitude he demonstrated: "You show me a hill, I’ll go up it," the president said of the governor.
Bush also praised Sen. Dianne Feinstein for asking the right questions and said, "We’ll give her the answers."
Asked to rate the difference between the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and the fires, the president said the question was better put to historians.
"My heart is with the Jeffcoats right now. The experts can figure out whether the response was perfect or not," he said.
"There’s all kinds of time for historians," Bush said.
Bush gave one more hug to Jay Jeffcoat, then left the area at 10:44 a.m. The president is traveling in an armored SUV.
-- James Gerstenzang
Fredalba:
Ricky Davis pulled up in a blue pickup truck with his boss and found his home virtually the last one standing on the historic stretch of Fredalba Road.
More than a year ago Davis and his long-time girlfriend, Beth Walsh, were breathless with excitement when they moved into Fredalba on Davis' 35th birthday in August. He spent September and October chopping down the tall pine trees and laying white rocks along driveway, ever conscious of the peril a wildfire could pose to the onetime logging community, which sits on a perch in the San Bernadino Mountains at 5,400 feet.
He knew nothing of fire early Monday morning when he left for his job at the Big Bear Marina. When co-workers told him, he tried to return to save the nine cats at home and the four keeshond dogs tied out back.
"You never think its going to happen," Davis said. "You're expecting to be let in to get your livestock and a little box with all your paperwork, and you have officials out there that stop you from coming in and tell you, 'Oh, it's already in flames, it's gonna burn down.'" With all the homes burning in Running Springs, "the reality was that resources "I don't want to say they were unavailable, but it was tough to get resources down into (the Fredalba) area," said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Bob Poole.
Davis was turned away Monday morning by CHP officer who warned he would be arrested if he tried to go back.
It was anguish -- save his animals or risk landing in jail, he said. Davis' boss got through with an emergency volunteer pass and brought the dogs and most of the cats back to Big Bear.
Early Wednesday afternoon, after slipping through the tightly monitored mountain checkpoints , Davis stared in disbelief at the line of houses leveled all along Fredalba Road. Then he remembered Viper, a favored pet that is half-bobcat, half-cat. He sprinted past the ash-covered flowers along his driveway, unlocked the door and ran from room to room.
"He's probably hiding somewhere, and I don't blame him," Davis said hopefully, slumping into a wooden chair at the dining room table when Viper failed to appear. His girlfriend was firing questions through his cellphone speaker about the status of the tool shed and their neighbors' homes. All gone.
His voice broke and tears welled a minute as he tried to describe what existed before Monday -- the tall rustling pines, the tight community where people treated one another like family.
"My neighbors are going to come back to nothing," Davis said, covering his eyes with his ball cap and passing his cellphone to a reporter.
It was Walsh calling again. She asked more questions than she answered.
"What do you mean, what did it look like?" she asked a reporter. "It's green, it's full of trees. I like it there because I want to be in the mountains with trees all around us. There are still trees there, aren't there?"
She was interrupted by Davis' shouts that he had found Jeff, their black cat who was hiding in the darkness beneath the back deck. "I've got to find Viper and then we're complete," Davis said. On the phone, Beth began to cry.
***
A hundred miles away in Valley Center (northern San Diego County), Rick Mercurio was heartsick to find that little more than the metal roof remained of his family house in Fredalba.
His great-aunt and -uncle bought the land in 1922 and built a cabin after the lumber companies pulled out. They left the property to Mercurio's mother and her siblings. His mother and father began 65 happy years of marriage after a chance meeting at a dance at Smiley Park in Fredalba in 1938. Family members traded off the cabin on weekends and gathered there each year for Thanksgiving.
The woodblocks Mercurio's great-aunt carved for Christmas cards hung on one wall, her paintings and watercolors on another. Native American baskets and pottery collected by a great-uncle who was an amateur archeologist were all on display. "There are so many memories in that cabin, and all the pictures were in there, so we're just sick," Mercurio said. "It was like a museum for our family."
