Poppet Flat, Calif. – There was no time to get to the truck, no time even to pull out a piece of protective sheltering and pray it would let them survive the rushing wall of flame.
Five firefighters were trying to protect a home from a fast-growing wildfire Thursday when fierce, unpredictable Santa Ana winds overtook them in the hills northwest of Palm Springs, said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Pat Boss. There was no time to retreat.
All but one of the firefighters were killed in the nation’s deadliest wildfire firefighting disaster in five years. The survivor was in critical condition, with burns over 95 percent of his body.
Boss said the Forest Service pulled all its firefighters off the blaze after the deaths so they could “gather their thoughts, say their prayers.”
Initially they had nothing to blame but the Santa Anas, the infamous dry, powerful winds from the northeast that usually begin afflicting Southern California this time of year.
But firefighting officials soon concluded that an arsonist, seeking to use the Santa Anas to full advantage, started the fire that by Thursday evening had become a 38-square-mile zone of destruction. The fire was only 5 percent contained.
Authorities quickly offered a $100,000 reward.
“Turn that scum in, please,” implored Riverside County Supervisor Marion Ashley.
The fire destroyed at least five homes, forced hundreds of people in the area to evacuate and stranded up to 400 people in an RV park near Palm Springs when flames burned to the edge of the only road out, officials said. They were in no immediate danger, said Charles Van Brunt, a ranger at the station at the entrance to the park, Silent Valley Club.
A firebreak created around Poppet Flat and the RV park years earlier stymied the flames, sheriff’s Cpl. Todd Garvin said.
Authorities asked people in the RV park, some of whom had fled there, to stay put to leave the roads clear for firefighters. Area residents were allowed to leave the park and go home in the evening.
Fire officials said the fire was set about 1 a.m. and had blackened 10,000 acres within 12 hours. Riverside County Fire Chief John Hawkins said the arson “constitutes murder.”
The last time so many firefighters were killed in a wildfire was July 10, 2001, when four of them became trapped by flames in a remote canyon of Washington’s Okanogan National Forest.
Fourteen firefighters died in Colorado’s 1994 Storm King fire just west of Glenwood Springs.
Three of the firefighters killed Thursday died at the scene and two were hospitalized in critical condition. One of those two died several hours later, and the other had severe respiratory burns, giving him little chance of survival, a doctor at the hospital said.
The hamlets of Poppet Ranch and Twin Pines were evacuated along with a juvenile detention center, Twin Pines Boys Ranch.
The firefighters who were killed were members of a five- person crew based in the nearby town of Idyllwild. Their names were not immediately released.
