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California is burning…

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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Having fun in the hills!


« on: July 29, 2018, 11:50:55 pm »


from the print edition of the Los Angeles Times…

Mountain communities flee amid scorched earth:
‘It's all heat, toxins and smoke’


Raging fire cuts path of destruction in serene Idyllwild.

By JACLYN COSGROVE, LAURA NEWBERRY, CORINA KNOLL and JOSEPH SERNA | Friday, July 27, 2018

The Cranston fire believed to have been started by an arsonist, burned multiple structures along Deer Foot Lane in Idyllwild. — Photograph: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times.
The Cranston fire believed to have been started by an arsonist, burned multiple structures along Deer Foot Lane in Idyllwild.
 — Photograph: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times.


IT WAS little more than a grave of scorched remains.

Appliances burned beyond recognition, a charred bathtub, twists of metal pipe. Slabs of concrete that once served as walls stood next to a chimney of blackened stone.

Signs of a caring owner — a filled birdbath, potted plants — were suddenly stark symbols of the past, before the Idyllwild home had been consumed by the Cranston fire.

The massive blaze that has sent thousands fleeing as it continues to rage through the San Jacinto Mountains is believed to have been sparked on Wednesday by an arsonist, a troubling detail in a battle that has enlisted nearly 700 firefighters and threatened hundreds of homes.

“It's the scariest feeling you can have because you're helpless,” said resident Tamara Friemoth, 56, about the moment she watched the fire curl around the mountains in front of the gas station and auto shop she owns with her husband.

Friemoth has lived in the area for four decades and although she ran home to grab clothes and family heirlooms, she kept her business open for firefighters seeking drinks and snacks.

By Thursday afternoon, the fire was 7,500 acres and 5% contained, easily spotted by the billowy plumes of smoke expanding into the sky.

A dusting of crimson retardant atop a ridge marked where the flames had retreated from Idyllwild, an enclave of artists and musicians and a tourist draw. But officials worried the triple-digit weather coupled with a shift in wind could build momentum and undo any progress, even sending the blaze back on top of firefighters and into the beloved town.


A plane, seen from Highway 74, drops retardant on the Cranston fire Thursday in Mountain Center. The fire was easily spotted by its billowy plumes of smoke. — Photograph: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times.
A plane, seen from Highway 74, drops retardant on the Cranston fire Thursday in Mountain Center. The fire was easily spotted by its billowy plumes of smoke.
 — Photograph: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times.


Chief Patrick Reitz of the Idyllwild Fire Protection District said his biggest concern was whether the fire might push past a fire line or fuel break.

Over the last several years, staff from local, state and federal agencies have actively worked to build and maintain fuel breaks in the area. Those, mixed with an aggressive air assault team and firefighters on the ground, have helped slow down the Cranston fire and save most of Idyllwild, where five structures were destroyed.

“It was a lot of work yesterday and tremendous effort, and it paid off,” Reitz said.

But the mushroom-like cloud that formed nearby has added another element to the usual volatility of fighting fires. Pyrocumulus clouds form from fire and collapse onto themselves, causing the weather conditions to change.

“It's all heat, toxins and smoke,” said Captain Scott Visyak of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Fed by dry fuel on steep slopes, the fire headed into Apple Canyon and Bonita Vista, and new evacuations were announced for McCall Park, south of Pine Wood, Cedar Glen, Pine Cove and Fern Valley.

Steve and Suzanne Coffer were on their way to San Diego to hit the casinos when approaching flames made them return home to hurriedly pack up their belongings. They spent the night in their car with their cat, parked near a church.


Steve and Suzanne Coffer, longtime residents of Idyllwild, rushed home on Wednesday to see their house on Deer Foot Lane coated in a pink fire retardant. — Photograph: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times.
Steve and Suzanne Coffer, longtime residents of Idyllwild, rushed home on Wednesday to see their house on Deer Foot Lane coated in a pink fire retardant.
 — Photograph: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times.


When they saw their house again, it was coated in retardant. The mess was no matter for Steve Coffer, who had moved to Idyllwild 40 years ago, yearning for a place far from the city.

The elation at finding his home still standing was difficult for him to express.

“I can't put it into words.”

Many residents were without power, including Ruth Kleefisch, 52, who drove from her home in Pine Cove to Idyllwild in an attempt to charge her cellphone and try to get reception.

Kleefisch's husband has liver cancer and has been unable to eat for the last four days. She was desperate to reach his doctor to ask what she could do to help her husband's nausea.

She said she was less concerned about the fire, which hadn't reached Pine Cove, and more concerned about being without power, especially if it lasted more than a few days.

