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Elfin Forest/Harmony Grove Fire Department
Major Incidents
Firefighter of the
Year 2008
Octavio "Henry" Vanzanni
20223 Elfin Forest Rd. Elfin Forest, CA 92029 Phone: 760-744-2186 Fire Chief: Frank Twohy
(Photo: EFHG engine 2811 at the Pines Fire.)
The Fire Storms of
2003 -
Thoughts from the Chief
By Chief Frank Twohy
As I reflect on the events of what will probably be called The Fire Storms of 2003 I can’t help but reflect how special our Communities are. It seems like only yesterday when we faced the Harmony Fire which truly tested us all. During that time our communities had a tremendous outpouring of help and hope to all who needed it. As communities we were never closer.
During the fire storm of 2003 the same community spirit was back and never was I more proud! Countless people stopped by the station and offered help. The department was manning the station twenty four hours a day and needless to say all were quite tired. We were taken care of beautifully by the Fire Auxiliary, and many community members dropped by with additional food and snacks. The station became a clearing house for information and a place for company. The station served as command center for monitoring fire progress and two nights of community patrols as a fire watch.
Our block captains did an outstanding job of informing us of where to go and when to leave if we needed to evacuate.
We have all heard over the radio, seen on TV, or read in the papers about what may have gone wrong and what should have been done. As your fire chief, I participated in as many as two conference calls a day with all the fire Chiefs in North County. We were constantly keeping each other informed of what was happening in our jurisdictions and setting resource commitments we could make to incidents in North County, the county and out of county.
I met with our neighboring fire chiefs and we developed evacuation plans for our areas and identified trigger events which would put the plans into effect. This where the block captains shined!
Some have questioned the wisdom of the San Diego County Fire Departments helping neighbors outside our county. I looked at the list of fire departments that sent engines to the Harmony Fire, which was not the only fire burning in California, (Malibu and other areas were also burning). My list shows 127 departments responded!
The Elfin / Forest Harmony Grove Department committed 3 engines and ten firefighters to the fires. One engine was in San Bernardo for three days then moved to the Cedar Fire. That engine was part of the strike team that defended Julian the Day Steve Rucker lost his life. The other two engines were defending Valley Center on the Paradise Fire helping to keep the fire out of Escondido which would threaten us.
When residents came by the station some would express some concern because our engines were elsewhere and our communities were facing danger. Our communities did indeed face danger as two vegetation fires were to occur here. Mr. Paul Borden of Home Federal Bank and San Elijo, stopped by the station offering to do anything he could to help. We needed a water truck as our water tender was in Valley Center providing water to save homes. He quickly arranged to place a water truck from Cass Construction at the station. The Department used the water truck that very night to provide water to extinguish the vegetation fire at the old trailer park.
Due to our chiefs’ conferences and auto and mutual aid we give each other, we received six engines, and two additional chief officers including the chief of Encinitas for our fires!
Twenty-two of your firefighters were rotated in and out of our three engines over an eight day period and committed in excess of 1,660 hours of service to others!
FROM THE FIRE
October 2003
By Steve Barker
I’m back in the office after a week on the Paradise Fire. What I’ve discovered is that many of our wonderful friends have called or e-mailed concerned for our welfare. I want to thank you all, let you know we are fine and give you a recap of the last week.
It certainly was one of those weeks that we’ll never forget. The first fire to break out was the Pendleton fire, caused by ordinance on the Marine base. It threatened the towns of Fallbrook and DeLuz, with winds blowing from the west, pushing it off the Marine Base and into residential areas. Julie Beer, our Director of Development, had a close call, but never had to evacuate.
While that fire was still burning, the Grand Prix fire started in San Bernardino. This fire was fueled by Santa Ana winds from the NE and the fire quickly blew up into a firestorm consuming neighborhoods.
On Saturday, October 25th, Engine 2811 from Elfin Forest was dispatched on a North County structure strike team to the Grand Prix fire. A strike team is a group of five similar type of apparatus, in this case structure engines, that are under the strike team leader, usually a battalion chief. On each truck there is a Captain who’s in charge and sits in the front right seat, an engineer who drives and works the pump and one or two fire fighters who do the grunt work.
The next fire to start was the Old Fire – located not too far from the Grand Prix. Our North County strike team fought on both fires. The guys on 2811 saw a lot of fire, saved lots of houses and lost a few. John Reyes, Captain of 2811 was attacked by a rotweiller while fighting the fire in the backyard of a house. It was quite a fight, but they both survived.
The next fire broke out on Saturday night; it was the Cedar fire outside Ramona.
Elfin Forest was paged out late Saturday night for smoke check, which turned out to be the Ramona fire 10 miles away, but looked like it was coming from the hills of our district around the Olivenhein Dam. We responded with our brush engine to the Dam to check it out then came back to the station.
By this time our whole department was staged at the station in anticipation of being called out again. We stayed up the rest of the morning and watched in awe as the glowing smoke header grew over the ridge tops.
