Firefighters Feel a Mix of Pride and Frustration

On the second day, the firefighters slept.

But Robert L. Spangler, working voluntary overtime, went back to work on four hours’ sleep--his groin strained, arms aching and ankles bruised like ripe fruit.

“It’s a lot like playing pro ball,” Spangler said philosophically. “You know the difference between when you’re injured and just minor pain.”

Monday afternoon, several of the more than 400 firefighters who battled Sunday’s blaze spoke modestly of the mix of frustration and pride they found in fighting San Diego’s worst residential fire.

They recalled how canyons kept rekindling like trick birthday candles, and how crestfallen homeowners poked through the rubble of their homes for family photos.

But they also remembered houses that would have burned if it weren’t for their efforts. And they wondered at the extraordinary gratitude of residents they had helped in small ways.

“You feel good about the job you did,” said Spangler, a 35-year-old San Diego Fire Department captain who spent nearly 12 hours on the fire lines. “You just wish you could have done more.”

The late-morning fire caught Spangler and his company sitting down to a lunch of cold cuts. It routed Logan Bellows from the sports section of the Sunday paper. Robert Wear and his company watched anxiously all day from the station house at Point Loma, then were called in finally at 5:30 a.m. Monday.

Spangler started at West Mountain View Drive and Copley Avenue, his four-man company plunging down the canyon into the blaze. “Get in the burned area and work yourself around,” Spangler had said. “Work the perimeter, follow the burn.”

Then they climbed back up, blanketed in heavy firefighting coats and hauling more than 800 feet of hose. Turning, they watched the fire restart. They dove in again. An hour later, they returned to the staging area for reassignment.

“You’ve just flogged yourself, pulling this hose up and down the canyon,” Spangler said. “But when you get back into staging, you can see the smoke. All of a sudden you get an adrenaline rush. It’s a strange feeling: You’re not tired any more.”

Sunday’s fire was not like most.

It spread too far and lasted too long to use breathing tanks--30 pounds on a firefighter’s back and only 30 minutes of air. So the men’s lungs ached and their eyes stung. Flying embers burned their faces.

But in the end, the fire took no lives--a fact they said made it less agonizing than the 1978 PSA airline crash or last year’s McDonald’s massacre. “Oh, you bet, you just feel helpless,” Spangler said of fatal incidents. “You do what you can, and they die on you.”

What saddened Wear on Monday morning were the expressions on people’s faces. Sent in late to watch for “hot spots,” he found himself helping homeowners hunt for photo albums and strongboxes among the ashes.

“I just remember the sweat on this guy’s face, going through papers. You can see the eyes, the whole expression, that lost feeling, ‘What am I going to do now?’ ” Wear said sadly.

“I just felt heartbroken, the same way I would if that was my house, or my mother’s house. I felt bad. I even apologized. I said, ‘I’m sorry it had to happen.’ ”

Spangler left after 12 hours with only one 45-minute break for a few pieces of chicken. He went out to another fire, then returned to the firehouse to sleep, calling his wife just before 2 a.m. to say he was OK.

Spangler, working overtime to pay off the cost of breaking his neck teaching a rescue course last summer, spoke Monday about balancing his work and his family life.

“I found out my boy told his class that when he grew up he wanted to be a firefighter,” he said, bemused. “I thought that was kind of neat. But I was hoping we’d get him to be a doctor or something. He could make some money and support his dad in his old age.”