-- Maeve Reston
Lake Arrowhead adjacent, San Bernardino Mountains:
A base camp for as many as 3,000 firefighters battling the Slide fire is under construction at the Snow Valley Ski Resort, about 20 miles east of Lake Arrowhead on Highway 18.
Even as workers set up sleeping quarters, shower stalls, kitchens and communication centers for new arrivals from as far away as Utah and Idaho, the Slide fire roared all but unimpeded through insect-ravaged and drought-stricken pine and oak forests, sending up clouds of smoke so thick that air tankers were unable to help in the attack.
That fire has spread across a vast swath of mountainous terrain, occasionally making unexpected runs up side canyons to Highway 18 where firefighters have fought back with hoes and shovels.
-- Louis Sahagun
Lake Arrowhead:
When Elliott Gotfredson, 33, and his girlfriend of two years, Kimberly Trzcinski, 38, returned from a brief evacuation Tuesday and find their three-story, $1,500-a-month rented house still standing, they prepared to bed down without electricity, heat or clean water. So they lit the fireplace.
"I was freezing cold," Trzcinski said. "And the fire (which destroyed the next-door neighbor's house) was gone, so I thought it'd be OK to do it. Soon after, I had like the whole fire department out here knocking on my door."
Officials didn't tell them to leave then. But sheriff's deputies came by Wednesday morning and ordered them out.
They stayed. They have running water now, "but it's like mud," Trzcinski said.
"I feel like we're helping guard the neighborhood," Gotfredson said as Trzcinski watered down some smoking areas in their yard. "We know the dangers of fires but we moved up here keeping that in mind. It's now just like camping, but all indoors."
-- Francisco Vara-Orta
The arson suspect killed by police Tuesday night in San Bernardino is described as a 27-year-old man whose home is listed in Arizona. Sheriff's investigators will search his impounded pickup truck when they obtain a search warrant, Lt. Scott Patterson of the San Bernardino Police Department said this afternoon.
The man was shot after fleeing police and trying to ram their cruisers, authorities said. He had been spotted in deep brush behind Cal State San Bernardino.
No additional information, including his identity, will be released until Thursday.
-- Hector Becerra
Lake Arrowhead:
With winds diminishing and relative humidity climbing, fire authorities in the San Bernardino Mountains today shifted their strategy from protecting structures to hammering two major fires in the Lake Arrowhead area with air tankers and fire breaks.
"We're not ignoring structures, but the big focus today is on perimeter control," said Pat Farrell, planning section chief of the Inter-disciplinary Incident Management Team, which was stationed at Rim of the World High School along Highway 18 between Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake. Hundreds of homes already have been destroyed in Running Springs and Grass Valley.
"We would like the Grass Valley fire contained and out of our hair; we're going to put a lasso around it," Farrell said. "The Slide fire is more complex and moving in different directions."
Valerie Meyers, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said the relatively benign weather conditions would continue through the weekend, when drizzle and light showers were possible.
Positive changes in the weather today included brutal Santa Ana conditions giving way to mild sea breezes from the west, raising relative humidity levels to above 30 percent, reducing the threat of fire and making existing blazes more manageable.
In the meantime, utility crews were roaming the mountains securing power lines and turning off gas mains. The Rim of the World High School became a bustling staging grounds for earthmovers, fire engines and hand crews streaming in all day long from fires dying down elsewhere.
High school classrooms and administrative offices had been taken over by fire behavior analysts, damage assessment teams and fire chiefs. who were assigning endless rounds of air assaults to fires just south of Running Springs, which claimed a few more homes Tuesday night.
Also today, fire authorities came under intense criticism from some residents of Green Valley Lake, about 10 miles to the east, who accused them of abruptly pulling firefighters out of the community Monday night.
The authorities "said screw this place and ran," said Robert Neville, 27, a former U.S. Forest Service employee. "They said it was a tactical decision because it was too dangerous. But it wasn't that dangerous. If we'd had more help we could've saved more homes."
Green Valley Lake was particularly hard hit by the Slide fire, losing at least 55 homes and two commercial businesses, including a lumber yard. At least 41 homes were lost along Angeles Drive alone.