“The neighborhood's quiet, everything is quiet. There's nobody here. Once all the tourists leave, there's not that many left of us, really.”

Fires have also struck Northern California, where firefighters work in brutal 110-degree temperatures on the northern edge of the Sacramento Valley. Crews scrambled when a shift in the winds pushed the Carr fire three miles east in four hours, catching residents in Whiskeytown on their heels.

The blaze reached the edge of Whiskeytown Lake, where local news outlets reported that 40 boats were burned along with a number of homes.


Members of a hand crew fight the Cranston fire raging in Mountain Center. As of Thursday afternoon, the blaze had charred 7,500 acres and was 5% contained. — Photograph: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times.
Members of a hand crew fight the Cranston fire raging in Mountain Center. As of Thursday afternoon, the blaze had charred 7,500 acres and was 5% contained.
 — Photograph: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times.


Authorities placed 192 homes under mandatory evacuation orders, most of those in Whiskeytown and the community of French Gulch, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.

The blaze was 20,000 acres and 10% contained on Thursday morning. But most of that containment was on the fire's west and northwestern edge, not on its southern face where the residents are, said spokesman Chad Carroll. The blaze has been running along the north side of Highway 299 since a vehicle malfunction sparked it on Monday afternoon, he said.

While the Carr fire has been fueled by wind and topography, the Ferguson fire outside Yosemite National Park has been decidedly different, said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Jacob Welsh.

Crews in the rugged forests in Mariposa County have been dealing with an inversion layer that has put the Ferguson fire's smoke right on top of Yosemite Valley and other low-lying areas. Poor air quality and visibility have limited the ability for planes and helicopters to help fight the fire, Welsh said. At the same time, that smoky blanket keeps the fire from “getting a breath of fresh air” and growing, Welsh said.

One of the biggest obstacles to containing the fire continues to be the terrain, a mix of steep cliffs with deep, inaccessible canyons loaded with vegetation and slopes of standing dead trees — victims of a bark beetle infestation that's killed 129 million trees since 2010.

The Ferguson fire was 43,299 acres and 27% contained, officials said.

The strategy with the Cranston fire is to hack away at flammable vegetation along its perimeter to cut off the fuel supply, said Kate Kramer, a spokeswoman with the San Bernardino National Forest.

Farther out from the fire line, she said, firefighters are clearing flammable brush to prevent it from spreading.

The blaze is being directly attacked in areas covered in extremely dry grass, where the fire burns quickly and stays low enough to be extinguished safely.


__________________________________________________________________________

Jaclyn Cosgrove reported from Mountain Center; Laura Newberry from Banning; and Corina Knoll Knoll and Joseph Serna from Los Angeles.

• Jaclyn Cosgrove is a Metpro reporter at the Los Angeles Times. Previously, she worked as the health reporter at The Oklahoman. She was selected for a 2015-16 Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism. For her fellowship project, she explored the barriers that low-income, uninsured people with mental illnesses face in finding treatment. Cosgrove is originally from Arpelar, Oklahoma, and graduated from Oklahoma State University.

• Laura Newberry has been writing for the Los Angeles Times since she joined the newspaper's staff in 2012. Orignially from Central Florida, she worked as an environment and education reporter in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts before attending UC Berkeley. She is focused on narrative writing at the journalism school, with a special interest in environmental and human rights reporting. Her work has appeared in the Tampa Bay Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the East Bay Express, the Indianapolis Star, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Orlando Sentinel and others.

• Corina Knoll writes for the Metro section of the Los Angeles Times. She was on the team that investigated corruption in Bell — which led to the newspaper's 2011 Pulitzer Prize for public service — and went on to cover the trials of the city's former officials. She later contributed to the paper's coverage of the San Bernardino terror attack that won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. As a regional reporter, she wrote features about the San Gabriel Valley and the Westside. During her courts beat, she covered high-profile criminal cases and civil disputes, including the Jackson family versus AEG and Bryan Stow versus L.A. Dodgers. In her current gig she is called upon to rewrite breaking news stories and also writes long-form narratives. Recently, she and two colleagues investigated sheriff's deputies whose histories of misconduct landed them on the department's top-secret Brady list. Raised in the Midwest, she is a graduate of Macalester College.

• Joseph Serna is a Metro reporter who has been with the Los Angeles Times since 2012. He previously worked for papers in Orange County and Signal Hill, a 2.2-square-mile city surrounded by Long Beach. He was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News for coverage of the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack and is a graduate of California's community college and Cal State systems.

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=aba1b355-3170-46ee-9972-179a756c24fc
http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=2668c92a-9247-4e95-934a-9da612f95ada
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