3-Day-Old Fire Burns Within 2 Miles of Piru

PIRU — A wildfire fueled by scorching heat and old, dry brush burned stubbornly toward Piru on Thursday as the U.S. Forest Service deployed elite crews to clear breaks in rugged terrain north of California 126.

By its third day, the blaze had blackened about 12,700 acres in mountains stretching through Los Padres National Forest, coming within two miles of Piru, home to 1,000.

The cost of battling the fire as of Thursday night was about $864,000, said Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Joe Luna. “And we’ve got two or three more days of this,” Luna said.

After ordering 30 campers at Lake Piru Campground and a handful of nearby residents to leave Wednesday, Ventura County sheriff’s officials prepared to evacuate all of Piru if the eastbound fire turned south. But with the fire still burning in wilderness areas to the east at nightfall, authorities said Piru and Fillmore residents would remain safe through Thursday.

The fire had burned to within half a mile of Lake Piru by Thursday evening, darkening sunny skies with a pall of thick, brown smoke.

But a 15-degree drop in temperatures from the day before--albeit to a still sizzling 95 degrees--plus the arrival of more firefighters and helicopters gave cause for optimism.

“When you’ve been boiling at more than 100 for three days, a drop down to 95 is leading in the right direction,” said California Department of Forestry spokesman Bill Peters. “But it’s still a volatile situation.”

Indeed, Thursday evening, the fire’s own heat fueled wind gusts that hastened its advance.

Firefighters expected to continue digging a 20-mile containment line around the fire through the weekend. The buffer was 10% complete by Thursday afternoon.

Working largely by hand, more than 1,800 firefighters battled the blaze. U.S. Forest Service teams from as far as Arizona arrived early in the day, joining crews from across California.

Scores of idle red engines lined the streets near the command post at Fillmore’s Shiells Park, rendered useless by rugged terrain.

At the encampment, sweaty firefighters coming off shifts guzzled bottled water and devoured fruit salads.

Flames shot as high as 100 feet in canyons near Lake Piru, as firefighters wielding shovels and picks cleared a break north of Piru and Fillmore to protect both communities.

Officials planned to light backfires if the blaze crossed the buffer.

Near Piru, U.S. Forest Service Hot Shots hacked through bone-dry chaparral that had not burned in more than 70 years. Above them, 11 helicopters and air tankers cut through plumes of smoke, dropping as much as 3,000 gallons of water at a time.

Mountain peaks as high as 4,500 feet hampered radio communication among 13 agencies.

In such conditions, success hinges on the efforts of firefighters working by hand, said U.S. Forest Service Battalion Chief Bill Krushak.

Krushak, a former Hot Shot, said regular five-mile runs and calisthenics prepare the crews for torturous heat.

Drawn from numerous federal agencies, the crews are trained to fight fires three days at a time before returning to camp.

“A working Hot Shot crew does become a machine,” Krushak said. “They go where you can’t get bulldozers and fire engines. It’s the grunt work of the business.”

About 600 of the firefighters on the scene specialize in fighting flames with hand tools.

Most of them were prison inmates from across the state, while 180 were part of the federal team.

Meanwhile, arson investigators combed oil wells and brush a few miles north of Fillmore, where the fire began Tuesday afternoon.

They asked oil workers if any suspicious people had been seen traveling the bumpy dirt roads.

“Not everyone and their brother comes up in this area,” Ventura County Fire Capt. Mark Tallion said.

Despite the extreme conditions, only four firefighters suffered minor injuries, all of them beestings, Thursday.

One, a Hot Shot crew member on the front line, was airlifted to Henry Mayo Hospital in Santa Clarita because of an allergic reaction to a sting. His identity was not available.

Authorities continued to warn residents to be ready to leave, and many had taken the advice.

But after spending the night with friends a few miles away, 77-year-old Donald Layman returned to his mobile home on a knoll above Piru Canyon Road.

The retired Air Force technical sergeant said he sweated through plenty of heat while training as a young man in the Arizona desert.

Thursday afternoon, he sat on a creaky wooden porch, smoking cigarettes and watching flames creep closer. “I didn’t want to go,” Layman said. “I wanted to stay and ride it out.”

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Correspondent Rob Selna contributed to this report.