"We were getting hit full flame at 7 p.m. Monday. But by 10 p.m. the firefighters were gone," he said, "It was just me and my dad, a former fire chief here, trying to fight the fire by ourselves with garden hoses. My neighbors are in tears."
In an interview, Farrell said, "It is an emotional issue, and it goes with the territory. But we cannot afford to put people in a position where we cannot cover them."
-- Louis Sahagun
Amid worries of new blazes adding to the firestorm already afflicting the region, a man who set a brush fire in Hesperia was arrested today on suspicion of arson, and police reported shooting and killing another arson suspect after chasing him out of scrub behind Cal State San Bernardino.
Law enforcement officials said Wednesday that they did not know whether either of the men started any of the more than a dozen large fires that have devastated Southern California in recent days, including the nearby Lake Arrowhead blaze. The Hesperia blaze in the arson case was quickly extinguished by spectators.
At least one of the huge wildfires, the Rosa fire in Temecula, was described as the work of an arsonist, investigators have said.
The confrontation that ended in the shooting death started around 6 p.m. Tuesday when San Bernardino university police spotted a man in a rural area of flood channels and scrub near the campus. University police tried to detain the man, but he got into his car and fled, authorities said.
"We don't know whether he was an arsonist," said Lt. Scott Patterson of the San Bernardino Police Department, which joined the pursuit. "What was related by the Cal State police was that they tried to contact him as a suspicious person in a brush area. Things being how they are, there was a suspicion that he could be an arsonist."
The area near the campus had been affected by the massive Old Fire of 2003, Patterson said, adding that "it's very fire-prone. It's an area that would be very devastated if a fire were to start there."
The man, whose identity has not been released, drove north on Waterman Avenue and up a dirt fire road up into the foothills. When officers tried to take him into custody, the man began to ram officers' vehicles, Patterson said. Officers shot and killed him.
"Both agencies' officers fired," said University Police Chief Jimmie Brown, who added that they didn't know who fired the fatal shot. "But right now, we don't know too much more."
The shooting is being investigated by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, which is routine for officer-involved shootings.
About three hours later in Hesperia, a man was seen by a female motorist squatting along the side of Highway 173 just south of Arrowhead Lake Road. Sheriff's officials say John Alfred Rund, 48, of Hesperia had just started a fire along the flat, isolated scrubby road.
The woman called police, and soon Highway Patrol and sheriff's deputies were looking for the suspect, who witnesses said took off on a Honda motorcycle, wearing a red-and-white striped helmet.
Four residents of the area grabbed shovels and put out the brush fire with dirt, said sheriff's spokeswoman Jodi Miller.
A CHP helicopter, using infrared equipment, caught sight of Rund on his motorcycle, Miller said. Along with CHP officers, sheriff's deputies found and arrested Rund at a home along Highway 173 near Highway 138, she said.
He is being held on $750,000 bail on suspicion of arson, and is due in court tomorrow at Victorville Superior Court. Rund is unemployed, Miller said.
"He has not been connected in anyway so far with any fire up on the hill," she said. "We don't know at this point what started that fire."
San Bernardino:
A man was arrested in San Bernardino for starting a brush fire Tuesday night that was quickly extinguished by bystanders, officials said.
John Alfred Rund, 48, of Hesperia was booked on suspicion of arson early this morning, said San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Cindy Beavers.
CHP officers responded to a call about 8:50 p.m. Tuesday night of a brush fire started along Highway 173 south of Arrowhead Lake Road, Beavers said.
When they arrived on scene, four people were attempting to put out the brush fire using shovels and dirt.
Witnesses said they had seen a man squatting near the origin of the fire. They said he left on a Honda motorcycle, wearing a red-and-white striped helmet, Beavers said.
After an aerial search using infrared equipment, the motorcyclist was located, interviewed and arrested.
Sheriff's investigators are trying to determine whether Rund is connected to any other fire in San Bernardino County.
Anyone with information is requested to call sheriff's dispatch at (909) 387-8313, or (800) 78-CRIME and remain anonymous.
