Planes Arrived 5 1/2 Hours After 1st Request

It was 8:20 p.m. Sunday when a line of firefighters, with the help of two air tankers dropping fire retardant into the canyon below Cromwell Court, finally got control of the Normal Heights fire.

The firefighters had been working the fire since noon; the air tankers were new arrivals.

Although the city first asked for the tankers at 1 p.m. Sunday, an hour after the devastating fire began, the two California Department of Forestry air tankers and an accompanying spotter plane didn’t arrive until 6:27 p.m. By then, about 50 homes had burned.

The air tankers played a critical role in stopping San Diego’s worst fire, Roger Phillips, San Diego fire chief, told reporters Monday.

Still, like a lot of firefighters and homeowners, Phillips would have liked to have had them hours earlier. Getting the tankers sooner would not necessarily have ended the canyon-fed fire sooner but, Phillips said, “They would have helped.”

A day after the fire, some homeowners and city officials had questions. Why didn’t the tankers come sooner? And why did they have to come from Ventura County, 200 miles north of San Diego, when all day Sunday four Forestry Department air tankers were working a 12,000-acre fire in the sparsely populated Mt. Miguel area, 40 miles east of San Diego?

“I guess we accept (Forestry Department) policy at this point,” said Peggy Goldstein, an assistant to Mayor Roger Hedgecock. “There’s no question the tankers were busy and they were in use (at Mt. Miguel) . . . But the community was saying, ‘We have a lot of houses here (in Normal Heights) and they don’t.’ ”

State forestry officials cite department policy and the demands of a hot, dry, windy day when four big fires and many small ones were burning in Southern California. And San Diego firefighters say they believe the state agency gave as much help as it could.

The call for air tankers--planes equipped with a tank for dumping 500 to 3,000 gallons of fire retardant--followed this chronology:

The Normal Heights fire began in the steep, brushy canyon near Lehr’s Greenhouse restaurant at 11:54 a.m. Sunday. Within the next hour, firefighters realized this was a fire that required more than ground crews and fire engines.

“We wanted the air tankers as soon as we could get them,” said Ron Darrah, San Diego battalion chief. The city does not own any air tankers.

At 12:59 p.m. Sunday, the city asked the forestry office in El Cajon for air tankers but was turned down. Chief Doug Allen of the Forestry Department said, “We advised them that we have committed two (tankers) to the Millar Ranch Fire (at the base of Mt. Miguel) and had four additional (air tankers) requested for that fire, and we hadn’t received word back on that request.”

Although the Mt. Miguel area is rural, Allen estimated that in the path of that fire were 1,000 buildings, 500 of them homes in the communities of Jamul, Procter Valley and Echo Valley, and atop John Wayne Mountain.

“Had airplanes been called off the Millar Ranch fire to fight the city fire, there would probably be a hue and cry (from East County residents) about the equipment not being in its (assigned) jurisdiction,” Allen said. He said he had done the right thing by not allowing tankers to be diverted to San Diego. (Sixty-four homes burned in the Normal Heights fire Sunday. Three burned in the Mt. Miguel fire.)

In addition, Allen noted a Forestry Department maxim about fires: “The fire that’s going is the fire that gets the attention.” The Mt. Miguel fire was reported at 11:44 a.m. Sunday, minutes before the Normal Heights fire, so Mt. Miguel had priority. “Had their fire occurred first . . . we’d have sent the air tankers down” to San Diego, Allen added.

With the Normal Heights fire still burning out of control at 3 p.m. Sunday, Councilwoman Gloria McColl and Hedgecock surveyed the damage and agreed that the city needed aerial support.

“We said (to Phillips), ‘We’ve got to get aerial help or we have the potential of losing Kensington and Talmadge and the College area,’ ” as well as Normal Heights, McColl recounted.

The next recorded call for aerial support, however, was not until 4:45 p.m., according to Forestry Department records. Allen said the El Cajon office received a request for air tankers between 4 and 6 p.m. Sunday.

At 4:45 p.m. Sunday, the Forestry Department’s regional office in Riverside also recorded a request for aerial support.

Fire officials in Riverside, apparently unaware of San Diego’s earlier request, recorded this as “Request Number One,” said Mike Harris, fire prevention program manager. Harris said his office has no record of a 1 p.m. request.

Donald Farney, San Diego assistant fire chief, said he did not know why the first request was not recorded in Riverside--”unless there was some breakdown in communications and it didn’t go to the regional office.”

A Forestry Department dispatcher answered the 4:45 request immediately, Harris said, lining up a spotter plane and two air tankers that were working the Ventura fire.

Fire officials in Riverside considered diverting an air tanker from the closer Mt. Miguel fire but decided not to, Harris said, because, “Its incident commander reported the fire was threatening some structures and his troops were in a life support situation.” (The Ventura fire, however, was also tagged “no divert,” said forestry ranger Carl Stadick, who said he could not explain why planes were supplied from that fire.)

Harris noted that the Forestry Department requires a formal request to send air tankers to a city, “because air tankers are not covered under the mutual aid system” that provides firefighters or engines.

“Air tankers are not covered for the simple reason that the city doesn’t have air tankers to give us back. It’s called ‘assistance by hire,’ ” the city paying for each load of fire retardant dropped, he said.

In addition, Harris said, forestry officials set priorities: “Our highest priority is always life and property.” But in addition, he said, “That air tanker fleet is maintained for state responsibility areas--areas where the state has the financial responsibility to prevent and suppress fires. Once a city is incorporated it is not our responsibility--although, when a city asks, we do the best we can to honor their request.”

In addition to the Mt. Miguel, Ventura and Normal Heights fires, the Forestry Department was fighting major fires Sunday in Cabazon near Palm Springs and in the Sequoia National Park, Harris noted.

Harris said he believed forestry officials would have tried to get air tankers to San Diego as soon as possible. “It’s not uncommon for us to be very flexible within our jurisdiction when it comes to protecting someone’s home,” he said.

In addition to the delay in getting air tankers, several other factors contributed to the severity of Sunday’s fire, McColl and fire officials said.

- Wood shake roofs. Although San Diego since 1982 has required the installation of fire retardant roofs, homes built before that time are exempt. In Normal Heights, where many homes are 40 to 60 years old, many roofs burned.

- Heavy brush. The city’s weed abatement law applies to vacant lots but not to the chapparal-covered slopes of canyons, McColl said. City officials each year ask residents to cut down high brush and plant ice plant or other fire-resistant shrubs on the hills below their homes. McColl toured Normal Heights two weeks ago, passing out fire-prevention literature. Many residents who followed that advice survived the fire without damage, but others weren’t as lucky. “If you do it (plant ice plant) and your neighbor doesn’t, you’re at risk,” McColl said.

- Low water pressure. Residents and firefighters had trouble Sunday getting enough water pressure to hose down the fire. Fire officials blamed this on the unusual demands of this fire but said it could happen in any neighborhood. One problem was that, on some streets above finger canyons, instead of 8- to 10-inch water mains, there were 6-inch mains.

- Problematic equipment. In one case, a fire team from the North Island Naval Air Station did not have threads on its hoses that were compatible with the threads in city fire hydrants. But the city was able to supply fittings so the team could go to work, Phillips said.