The Slide Fire
(a water company perspective)

November 8, 2007
Rick Mull

The Santa Ana winds came up and started blowing out of the Northeast. The hot dry winds blew across the mountains from the area of Lucerne Valley and across the area that had burned a month earlier called The Butler II Fire. I walked into the office and said “are you ready for the Butler III fire”. I knew then that we were in trouble. Two days later the Grass Valley area of Lake Arrowhead started to burn.

I turned on the scanner to monitor the fires on October 22, 2007. In the early morning a call came out for Arrowbear Fire and Green Valley Lake Fire to respond to a reported fire at highway 18 and Green Valley Lake Road. Fire equipment started their response and a voice came over the air of a fire confirmed at Green Valley Lake Road. The Green Valley Lake equipment was well down the road to the fire when another call came out of a fire at the “Old Dump”. Not many people know where the old dump is BUT people on the Green Valley Lake fire department do. A voice came over the air that Green Valley Lake fire was canceling the response to highway 18 and responding to the old dump, the second reported fire. The fire trucks went by the office and I walked outside and looked toward the area of the old dump. I remember saying “ugh oh” to myself and then said “were in trouble – big trouble”. I went to the office and called the Crestline Lake Arrowhead Water Agency and talked to the Manager Roxanne Holmes. I told her that a fire had just broke out northeast of GVL and that I am requesting C.L.A.W.A. be on emergency standby.

An immediate need tactical response call went out over the air and the structure protection strike teams started their code 3 response. Teams from Running Springs and Arrowbear were first into town and an incident command was set up outside the Water Company office. The wind driven fire raged down the north side of Green Valley Lake. I went home and told my family to start loading and packing and get ready to get out in a hurry “it’s going to get us this time”.

Our tanks were full and topped off at the time. I hoped that the fire would just blow by us to the north and miss GVL. The first homes that burned in GVL were on Piedras Grande, they were started from their own power lines arcing from the wind and catching them on fire. The fire had not burned that far west yet. A resident was driving by at the time and tried to put the fire out at the houses but was unsuccessful. The fire raged to the west burning everything in its path. We monitored water system pressure and demand. The fire burned up and over the Holcomb tank and was raging to Holcomb Creek Drive.

I went to the Water Company office and saw a catastrophic water pressure failure with a drastic drop in system wide pressure. I knew our fire hydrants were going to be dead at the higher elevations of Lupin, Oak, Spring, Fir and Holcomb Creek. I thought that the fire had burned through the Holcomb Tank and we had a tank collapse and that tank is connected to all our tanks. This would cause a system wide draining of our water supply.

We were not sure where the problem was other than that we had a problem. Steve and I went to the tank and we couldn’t see it through the smoke. Houses were burning all around us, firefighters were everywhere trying to put them out. We got to the tank valve in Holcomb Drive and shut it down hoping to stop the draining of our supply. We rushed back to the office to see if that was the problem ….. it wasn’t. Still a system wide drop continuing and hydrants out of water. A battalion chief came to me and said that our hydrants were down and out of water. I said some catastrophic event happened and we don’t know what it is. We need help in finding the water loss, radio out to everyone to look for uncontrolled water loss. A minute later he came to me and said it’s on Juniper, the fire burned through our strike team and they had to cut and run for their lives. The hoses on the hydrant are burned through. I said “we got it” …. I’ll have them up and running in 3 minutes tell them to hold on, were on our way. We drove to the corner of Juniper and Piedras Grande in the middle of the Sunset Point inferno and shut down the main line hydrant feed going to the end of Juniper. I opened up the next closest Hydrant in the intersection and water was restored to the hydrants throughout GVL.

The trucks that had to pull out reconnected and the firefighters continued their pursuit to save what could be saved. Sunset Point was exploding and all the homes were ablaze and unstoppable.

At the office we checked our system pressure again and we had recovered, but we were taking a heavy hit on demand, and I wasn’t sure how much we had lost or where exactly our tank levels were. Years ago in Running Springs there was a fire that took homes. After it was over I found out that they used over a million gallons of water to fight it. I told Steve, “call C.L.A.W.A. while we still have phones and order an emergency turn on for immediate need”. “They are already on emergency standby”. “I want everything they got”. C.L.A.W.A. responded immediately and when they got here we decided to take 200 gallons a minute and see how it goes. If we need more we could get it but let’s see how we hold it. We stayed on at that rate for the rest of the week and held our tank levels high and a slow building to near full but not overflow.

That day the fire wrapped around the west end of Juniper Lane and burned towards Maple Lane. The New Hydrant at the end of Maple Lane that was installed this year proved to be a welcomed addition and no homes were lost in that area. I kept looking to the east and watched the fire burn. I knew that Crab Creek in the back of GVL would act like a chimney and the fire would burn up the draw to the south. The fire burned that way all day further and further to the south. Bull Dozers were deployed and they cut in containment lines to the east of us. Our tanks were in jeopardy in the campground. A wise old experienced fire dozer operator took his dozer and cut lines all around our tanks in an effort to save them. I wish I knew who he was so I could personally thank him because it worked. Our Tanks all made it without any damage.