-- Tami Abdollah
Lake Arrowhead:
As of this morning, more than 1,000 acres had burned in the Grass Valley area near Lake Arrowhead, said Tom Kempton, spokesman for the California Interagency Management Team, a coalition of state and local fire agencies. So far, 113 homes have burned, and damage assessment teams are roaming through the area, tallying structural damage.
"The decrease in wind expected today will allow us to start containing the fires," Kempton said. The forecast is looking favorable, and that would coincide with additional resources expected today, he said.
There are more than 560 firefighters on the scene and 150 more expected later today, he said.
In the Slide fire around Running Springs, more than 200 homes and three other structures have been destroyed, authorities said. Ten of the homes were lost overnight. Some 5,119 acres have burned.
-- Francisco Vara-Orta
San Bernardino County:
A sunset-to-sunrise curfew has been imposed in deserted communities in the path of the Slide and Grass Valley fires, in part as a precaution against looting.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department has not received any looting reports, but 10 two-men patrol units are regularly driving through the mountain communities, especially in the mandatory evacuation areas, searching for injured or stranded people as well as suspicious activity, said Cindy Beavers, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff's Department.
"Anyone out on the street between dusk and dawn, and in the evacuation areas, are subject to either a traffic stop or police contact to determine what they are doing," she said.
-- Tami Abdollah
Cal State San Bernardino:
A suspected arsonist was shot and killed by San Bernardino police last night, authorities said.
The man was spotted in a remote, brushy area behind Cal State San Bernardino, said Lt. Scott Patterson of the San Bernardino Police Department.
University police called in San Bernardino officers. When officers approached the suspect, he jumped in a car and fled, Patterson said. The man drove north on Waterman Avenue, then up a dirt fire road into the foothills, he said. When officers tried to stop him, he rammed their vehicles with his car, Patterson said.
"The officers fired their weapons in self-defense, and the suspect was struck and died as a result of his injuries," Patterson said.
The shooting is under investigation, Patterson said.
The man was in an area that burned during the 2003 Old fire, about 20 miles from the Lake Arrowhead blazes, Patterson said.
"They thought there could be the possibility that he's an arsonist," Patterson said. The area "is in the path of the fire."
-- Tami Abdollah
Lake Arrowhead:
Crews patrolled the Grass Valley fire's eastern flank Tuesday night and were able to protect homes in and around Lake Arrowhead. There was very little activity -- mostly smoldering trees, said Capt. Frank Davis of the California Department of Forestry.
Firefighters were aided by lighter winds and the work that fire crews had done since the Old fire in 2003 -- thinning timber and other fuels around the residential borders of Lake Arrowhead, Davis said.
"This is absolute proof that what we're doing works," said Randy Clauson, division chief for the U.S. Forest Service in the Mountaintop Ranger District of the San Bernardino National Forest.
"This could very well have been several thousand homes lost based on the fuel conditions [before the timber thinning]. We would not have been able to stop the fire," Clauson said.
"The good story is that we haven't lost any structures on the Grass Valley fire in 24 hours," Davis said. "There were no major fire runs on Grass Valley yesterday or last night."
Firefighters are still concerned about the homes south of Lake Arrowhead in Twin Peaks and Crestview, but they are not immediately threatened, he said.
The most active flank of the fire -- the western perimeter -- is moving into a wilderness area.
"The whole western flank is still open. It's backing down the hill toward the west, but no structures are threatened," Davis said.
-- Maeve Reston
Fire officials said they had made some progress on the Grass Valley fire overnight, and that no additional homes were thought to have been lost. But officials are still working on damage assessments.
Jack Froggatt of the Kern County Fire Department, branch director on the Slide fire, told firefighters at the Rim of the World High School command post during a 7 a.m. briefing today that they had made progress slowing the blaze's march through homes in Running Springs.
About 10 more homes in Running Springs were lost overnight, Froggatt said, but he cautioned that fire officials "really don't have a handle on numbers yet." There are still a number of "holdover fires"
burning in Running Springs, and firefighter resources are concentrated in the wealthy Rimwood Ranch neighborhood south of Highway 18.
