Phyl
R.I.P. Sweet Mia ♥
Member since 5/06 28918 total posts
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The Mystical Azzhorse! ™
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Re: OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!UPDATE P9
Friday, October 26, 2007
Santiago fire sweeps into Silverado Canyon
Fire crews on hand to protect homes. Deputies trying to evacuate any holdouts.
By DOUG IRVING, SAL HERNANDEZ and GREG HARDESTY
The Orange County Register
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The Santiago fire swept into the back end of Silverado Canyon this afternoon, charging down a hillside of dry brush and trees and threatening as many as 100 homes there.
A crew of nearly 200 firefighters had been waiting for the fire deep in the canyon, their only orders to protect homes and other structures. They were ready when it crested the ridge above them, and thought they could hold the line, incident information officer Rich Phelps said.
Orange County sheriff’s deputies rushed through the canyon to evacuate any remaining holdouts. It was the third time in recent days that they had told people there to get out; but canyon residents said about 40 of their neighbors had refused to heed those earlier evacuation orders.
Some of them said they weren’t planning to heed the new orders, either.
The canyon has a long reputation as a place often threatened but never touched by wildfire. By some accounts it has not burned in at least a century.
“This is my life. This property is my life,” said Mike Boeck, a 20-year canyon resident. “I’ve been helping get horses, cows, dogs and turtles out, but I’m not leaving.”
He later qualified that: “I’m out of here if the Santa Anas come back. … I don’t really want to die.”
Those residents who had chosen to stay were watching flames lap at a distant ridge. Smoke was filling the air, and pieces of ash were already falling.
John Mitchell has lived in the canyon for 16 years. He had loaded his motorcycle into the bed of his truck and packed up photos and personal documents, just in case. But he, too, said he was planning to stay.
“They can tell me to leave, but they can’t tell me how to protect my house against wildfire,” he said. “Silverado will not burn in a wildfire.”
Earlier, the fire had seemed to be slowing as it bulled its way north and east through the Cleveland National Forest. Firefighters have been working to cut a containment line along the border of Riverside County, and south to Trabuco Canyon.
Fire officials described hard-hit Modjeska Canyon, south of Silverado, as safe but not yet fully secure from the flames.
In Williams Canyon, holdout Don Ritze was watching flames curl along a ridge about 400 yards from his house. That was an improvement; overnight, the fire charged onto his property and burned to within 150 feet or so of where he stood. He lost 20 of his 200 avocado trees.
The fire had also come to a stop on its south flank, near Trabuco Canyon. Firefighters had lined up there and near Ortega Highway to turn it back if it started rolling toward communities such as Rancho Santa Margarita and Coto de Caza.
The main body of the fire was lurching away from the canyon communities, on a path that was taking it ever closer to the Riverside County line. Ash was already falling in some Riverside communities, such as Temescal Valley.
Fire crews were hiking into a part of the forest so remote that it has no roads, where they were planning to make a stand along a 20-mile line. Fire officials warned that they may have to resort to a more desperate “bump and run” defense if the fire breaks through that line and continues toward Riverside County.
It was hard to pinpoint the fire’s exact boundaries. It had burned up to Modjeska Peak, not far from the Riverside County line, and was also approaching Santiago Peak, the highest point in Orange County.
Santiago Peak is sometimes called the “talking mountain” because its summit bristles with important transmission towers. Those towers serve thousands of cellular-phone customers in Orange and Riverside counties; they also act as a major link in the radio system used by police and firefighters.
Several teams of firefighters were told to protect those tower sites as part of their orders this morning.
The Orange County Fire Authority estimated that the fire was still only 30 percent contained, and had grown by about 1,000 acres overnight. The fire has so far blackened around 27,000 acres since it broke out on Sunday evening.
Hundreds of new firefighters had been rushed to the lines, along with a much larger array of firefighting equipment than had previously been brought to bear on the Santiago fire. Thirteen helicopters were in the air, along with four air tankers. On the ground, some 1,600 firefighters were trying to bring the fire under control, backed up by 216 fire engines and 11 bulldozers.
But they were caught in an uphill battle, literally, as the fire climbed the mountains. A simple law of nature – heat rises – gave the fire an advantage as it pushed its way up the steep slopes. It was drying and preheating the terrain ahead of it, before it even arrived.
Firefighters expected the fire to be just as unruly and dangerous if it broke through their lines, crested the mountains and started down the other side. Winds coursing down the backside of the mountains, they feared, would whip the flames toward Corona or the Temescal Valley.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Orange County canyon residents were still waiting for the all-clear to return to their homes. Fire officials said they had no estimate of when they’d be lifting the mandatory evacuation orders.
They were hoping to begin making contact with those people who had lost everything in the fire, and to begin taking them back to what’s left of their property. In all, the fire has destroyed 14 houses, mostly in Modjeska Canyon. It has damaged at least eight others and swept through at least 20 outbuildings.
Investigators have said they recovered evidence inside the V-shaped canyon where the fire started that left little doubt that it was a work of arson. The reward for information leading to the arrest of whomever was responsible now stands at $285,000.
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Santiago Fire in OC is still not under control and has burned more than 26,000 acres.
He's so cute
I hope they find him and burn his azz with a hot poker 