Early that morning before dawn, the Paradise fire began in Valley Center. Our water tender 2851 was called out to the fire with a crew of two. By mid day our brush engine 2862 was also called out for strike team 6415C. A North County group of engines; from Fallbrook 1164, Encinitas 2360, San Marcos 1461, Rancho Santa Fe 2661 and Elfin Forest 2862. Chief Terich, (1203) from Vista Fire, was our strike team leader. Captain Les George from Vista Fire was his driver.
For clarification, a brush engine (type 3) is different from a structure engine (type 1) in a few ways. A type 3 is made for off road driving, carries few or no ladders, carries brush hose, which is smaller in diameter than structure hoses, and has a shorter wheel base.
On Sunday and Monday strike team 6415C, and crew fought fire in the Ridge Ranch area, saved some very expensive homes and fought a valiant but futile effort to keep the fire south of the Valley Center grade. At the peak of that fight, engines were lined up two abreast down the grade as a 100-foot wall of flames ran up the canyon toward them. The fire ultimately jumped the road and blew past their line. They retreated to the ridge above and dug in to save homes off of Bambridge. No homes were lost in that area but the fire moved through into the Daley Ranch and Dixon Lake area. Water tender 2851 ended up being shanghaied by another strike team as they were driving into Valley Center. They fought fire in the Paradise Mountain and Rincon Valley areas. This was a very hot area where many homes and a few lives were lost.
For clarification a water tender is simply a truck designed to carry large amounts of water (2000 gallons in 2851) and usually acts in support of structure and brush engines, shuttling water from hydrant to truck.
Back in Elfin Forest the station grew busier by the hour with residents arriving and calling asking about where the fire was and if they should evacuate.
Sunday, October 26th – Our station was toned (paged) out for a vegetation fire off Seaquest Lane. As we jumped into our remaining brush 2860, our thoughts were racing as to whether this could be an arson fire, where will we find the resources to fight it, will the east wind or west wind be controlling the path of the fire? As we arrived on scene, we found a ½ acre area inside a corral fence in flames in light fuel.
Mike Sampson put the truck in pump, the rest of the crew pulled hose, shovels, McClouds (a giant hoe) and attacked the creeping fire edge with hand tools. The goal was to keep the fire from spreading to the brush 20 feet away.
Within 10 minutes the fire was out and overhaul started, which consisted of dumping 1000 gallons of water on the fire and scratching in a 3 feet wide vegetation free path around the fire. Cause of the fire was the owner trying to clear his property of weeds with his tractor. The tractor blade scraped a rock, caused a spark and ignited the brush. This is quite common when humidity drops under 15%.
With most of our department already on out of district fires, we relied heavily on our new guys. They were very green, but got the job done on their first fire. Over the next week they would end up on other small fires, car wrecks and medical aids. They named themselves the Bad News Bears and really rose to the occasion like the team of kids in the movie of the same name.
Monday night we had a crew relieve our 2851 guys who had yet to sleep or eat a real meal since Sunday morning. Back in Elfin Forest, the owner of San Elijo, a development near Elfin Forest, came to the station with an offer to help in any way he could. Chief Twohy said, “Loan us a water tender” and they did.
At 01:00 Tuesday morning we were toned out (paged) for another brush fire in the old vacated trailer park. When we arrived we discovered a half acre on fire, including some palm trees and some bamboo in the old creek. Nona, our engineer, immediately got the truck in pump and in a few moments, the Bad News Bears were in the thick of the fire, flowing water. Within 20 minutes, the fire was knocked down and within 2 hours overhaul was complete. The fire was of “suspicious origin”, probably arson caused.
The newly borrowed water tender proved to be a great asset. The guys just relieved from 2851 (David Jones and Tim Costanzo) had barely laid their heads on their pillows (after 36 hours without sleep) when the page went off for this fire. With no sleep in 48 hours, they still rose and got to the station. Once there, they discovered a strange water tender. They figured out how to start it, drove it to the fire and got water out of it. A really commendable effort! We all returned to the station by 4 AM, cleaned and re-outfitted the trucks.
At 05:00 the relief team for 2862 assembled, loaded gear into the utility and left for Valley Center (the Paradise fire). The relief crew consisted of fire fighters Michael Holmes and me as Captain. We joined, Engineer, Bob Kephart and fire fighter, Bethany Love and replaced fire fighter, Matt Sampson and Captain, Darrin Lee. We ate breakfast in camp with the rest of the strike team, introduced ourselves to our strike team leader and received our morning briefing.
At 07:00 the strike team left camp for Ridge Ranch , where we stayed for the next 18 hours. We left staging a couple of times to respond to resident’s calls of smoke showing outside their homes. These were small spots and no real danger but our efforts relieved the very stressed out homeowners in the area.
At 21:00 the strike team was called to Woods Valley Road where several active fires were burning on the hillside. The main fire was in a very inaccessible cliff area below some very large estate homes.
At 03:00 the division chief approved a plan to descend down to the fire with a hose line and extinguish the fire in anticipation of a hand crew being available next morning to cut a line around the burn. Fighting fire in the “green”, down hill, in the dark is considered very dangerous because of the risk of the wind changing, driving the fire back up the hill thereby trapping the fire fighters. In spite of this, the risks were weighed and the ok given to the project. Our trucks, supported by one CDF truck, laid 1800 feet of hose over the side, extinguished the fire and walked out to Woods Valley Road. By 5AM, we were done and staged by homes on Ridge Ranch Road.