"All we've been doing is chasing structure for two days," Froggatt told firefighters. He said he hoped the focus could shift to perimeter control today.
-- Maeve Reston
Lake Arrowhead:
At the command post at Rim of the World High School, authorities said Running Springs is the area of greatest concern because the Slide fire continues to move in multiple directions.
The entire area from Snow Valley Lake west to the Valley of Enchantment are under mandatory evacuation, including all of Lake Arrowhead.
The west and north sides of Lake Arrowhead were evacuated Monday. On Tuesday morning the west and east sides of Lake Arrowhead were evacuated.
The East side of the Grass Valley blaze is fairly well controlled, while the West side is more active, according to CDF spokesman Glenn Barley.
Barley said there were no additional structures burned in Lake Arrowhead today as of 7:20pm Tuesday night.
-- Maeve Reston
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
Fredalba:
The fire decimated this San Bernardino community, which by late afternoon was a eerie vision of white ash and burning stumps on a carpet of blackened pine needles. Severed power lines dangled along Fredalba Road and there was virtually nothing left of the homes surrounding Fredalba's historical marker -- noting that the town was the home of the Brookings Lumber Company between 1898 and 1911.
A charred sports car with with flames coming out of the place the headlights once were, a bent and twisted basketball hoop, an ghostly metal table with four chairs still in place around it and a charcoal grill next to what might have once been a patio completed the scene.
There simply were not enough fire trucks to chase down the fire that swept from Running Springs into the steep, winding roads of Fredalba Tuesday morning, said Brian Savage, a Division Supervisor with Culver City Fire who was among the first to begin battling back the flames.
By the time he arrived between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., the flames had already raced through several homes and there were virtually no trucks available to save the rest, he said. Most of the eight engines that were still trying to put out spot fires in the Fredabla-Smiley Ranch communities at 4 p.m. did not arrive until after 1 p.m., Savage said.
The clutter left by homeowners in their wooded yards slowed efforts, Savage said.
"You tell people to do clearance and they think it's OK to leave the wood piles and the sheds," Savage said. "They just don't get it. We can't be at every house. … It's frustrating."
-- Maeve Reston
Lake Arrowhead:
Standing on a balcony across from Cedar Glen Canyon near Lake Arrowhead, where hundreds of home were burned in 2003, neighbors Shane McLelland and Jack Fuller surveyed a line of fire less than a mile away that headed in their direction.
Fuller lost his house in the earlier fire, but built a two-story, wood-framed hillside home to replace it.
With a panoramic view the neighbors can monitor the fires to the east and homes burning a mile away. To the west there are multi-million dollar homes in every nook and cranny of the mountains standing untouched.
McLelland and Fuller were among 50 homeowners who have chosen to stay to protect their homes, most of them built only in the last 4 years. McLelland lives a few miles away in the Grass Valley community of Lake Arrowhead, where many homes were lost last night and today. But, on Tuesday, he was laying out hoses and clearing brush from around the home of a long time friend in Cedar Glen.
McLelland and many other neighbors had repeatedly returned throughout the day to Fuller's balcony to keep tabs on the fires they believed would return to the canyon later tonight. Peering through binoculars, Fuller, a concrete construction worker, and McLelland, a custom car builder, shook their heads at the sight of homes going up in smoke on the western ridgeline of Green Valley Lake about a mile away from the fires.
Having lost his water pressure entirely earlier Tuesday, Fuller hired a local construction crew to bring a water tanker to his property and thoroughly hose down the house. "We're pretty sure what's going to happen next," McLelland said. "The fire is going to come through here, possibly take away all these new homes and then head into Lake Arrowhead. So, we've got our hoses laid out and ready. The water tanks up the street are full."
One of his neighbors installed a water pump near a creek just behind his house to fight the fire with the creek water.
"We just want to get this over with. Sitting around and waiting is nerve-racking. But we're not going to let our homes burn again if we can help it."
-- Louis Sahagun
San Bernardino schools will close Wednesday because of the fires, officials said.
