PASADENA, Calif.—On a recent frigid morning, more than a thousand first responders gathered at the Rose Bowl stadium for a daily briefing before heading out to battle a fire that has decimated nearby communities at the edge of the Los Angeles National Forest.
The stadium grounds are now a central command for fire crews from all over the Western region, as well as the law enforcement and military personnel that are stationed throughout evacuation zones.
Many of the men and women here have been in the fight since the beginning—sleeping in tents on the stadium’s lawn, working grueling shifts, and battling a merciless trifecta of weather, terrain, and competition for finite resources as concurrent blazes rage in other corners of the county.
“I think about the people you guys have left to be able to be here to help us rise from these ashes and restore our great county,” an operations section chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention told the crowd.
The phoenix he invoked is an apt totem for those who run toward infernos. Greg Stenmo, a battalion chief with the Angeles National Forest, wore one embroidered on his beanie, an insignia of the Little Tujunga “Hot Shots” crew—an elite, special forces of firefighting that take on some of the most monstrous wildland fires in the country.
He has seen the worst of what California wildfires have to offer—the town of Paradise in 2018 in Northern California, the Station fire in the Angeles National Forest in 2009, and the loss of comrades along the way. Still, this time is different.
“This is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” Stenmo said. Thinking of the thousands of homes that have been razed to the ground just miles from where we stood, he added, “I can’t grasp it, it seems unreal.”
In fact, Stenmo’s own brother lost his house in the Eaton Fire.
“As someone who works in this community, loves this community, and has been affected by this, I’ve been telling everyone ‘thank you.’ They never hear that from each other, but from my family to them, I appreciate them answering the call this time of year to be here.”
Stenmo’s was one of two U.S. Forest Service crews stationed in the city of Arcadia, about 17 miles northeast of Los Angeles, since Jan. 6 in anticipation of the Santa Ana winds that would pummel the Southland with gusts of up to 100 miles per hour.
“I expected it—I’ve been through it before, numerous Santa Ana events. I’ve been doing this since the late 90s and I’ve fought most fires here, locally,” said the Southern California native.
“If anything started, it was going to be very bad—very resistant to control.”
Stemno was right.
The Eaton fire, named for the nearby Eaton Canyon nature preserve in the San Gabriel Mountains, started the next evening and exploded overnight, from 400 acres to more than 10,000. Since then, 17 people have died from this fire alone, and more than 7,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed.
Earlier on Jan. 7, on the western side of Los Angeles, the Palisades fire erupted in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, killing at least 10 people and destroying around 5,000 structures. Several other smaller fires also threatened local communities.
By Jan. 17, there was good news: Another bout of Santa Anas, the dry winds that drive most of Southern California’s wildfires, had passed, and the Eaton Fire was 65 percent contained. The Palisades fire was also at 31 percent containment.
On that first, crucial Tuesday, Stenmo started his shift at 6 a.m., and ended it the following day at 10 p.m. He worked 40 hours straight, 30 of which he spent inside the danger zone.
His crew was at a staging area in Altadena within eight minutes of being dispatched from their headquarters in Arcadia. But the situation was already out of control, with the fire moving so fast it was already affecting the staging area itself, forcing his team to improvise.
He integrated with another battalion’s command and assigned his trucks to cover a square-mile section near the head of the popular Eaton Canyon hiking trail. Houses there lit up quickly. Stenmo’s crew tried to stop the fire from leaping house-to-house and began scanning for residents.
“I remember getting one gentleman out—as I knocked on his door, the whole back of his house was catching on fire behind him and the hallway was orange,” Stenmo said. “I grabbed him and two other elderly people and put them in the cab of my truck. ... I told a sheriff’s deputy to take them south as far as you can.”
Another man told him he’d gotten in his car and tried to leave, but the fire penned him in from every direction. He’d gone back inside to wait and hope someone would come for him.
Stenmo offers a sober recounting. Short of experiencing it, there is likely little that can convey the brute physicality of 70 mile-per-hour sustained winds—and 100 mph gusts—whipping a raging inferno through residential streets.
“There’s just fire everywhere. Typically, we’re used to putting hoses around the perimeter of the fire—there was no perimeter. Everything was burning around you. It was just a massive amount of fire in the environment, and that environment turned to structures, and it just continued through the structures.”
He called the conditions “unprecedented,” and said he doesn’t believe the destruction was caused by a lack of resources.
“In eight minutes, you’d be trying to get 4,000 engines to 4,000 structures? And that’s when we’re already fighting the Palisades fire,” he said.
“So you could have thrown the world at it, but it probably wouldn’t have stopped it. It was going to run out of fuel when it ran out of fuel.”
Media attention has focused on hydrants and water pressure issues in the Palisades area, but some agencies have reported similar issues in Altadena. Evacuated Altadena residents told The Epoch Times they watched fire rigs hook up to hydrants only to have hoses run dry, with water tenders taking too long to get up and down the hills in time to save homes, in what they describe as a response clearly overwhelmed by the emergency.
Meanwhile, several residents said they stayed behind or returned to their streets to battle flames with pool water, putting out smoldering homes or trees that threatened to spread embers.
The U.S. Fire Service told The Epoch Times that water supply was not an issue for their crews.
Asked how he makes it through a hellish 40-hour shift, the chief said he has tried to “sharpen” his thinking so he doesn’t make mistakes out of exhaustion.
“To lead those people looking to me to keep them safe and give them accurate directions, I try to fine-tune my awareness of the radio, my awareness of what I’m asking people to do, of the surroundings we’re in.”
In the stress of a fire fight, especially a massive and unpredictable one with a complex response, communication is everything. Directing his crew of 26 from a standard-issue white pickup truck, Stenmo turns off all the various apps firefighters have on their phones alerting them of nearby threats so he can focus just on the situation in front of him.
Sometimes, while his engines are battling a fire, he’ll pick up a garden hose and do what he can with it.
“It’s a sense of duty. I saw a lot of heroic acts that night, not just by firefighters, but sheriffs, law enforcement. A lot of good decisions were made, and we don’t necessarily see that,” he said, highlighting utility workers who entered the danger zone to help prevent gas explosions.
“You see people struggling, waking up to this, they’re in the worst moment of their life and you’re trying to help them. I think that drives you to do the best you can no matter the state around you.”
As for the fear, he said, everyone in this line of work is already comfortable being around fire.
“The first time you take heat on a wildfire or any type of fire, your body will either say, ‘I don’t want that,’ or ‘OK, we’re good.’ I think that’s a root thing, to try to run from a wildfire. But for us, we’re very comfortable in that environment.”
For Stenmo, the current crisis began, with a perennial idiocy, on New Year’s Eve.
“We’ve had a lot of stupidity in the forest—fireworks, not making the right decision. Some of us have been at this before anyone else showed up,” he said, referring to three separate fires he worked on in the Angeles National Forest between Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.
One got to 11 acres, big for this time of year, he said. “Typically around the nation, most forests are under snow, so we run a 12-month fire season here which is not normal for most people. For us it’s normal.”
What won’t make it to the news, he said, are the countless blazes snuffed out before they have a chance to go anywhere.
“My friends always ask, ‘What fire?’ And I say, ‘Well, we caught it at a quarter-acre.’”
When he does eventually sleep, Stenmo knows plenty of his peers are still out in the field doing the same.
