Sifting Through the Ashes : Firefighters: Shelters may have saved the lives of 15 men whose close call with death came just two months after two colleagues died in another blaze.

By ANDREW LePAGE

Oct. 31, 1993 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS — With flames crackling around them and smoke so thick they could hardly see or breathe, 15 firefighters battling the Altadena blaze realized that they were trapped.

As the fire closed in on them before dawn Wednesday, 10 men from the County Fire Department’s Camp 2 in La Canada Flintridge and five other firefighters crouched beneath their aluminum-coated, tent-like fire shelters.

“I told the guys that ‘This thing is going to overrun us and we’re going to put our shelters down and make camp,’ ” said Gaylord Ward, Camp 2 strike team leader.

Wrapping himself in the shelter for the first time, said one four-year veteran of Camp 2, made him feel “like a potato.”

“It felt like the shelter was shriveling around me,” said another, describing the intense heat that built up around his shelter as flames shot back and forth overhead.

Fifteen minutes later, all walked away, shaken but unscathed.

These crew members had to do what few wildland firefighters in Los Angeles County have ever needed to do: deploy their emergency shelters as a last-ditch effort to save themselves. But it was only two months ago that another Camp 2 crew needed the shelters, in another Altadena fire. Four men didn’t have time to get their shelters out; two perished and two are recovering from severe burns.

Several crew members said last week that they owe their lives to the shelters. After the last Altadena blaze, they stepped up drills with the tents, which they carry in pouches hooked on their belts.

Crew member Charles Knight said the loss of his two friends drove him to train harder and be more careful.

“I can see them saying, ‘Stick in there, work hard and don’t give up.’ ”

Young and eager, Camp 2 crew members use hand tools--including chain saws, shovels, and scraping devices--to cut break lines around fires to keep them from spreading. Their job of removing vegetation that could fuel wilderness fires is a steppingstone to more coveted, sworn firefighting jobs with county or city fire departments.

Many of the roughly 30 firefighters based at Camp 2 were just beginning to come to grips with the deaths of comrades Arthur Ruezga and Christopher Drake Herman in the last Altadena blaze. That fire shot up a steep canyon and surprised the crew above.

For 24-year-old Steven Kuch, one of two Camp 2 crew members overcome by flames in Wednesday’s fire and who also survived the August blaze, last week’s close call was a sign to take the rest of the week off.

“I feel lucky. I feel good this time because no one was hurt,” he said.

But most of the others, who had used their fire shelters for the first time Wednesday morning, volunteered to join in the fight Wednesday night to save homes in the Sierra Madre foothills.

“I’ve got to go back out,” crew member Mark Shea said before climbing aboard a transport truck only hours after draping himself in his fire shelter. “I’m shaken up, but if I don’t go out now I would probably be afraid the next time. . . . Might as well get it out of my system now.”

Even though the two Altadena fires required use of the shelters, firefighters say they have seldom been required to protect themselves in this way.

“I’ve been doing this for 26 years and I never deployed (a fire shelter) until today,” said Camp 2 crew foreman Ken Dorn.

“You hate to use it,” Kuch said, “because it’s your last resort and you know you’re in trouble.”

“When you have to deploy your shelter it almost seems like you have half a chance of living,” said Knight, 26.

The fire engine that accompanied them Wednesday couldn’t match the 10- to 15-foot flames roaring across the mostly inaccessible terrain. So the fire engine formed a triangle with a nearby water truck and pickup. The crew members bunched together between the vehicles, crouching beneath their shelters.

“The flames went right over us,” showering the group with embers, Kuch said. “I felt pretty safe under the shelter. The worst thing would have been debris flying into the shelter and destroying it.”

Ward could see bright red as he looked up at the tiny pinholes of his shelter.

“As the heat was coming on I just started hoping no one would get up and start running--you’ve got to stay under the shelter,” he said. Firefighters who panic and run have been killed.

To check on his crew, and to keep their minds off the danger as flames passed overhead, Ward called out to each man. Some said they thought of their families as 15 minutes elapsed in the inferno. Others said they thought about their two dead friends.

“I thought, ‘This is how the guys must have felt” in the previous Altadena fire, Shea said.

“I’ve never felt so helpless in my life,” Knight added.

Crew members say they know well that each time they’re sent out to a fire their lives are on the line. Although they are not sworn and earn half the salary of full-fledged firefighters, these men say the job is equally rewarding. Thanks comes not in a paycheck but in knowing you’ve helped save others and their cherished possessions.

Said Camp 2 member Tim Koch of Santa Clarita: “Not everybody realizes just how important we are to stopping a brush fire before it runs into a community of houses.”

Group Helps Fire Victims

Fire victims seeking help can turn to the California Community Foundation, which has created the Southern California Fire Fund. The 79-year-old nonprofit public charity will dispense long-term aid such as relocation assistance, psychological counseling and other services, said Jack Shakely, foundation president.

Shakely said his organization will focus on long-term rather than emergency needs, as it did last year after the civil disturbances in Los Angeles and neighboring communities. “Some of the tough stuff really begins months later,” Shakely said.

The foundation will be aided by two other organizations, the Ventura County Community Foundation and the Orange County Community Foundation. Donations to the fire fund can be made by calling (213) 413-4042 in Los Angeles County, (714) 641-3874 in Orange County and (805) 988-0196 in Ventura County.