Orange View Fairgrounds evacuation center:
Ruben Gurrola, 53, the patriarch of his family, has lived in the Lake Arrowhead area for 27 years. He has been buying his $150,000 house near the rim of The World High School for 8 years. Monday morning he decided to pack up the family and voluntarily evacuate to the center in San Bernardino. He spent his first night in his truck because, "It was full of the most important documents of his life," those of his marriage, his citizenship papers, and his forthcoming homeowners papers (deed).
The family also went through the 2003 fire. They were at a soccer game in San Bernardino and didn't make it to their home in time to save their dog, Pug. But the home survived then and the Gurrolas are hopeful it will again.
It was better this time, as the family was home to gather together, but, "I hope it does not become a routine."
Gurrola's daughters, Margarita, 21, was worried about her one-month-old son, David. "You know there's just so many people around and I just worry about germs or an illness spreading and my son getting sick from it. But it's been safe so far. It's not your house but I guess it'll be home for the next few days."
-- Francisco Vara-Orta
Arrowbear-Running Springs:
Two 21-man U.S. Forest Service crews -- the Feather River Hot Shots and the Breckenridge Hot Shots -- sipped boxed Starbucks coffee in the parking lot of Blondie's Bar and Grill as they waited for water-dropping planes and helicopters to clear a safe path for them. The crews planned to hike in when it was safe to build a containment line with their saws and pulaskis, an axe-like tool used to fight wildfires.
"We're just getting a feel of what the fire is doing ... it's a pretty steady line of fire moving down the southwest," said Hot Shot Capt. Ray Torres of the Feather River group. "We've got some folks scouting to see how we can get in there to actually start attacking this thing."
Jason Foreman, lead saw on the Breckenridge Hot Shot crew, said the clouds of smoke signified the peak burn period of the day.
"It's so erratic, we haven't been able to get out there. ... We might spread ourselves too thin," said Foreman, 29. Most recently, Foreman said his crew had worked the initial attack on the fire around Lake Isabella in California and the Gray's Creek Fire in Idaho in early September.
"They were nothing like this," he said, eyeing the smoke along the ridgeline.
-- Maeve Reston
San Bernardino:
By Tuesday afternoon, the number of evacuees at the Orange View Fairgrounds in San Bernardino had grown to nearly 1,500 from about 900 Monday night. Most of the arrivals were coming from the burned areas near Lake Arrowhead.
Children were playing and people milled about in tank tops and shorts under a blazing sun. In the parking lot, dozens of tents were set up among RVs and rows of cars. One woman was sunbathing in the bed of a pickup truck.
An animal shelter, made up of dozens of cages in a large tent, held dogs, cats, rabbits and birds.
Two large warehouses have been converted into dorms, filled with cots and tables that offered fire information and services to evacuees. Inside people napped, read books and watched a large graphic projected on a wall showing the progress of the fires.
-Francisco Vara-Orta in San Bernardino
Two 21-man U.S. Forest Service crews -- the Feather River Hot Shots and the Breckenridge Hot Shots -- sipped boxed Starbucks coffee in the parking lot of Blondie's Grille & Bar in Arrowbear, waiting for water-dropping planes to clear the way for them to hike in and build a containment line with their saws and pulaskis (a combination ax and pick, used to clear brush).
Jason Foreman, lead saw on the Breckenridge Hot Shots, said the clouds of smoke signified "the buildup" and the peak burn period of the day.
-- Maeve Reston in Arrowbear
Scott Garrett, 48, a semiretired movie studio art department technician, lives in a four-story 6,000-square-foot home on the hillside of Grass Valley on Sonoma Street.
With his Labrador mix, Liberty, he decided to stay through the mandatory evacuations Monday and try to save his home. He was ready to leave "when all the houses started burning and exploding, all the ammunition and propane going off. I saw my neighbor and we decided to stay. I'm glad I did."
"I made a ditch kit: my three favorite paintings, my dog and my favorite pair of shoes [military desert boots]."
Read on »
The city of Highland is advising residents of a precautionary and voluntary evacuation for those located east of Highway 330, north of Highland Avenue and west of Weaver. The evacuation in the community at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains is due to the Green Valley Lake/Slide Fire.
