Arrowhead fight aided by equipment sent from other fire scenes
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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