A formidible enemy

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Fire Capt. Brian Eagan of the California Department of Forestry stood on a steep ridgeline where his crew managed to save a neighborhood of million-dollar homes and pointed to the crest where a stand of trees was burned like matchsticks.

‘You can see where this whole ridge was slicked off,’ he said, referencing a term used to describe so-called crown fires, where flames leap from tree to tree. ‘It’s nothing more than standing logs now.’

With crown fires, he said, the flames travel extremely fast with temperatures sometimes reaching as high as 1,500 degrees, he said. Unlike with grass fires, the heat can be sustained for as long as an hour, making it very diffcult for firefighters to battle, he said.

‘When it gets into the trees, all we can do is back off,’ said Eagan, a 23 year veteran of the state fire department. ‘There’s nothing we can do.’

Several conditions helped prime the fire, including the dry weather, the winds and housing situated deep in the wilderness.

‘You could have all the resources in the world and you couldn’t have stopped it,’ Eagan said. ‘When you put homes into this kind of setting, where wind and fires occur -- not just here; it’s statewide -- our focus goes from fighting fires to protecting homes.’

Eagan also said homeowners still failed to realize the importance of clearing out brush and deadwood around their homes.

‘Sometimes mother nature says, ‘I’m sorry, but today I’m going to have it my way,’ ‘ he said.

-- Eric Bailey