At 09:30 we were relieved by another strike team and returned to camp for breakfast. We sat in camp for 4 hours waiting for word on when we could sleep. Sometime in the afternoon we were told that there was no place to sleep in camp, but we could go elsewhere for the night as long as we stayed together.
I called Pala Casino and arranged for 15 rooms. Once in Pala, Holmes had the tribal chief on the phone and had our room rates cut in half. The staff at Pala was great. They even did a special laundry load for us, which was really needed, though the chief never got his pants and tighty whiteys back.After 60 hours awake we finally got a nights sleep.
0500 October 30th. We were back on the road to camp in Valley Center for breakfast and a briefing. We were assigned to the northeast branch of the fire – specifically Mesa Grande. On the way there our truck started losing power. We were eventually doing under 10 mph on the Rincon grade. We left the strike team and turned around for camp and a mechanic. We discovered the problem was in our carburetor linkage. We had a mangled part and would have to order a new one from San Diego. That would have put us off the fire and the strike team.
Our own Chief, Frank Twohy, showed up on the scene and quickly identified an expeditious solution. We stripped the part off another county vehicle in the lot. We apologized to the mechanic and headed back to the fire. We caught up with our strike team in Mesa Grande, west of Lake Henshaw.
Our assignment was to clean up hot spots and secure the line on a ridge above Black Canyon. At this point, the wind was coming from the west and blowing pretty good. In fact, it was cold – what a climatic change we had experienced in the last few days.
After about 5 hours’ work, we headed back down through the oaks on winding dirt roads in the dark. We arrive back at camp just in time for dinner. Showers had been installed so we all enjoyed getting clean again.
The camp experience was quite interesting. At the peak of the fire, the camp must have held over 3,000 people. All the services such as food, latrines, fuel, supply, medical and tents were all provided by a combination of private contractors and inmates. Additionally, command and control logistics occupied several buildings and tents. There was even a full studio and stage for news conferences.
Back in Elfin Forest – Nona and Chief Frank handled calls from nervous neighbors. Thursday, with limited crew, the department responded to a head-on collision. Nona and crew extracted one of the drivers from his car, using the “jaws of life” and pulling the dashboard off his chest with the hydraulic spreaders. He was transported by Air Ambulance,while two less seriously injured passengers were ambulanced to Palomar Hospital.
Also on Thursday, our daughter, Emily, totaled her car in a freeway pile up. She wasn’t hurt, but it was one more thing that Nona had to manage and worry about during this unbelievable week
Friday, Oct. 31st – Halloween. We were assigned to Pamo Valley, outside of Ramona. Specifically, we were to work on a portion of the fire line still considered active off of the Lusardi truck trail. Mostly we sat all day at the trailhead while the folks in charge developed a plan of attack. We did take some time to patrol the valley, which meant driving through herds of cattle and checking on the few remaining houses in the valley.
Around 16:30 a pick up truck appeared at the barbwire gate and two kids around 4 and 6 got out in full costume to open the gate for their cousin’s car. These were the only kids any of the fire fighters (all fathers) would get to see on Halloween. All of us piled out of the trucks and rifled through our lunch bags and produced several chocolate bars and candy for the two kids’ bags. The CDF chief with us took the bars off his uniform and pinned them on the littlest trick-or-treater.
At sundown we headed back to camp. The next morning we returned to the truck trail and spent the day putting out smokes, cutting lines and cleaning downed oaks from roads. At sundown we returned to camp.
Saturday,November 1st 20:00 - A relief crew from Elfin Forest, led by Nona, was at camp and Brush 2862 was released from the strike team. WT 2851 and 2811 were both released on Sunday.
Today (Monday) it rained so the fires are almost totally extinguished. If you’ve read the papers, you know the stats. Over 300,000 acres burned, thousands of homes lost, 20 plus people killed, including a fire fighter from Novato, California. This one’s over, but there will be more fires. It’s a part of a natural cycle. These hills have burned regularly for thousands of years. Only now, millions of people live in this ecosystem.
However, fires of this magnitude are not natural. They are a result of years’ of bad forest management, poor development zoning and weak building codes. All it took was a few years of drought, beetle infestation and dry winds to complete the formula for disaster. Hopefully, this tragedy will be a catalyst for change that will include prescribed burns and fire retardant roofs.
In spite of the reality of the fire’s impact, I had a wonderful experience with my crew – Bob Kephart, my long time friend and talented engineer, Bethany Love, who was positive, upbeat and hard working the whole fire, Trevor Whitehead, our young probationary fire fighter with great heart, broad shoulders and a long future in the fire service, and Michael Holmes, who kept us laughing and from taking ourselves too seriously.
Working with the men and women on our strike team and the hundreds of other folks from departments from throughout the state renews my faith in my fellow humans and their ability to give of themselves in service to people they will never meet.
My final thought is a reminder that the black stark hills that today look so void of life will explode next spring with the most spectacular wildflowers our county has ever seen.
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