"It's the Worst Ever"

By Amy Wilentz

There is a war going on in the Western U.S., and battalions of men and women from all over the country are fighting it. With water tanks, pumps and miles upon miles of hoses, this yellow-clad army is struggling against fires that are raging through the tall timber of the Pacific Northwest, the grasslands and sagebrush of Oregon and Nevada, the tinder-dry chaparral of California.

Since June 27, some 4,000 separate blazes have destroyed about 1.5 million acres in 14 states, including North and South Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska, as well as Canada. So far this year, 2.1 million acres in the West have been scorched. That adds up to 900,000 more acres than were affected in all of 1984. In California, the hardest-hit state, officials estimate damage at $50 million, including the destruction of 184 homes. California Governor George Deukmejian has declared a state of emergency in seven counties. So far, three people have died in California, and hundreds of fires, both large and small, continue to race out of control. "It's the worst ever, and we're just at the beginning of the season," said Jack Wilson, a director of the Federal Interagency Fire Center, based in Boise. "This is going to go on and on and on."

The West usually goes through a fire season in the last weeks of summer, but the ferocious blazes rarely start this early. "It's burning like October," said Dan Kleinman of the U.S. Forest Service. Meteorologists blame a mammoth high-pressure system, centered over Utah and bringing temperatures as high as 112 DEGF, for the weather conditions that have fostered the fires. The climatic front has locked the Western states into a kind of giant sauna, where dry heat settles, ocean breezes cannot penetrate and nighttime temperatures remain high. "We're facing all of July and August," said Clyde O'Dell, a Boise-based federal meteorologist. "It doesn't look good." (Dry weather has plagued other areas of the country as well, but it has brought drought rather than fire to them. In New York last week, Governor Mario Cuomo declared eight down-state counties disaster areas.)

Across the West, parched foliage has been ignited by dry-lightning storms and sometimes sparks from defective mufflers. But according to California fire officials, as many as one-third of the wildfires have been set by arsonists. Incendiary devices were found at the site of the deadly California fire in the Baldwin Hills area of Los Angeles.

To battle the spreading inferno, 15,924 men and women, the largest group of fire fighters ever assembled in the nation's history, have traveled from points as far away as Alaska and Massachusetts. Across the country, fire-fighting storerooms have been stripped of pumps, hoses, tools, sleeping bags and canteens.

Backed by such sophisticated hardware as helicopters and flame-fighting airplanes, and equipped with tools that range from rakes and axes to 156 bulldozers, the fire fighters try to create firebreaks as wide as 100 ft. to isolate the flames. Wearing goggles, hard hats and nonflammable shirts, they may work shifts that last more than 24 hours. Thus far, 228 have been injured on the lines from heat exhaustion, burns and poison oak.

The most dangerous of the 14 major blazes ravaging California was started by arsonists one mile south of Los Gatos and 15 miles north of Santa Cruz in the jagged, wooded canyons and cliffs of the Santa Cruz Mountains. With flames shooting 150 ft. high, the fire spread quickly, fanned by 20-m.p.h. winds and temperatures of 104 DEGF. The fire was so severe that 650 California minimum-security prisoners were brought in to help with the dirty brush-cutting work. With chain saws in hand and the flames often only yards away, they slashed at the highly flammable under brush, sometimes in shifts that lasted as long as 43 hours. "They really work their fannies off," said Steve Sherman, a Conservation Corps fire captain.

As the blaze moved toward Santa Cruz, a nudist camp in its path was evacuated, scores of animals were rescued, including a wildly oinking 600-lb. sow, and lone fire fighters in the hilly terrain made desperate last stands against the flames with garden hoses. Nine helicopters churned overhead, dumping water when necessary and lowering equipment to the fighters below.

Deborah Daly, 27, a seasonal fire fighter for the California department of forestry, worked twelve days straight. "I'm not in bad shape, but I'm getting tired," she said, echoing the sentiments of many of her colleagues. After she helped her team dig an emergency firebreak around a threatened house, said Daly, "I thought my arms were going to fall off. But it felt great. Saving houses is a fantastic feeling."

At one point last week in the Los Gatos area, the exhausted strike teams, called in from 45 California fire agencies, decided to dig in and turn back the fire along two mountain-ridge roads. More than 150 fire engines and crews numbering in the hundreds lined the paths. "This is where m we're staying put, we hope," said Tim Exline, acting fire chief of the town of Corte Madera in Northern California's Marin County. "We're going to make a helluva stand." Home after home was saved during the night. Said one man whose house remained standing: "Have you ever heard a tree explode? It's like a bullwhip. I was scared to death."

Like the Los Gatos area, other regions of the West have now taken on an almost surreal look: vast, charred ranges spotted with orange flames and black smoke. But an end may be in sight, at least for parts of California. At week's end, the high-pressure system seemed to be easing, a fog moved in, and temperatures dropped into the 60s. As the first weak drops drizzled down, joyful fire fighters shouted, "It's raining! It's raining!" --By Amy Wilentz. Reported by Stephen Koepp/Los Gatos and Richard Woodbury/Los Angeles

With reporting by Reported by Stephen Koepp/Los Gatos, Richard Woodbury/Los Angeles