I was at home late in the day, tired and wanted to try and relax a bit and wait to see what the night would bring. It was dusk and getting dark outside. A bang hit my house, the house shook. I looked outside and saw my two flags pinned horizontally and the flag pole bending. I ran out on my deck and once again said “oh no”. The wind had picked back up. And then there was this sound, this sound, like nothing I had ever heard before. In all the years of firefighting, all the fires I have been on I never had heard that sound. Blood curdling that makes your hair stand on end. The sound of pine needles and tree branches, a freight train all in one but there was a warning, an alarm this sound of a high pitched baby screaming in the night sky this whale singing out of the forest screaming in pain. I’ll never forget THAT sound, that scream. I jumped in the truck to see what was happening and where the fire was at to the east. I got to the fire station and saw the fire raging down the canyon off of Green Valley Lane. That’s where the Stable well was. I turned around and went to the office and grabbed the gated “Y” and the fire hoses. I raced back to the fire and on the way called Diane and yelled into the phone “ I’m not letting it take stable, I’m not letting it get the stable.” And hung up the phone tearfully. When I got there I hooked to the Hydrant and ran into the forest by the Stable wells to try and save them. Standing alone in the forest with a fire hose and just right then in a semi-circular pattern 5 trees exploded around me. I thought I was standing at the gates of hell and that scream, that sound. I said out loud “Rick you know better than this, there is nothing you can do”.
I turned around and left and got out of there. I knew the Stable was lost. I went back to the office and looked up to the ridge above Angeles and saw a ball of fire ragging down the ridge heading to the west being fanned by an 80 MPH wind.

The incident commander was standing in the street and said get out now. The Fire Department, Steve and I left. The fire was closing in on itself, closing the box with no escape route in a couple of minutes so we all had to go and beat the fire out. There are 10 rules to wild land firefighting. If you break one of them…….people die. One of them is always have an escape route. Ours was closing. I wondered when I left if there would be anything left when I come back in the morning.

In the morning when I came back it was devastation to about 105 homes. Flames shooting out of every homes gas pipes, smoke and destruction. I felt like I was in a war zone.

The Water Company lost 17 horizontal wells and one vertical well (the Stable). The horizontal wells had their containment boxes and well vents burned. They are still in operation but are in need of repairs. All tanks are fine and no loss there. I feel lucky that this is all we have lost so far.  Please remember that this is only the beginning. The worst may yet be coming.

The lost homes were all leaking water, so we had a constant drain on our system. In the Angeles system the first day we went from 24 feet of water in our tanks to 9 feet of water. We were still fighting fire and the system was draining. We hit that area first and started shutting down the homes we could see leaking first. By the next day we were down to 1 1/2 feet of water in our tanks on Angeles and still losing. I ordered a shut down of all fire homes and a check on all others for leaks. We were running out of water for fighting the fire. I had no way to pump up the system and get water up there. I thought to myself, how many more homes will we lose if I run out of water?????

Hard times require hard decisions so I had to make the hard call to our system integrity. I went to Chief Art Bishop ,  who happens to be well versed in water issues, and had a face to face with him. I told him of the situation up on Angeles and we had maybe 2 hours of water left. I requested the use of a fire truck for a sanitary cross connection between systems. What we did was to flush the fire truck out completely many times. Chlorinate the truck, pump and all components to sterilize. We then hooked up to a hydrant at Falling Leaf Drive and pumped a fire hose up to Angeles Drive and sterilized the lines with chlorine at sterile high levels. We then connected the fire hose to a hydrant on Angeles Drive and pumped up between systems. After hours of pumping we had 21 feet of water in our tanks and a calculated chlorine residual of 0.8ppm. This meets drinking water standards for chlorine residual levels. No one was living on Angeles at the time. The next morning a series of water samples were taken to the lab and analyzed. The result was good water to drink, no contamination had occurred in the process. We also continued our home shut off to stop leaks.

After the first week of the fire C.L.A.W.A. was reduced back to 100 gpm. With the leaks turned off we were still gaining slowly in our tank levels but demand was still high for firefighting purposes. After the next week we were able to reduce back to 50 gpm where we currently are. So far we have taken well over 2,000,000 gallons of water from C.L.A.W.A. but we have not overflowed our tanks. We have just been maintaining them at the highest levels based on system demand.

As I mentioned above we lost the Stable well. Not just a little bit. I mean completely destroyed. Stable is the largest producing well in GVL. It is the well we go to, to avoid C.L.A.W.A. purchases. It is also costly to replace. It has 480 volt, 3 phase power the well structure has transformers in it for conversion to 110 volts for lights, heat and another booster pump for Stable #1 well. With C.L.A.W.A. costing us initially $700.00 a day for water it does not take too long to know we need that pump up and going as soon as possible. I hired Eric Carter Construction to come in and help rebuild it during the fire. I got clearance for Eric Carter and Bradshaw Electric to come into the closed fire zone and start construction. They dropped their jobs and came right in and started to rebuild. The Stable Well pump station is completed at this time. The well motor network and seals had to be pulled and replaced by Sam Crum well drillers. This was done. The well was test pumped yesterday and we have begun plumbing back to the water system. We should be online by Friday in turn key operation.

When disasters such as this happen, Edison has to replace power poles and restore power. In the next several months adjustments by Edison will need to be made. This can cause power variations and this is very important to 3 phase pumps. I have ordered pump savers through Bradshaw Electric to be installed on all of our 3 phase pump systems. Well savers will do a service disconnect if it senses variations in power. If power single phases one of these pumps it will destroy it and require the whole assembly to be pulled and replaced. The well savers will be in by Friday and those wells brought back online and we should be once again self sufficient for our water supply needs and off of C.L.A.W.A. The power panel and pole was destroyed at the Snow Canyon well system and will need to be replaced in the future but is not a priority right now.

Now we get to the point of where we are now. We will be back up to 100 percent in a few weeks.

The fire did a lot of damage to the forests and specifically the root structure that holds the soil. Precautions need to be done now to prevent further catastrophic damage. Flooding is a real and dangerous threat. In many ways worse than the fire. We have a warning now so we need to prepare. I have been working with many officials and planning for flood prevention. We will need sand bags and possibly K rail to help us. The lake is in extreme danger as well as our tanks and well systems. I am ordering 2000 sand bags now turbidity and erosion barriers for the lake.

Regards,
Rick