More than 100 structures were lost in Running Springs as of this morning and 25 in Green Valley Lake, according to U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Veronica Magnuson. But she said it was difficult to keep track with all the spot fires.
With more than 15,000 people under mandatory evacuation between the Slide and Grass Valley fires, San Bernardino County sheriff's officials were making another round of door-to-door pleas for residents to leave.
"I have a message for them: Please leave," Magnuson said. "You're interfering. You're risking our lives."
Read on »
By 10:30 a.m. the mountain communities of Running Springs and Green Valley had lost a combined 100 houses at least. At the hour, however, it appeared that the fire had skirted the rustic downtown of Running Springs, U.S. Forest Service spokesman Bob Poole said. But homes outside the town center continued to catch fire.
Along with the usual signs of devastation -- lone chimneys and blackened rubble -- were some incongruous scenes. At three houses burned to the ground, pipes from the household plumbing survived and the water still flowed, creating mini-geysers that tossed water up about eight inches even as the scene smoldered.
The heat rising off the houses created optical illusions as well, like a wobbly, waving highway in a desert. Blacked trees viewed through the heat appeared to shimmer.
On one block, six vehicles -- two pickups, three sedans and a van -- were parked facing nose-out at the ends of driveways, ready to escape. The residents of the houses were nowhere to be found, but the six vehicles, now burned hulks, sat in their driveways.
-- Louis Sahagun
The Slide fire has burned through 4,000 acres in the Lake Arrowhead area and is spreading rapidly, driven by northeast wind gusts of up to 45 mph, said Richard Thornburgh, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.
By Monday night, 25 homes had been reported lost at Green Valley Lake, and overnight about 100 homes were destroyed in Running Springs, he said.
Last night law enforcement and fire crews had to leave the Green Valley area and have not been able to get back in because of fire and smoke, Thornburgh said.
"So we don't really have an accurate status on how many homes we've lost in Green Valley Lake," he said. "We just know it was 25 as of yesterday, and probably more than that now."
The fire crossed Highway 18 on the west end of Running Springs and also Highway 330 by Fedalba and Smiley Park, Thornburgh said.
He said the fire is still not contained.
"Crews are doing active structure protection in Fedalba and Smiley Park and it's very critical that residents evacuate," he said. There are no reports of injuries, he said.
The Grass Valley fire has burned through at least 400 acres in north Lake Arrowhead, with about 113 homes destroyed as of yesterday, Thornburgh said.
"The fire did not move overnight -- no more structures were lost -- but crews were working in Fairway and Grandview areas where there's a lot of unburned pockets around," he said.
Evacuations are mandatory in north Lake Arrowhead, Twin Peaks and Blue Jay, he said. An order to leave Crestline and all of Lake Gregory and Rim Forest went out Monday night, Thornburgh said. He said the fire is still not contained.
The Martin Ranch fire started about 12:15 a.m. today and has burned through about 200 acres south of Devore, Thornburgh said. The Little League Drive North and Meyers Canyon Road areas have been evacuated, he said.
The Cajon fire is now 50% contained at about 200 acres near Lytle Creek Ridge, Thornburgh said.
-- Tami Abdollah
At about 1:30 a.m. this morning a fire broke out near Martin Ranch and Meyers roads in the Verdemont area of San Bernardino, according to a statement from the mayor.
The fire burned about 75 acres but is now contained. No structures were burned, and no injuries were reported.
The Green Valley Lake/Slide fire has jumped across Highway 18 and is burning near the Smiley Park/Fredalba Road area around Highway 330, just south of Running Springs.
The city is monitoring the fire's progress down the front side of the San Bernardino Mountains and the risk to the eastern portions of the cities of San Bernardino and Highland.
People are being evacuated from the mountain communities to the Citrus and Damus buildings at the National Orange Show Events Center at Arrowhead Avenue and Mill Street in San Bernardino. To contact the evacuation center, call (909) 888-1481.
