Great reading: Firefighter details harrowing rescue

PARADISE — During the height of last Thursday's rush of flames into Paradise, a team of three volunteer firefighters protecting a home from the Humboldt Fire were apparently driven off by two approaching fire fronts.

Officials who listened to radio traffic that afternoon and others watching from a distance feared the men were lost.

Photo credit: http://www.chicoer.com

That the Tehama County team survived is being credited to a heroic rescue by Cal Fire public information officer Joshpae White, who drove them to safety through intense heat, smoke and flames.

To White, it's no big deal.

"It was nothing," said White in a phone interview this week. "Everything turned out OK."

To others, it was a very big deal.

The incident occurred Thursday afternoon in what's called a blowup — a dangerous acceleration of flames.

White said around 2 p.m. he was on Indian Springs Road, working with a couple of news representatives. They were at the end of a dirt road on a ridge that overlooks the canyon, above the fire. Several firefighting crews were in the area positioned to save structures as the blaze approached.

Suddenly, the fire's heat and intensity increased "significantly," and White advised the media to leave immediately.

Although he intended to follow the news crews out in his pickup, White was stopped on his way by a strike-team leader who asked him to be a lookout so the fire wouldn't "wrap around them." At that point, there were at least two separate flame fronts racing in their general direction.

White's lookout was interrupted by a homeowner living above the fire crew's location, who asked for help getting his horses out. White quickly helped move the animals to safety and then went back to check on the crew. An air tanker flying overhead dropped retardant on his pickup.

He then drove to a position near the Tehama strike-team's location. By this time, he said, the fire was moving in front of and behind them.

White said one of the firefighters quickly approached him and said they needed to get out of there. The three men got into the pickup and White quickly drove out.

"The fire was crossing the road in front of us," he said. "There was intense heat. A lot of brush, a lot of vegetation, was burning freely."

White drove on through the flames, which moved over the truck in waves, intermittently calm, then "blowing like a torch."

Heat blasted through the windows and cracked the windshield in several places.

More danger lie ahead, where the road, only 10 feet wide, makes a right turn on a slope, over a steep drop down into a canyon.

Unable to see where he was going because of the smoke and retardant, White had to drive slowly.

"The last thing I wanted to do was hit a tree — or go off the edge," he said. "I was trying to drive by Braille to feel where the turn was."

Despite the obstacles, he worked his way cautiously through the curve, finally making it over a berm to safety. Once parked, the volunteers notified their supervisor they had to abandon the fire engine, and all said they felt OK, White said.

Both he and a volunteer — who sat next to the truck's passenger window — were red-faced, like a bad sunburn, he added.

Watching from about 100 yards away, fire officials raced to the men's aid as soon as possible.

Cal Fire spokeswoman Janet Upton said she could tell the gravity of the situation from the serious look on White's face.

"He's usually very upbeat," she said.

White appeared to have first-degree burns, and she was concerned he could develop respiratory problems, but he wouldn't go to the hospital at first.

"He wanted to go back to work right away," she said. "He was more concerned about everyone else, and people's homes, than himself."

Eventually Upton ordered him to go to the hospital. White and the burned volunteer were taken by ambulance to Enloe Medical Center in Chico and treated for mild heat-radiation burns. They returned to work that day. White said the other two Tehama firefighters returned to their engine and found it hadn't been damaged.

White said he fared better than his truck. The searing heat melted off all the rubber seals around the windows and blistered the paint. "The truck saved our lives," he said.

White still isn't certain what actually occurred to make the crew to want to leave. The Tehama County volunteers declined interview requests.

"The way they described it, they were in fear for their lives," White said. "... You don't stop and ask questions, you just go. I'm not going to risk any lives. I did the same thing anyone else would have done."

Incident Commander Bob Wallen told the E-R that White may be given some kind of commendation for heroism.

"He probably saved those folks — if not their lives, from serious injury," Wallen said.

The commander said the incident occurred where the Humboldt Fire "hit the hottest and hardest" and moved faster than anyone anticipated.

Although the incident is under review, Wallen did not question what drove the strike team to leave the engine. He said he thought they might have been overwhelmed.

"I think they were scared for their lives — I would have been," Wallen said. "Josh recognized they were in peril and acted decisively. It's a tribute to him to recognize the situation was deteriorating rapidly, and he saved his fellow firefighters.

"It was absolutely heroic, in the highest tradition of the department, putting his life in jeopardy for other firefighters and our customers," he added. "He would tell you he was just doing his job."

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