All San Bernardino City Unified School District schools and Cal State San Bernardino are closed today because of the threat of fire, the district said in a statement.
Child care centers also have shut down, and before- and after-school programs, including athletic and other extracurricular activities, have been canceled.
The Slide fire, which has burned about 1,500 acres in the northern part of Lake Arrowhead, jumped Highway 330 this morning and is traveling the southwest edges of Running Springs, said Jason Meyer, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The Grass fire, which has been lumped together with the Slide fire as the Slide and Grass Fire Complex, has burned about 300 acres, Meyer said. The Grass fire has not yet met the Slide fire and is in the north Lake Arrowhead and Twin Peaks area, Meyer said.
Neither fire has been contained, he said.
Mandatory evacuations are in place for Crestline, Twin Peaks, north Lake Arrowhead, Crest Park, Sky Forest, Rim Forest, Running Springs, Arrowbear Lake, and Green Valley Lake, Meyer said. Voluntary evacuations are in place for Cedar Glen, south Lake Arrowhead, Valley of Enchantment and Cedar Pines Park, Meyer said.
--Tami Abdollah
San Bernardino:
About 975 people have registered with the American Red Cross shelter in San Bernardino, according to Dianne Strutt, the shelter's manager. Some ate dinner, others dozed on cots while 20 kids played soccer in one corner of the building. Strutt said that if they break 1,000 refugees, they will open up a similar building on the fairgrounds to take in more people.
In the parking lot, a few dozen people stayed in their cars or RVs. A makeshift animal shelter maintained by the San Bernardino County Vector Control housed about 75 dogs and cats in a truck with cages, according to Mark Scina, the shelter's on-site manager.
For Jana Robertson, a 20-year resident of Crestline, the camping cots were too painful to sleep on because of a neck injury she suffered in a car accident in 2001. During the 2003 fire she stayed with friends, but this time they had moved away. So she was given some towels to roll up under her neck as she slept in her Suzuki Grand Vitara.
"You really do take for granted the luxuries back home, even if it is in the mountains. God, it'd be great to shower though."
Like many residents stranded either inside or outside the shelter, Robertson said it's painful waiting to find out the damage the fire has inflicted. "Faith is what I hope most of us have packed tonight."
-- Francisco VaraOrta
San Bernardino:
The Mundo family fled their Twin Peaks home around 10 a.m. Monday morning and eventually made their way down to the Red Cross evacuation site at the Orange Show Fairgrounds in San Bernardino. It's the first wildfire they've experienced since moving to the area four years ago from El Salvador.
"You can feel so many different emotions; in a way you're excited at seeing all the fire and the smoke from a distance, but then you're scared that it will come closer to you," said Alejandra Mundo, 19. The family grabbed some of their jewelry, photos and clothes, but left behind what they hoped was going to become their first home in the United States. Although they had been renting out the house for $1,000 a month, the owner told them a few months ago that she was willing to sell it to them for $325,000 this coming December. "Our dreams could be up in smoke," said the family's matriarch, Sara, 40. "But as long as the family is together that's the most important thing anyone can have."
As of 4 p.m. the family was preparing to stay one to two nights in the shelter. They hadn't heard anything about their home.
-- Francisco VaraOrta
Between Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear:
The Kerr family watched their Grass Valley Lake-area home burn to the ground Monday morning. Asked to move two blocks away by the CHP, the family parked and waited until they saw the house collapse. Three members of the family of five -- father Michael, 42, Sarah, 14, and son Kelle, 13 -- were channeling their grief by volunteering at the Red Cross Evacuation Center in San Bernardino, helping to set up cots and pick up trash early Monday evening.
"We're mountain people; we're tough," Michael Kerr said. "We're here to help out and to help ourselves mentally.
"You have to be either part of the problem or part of the solution, so we're not going to sit around and cry."
Two other family members -- Julie, 41, and John, 12 -- were staying at a Motel 6 to catch up on their rest. All five shared a three-story house, valued at $500,000. They're planning on staying at the shelter overnight to work out details with the insurance company on a temporary dwelling.
"We're going to rebuild," Michael said. "We've been living in that | |
