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About 3:20 p.m. on
Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2009,
employees of the U.S. Forest
Service’s Angeles Crest Sta-
tion received a walk-in re-
port of a vegetation fire less
than 2 miles north of their
tiny outpost in the Angeles
National Forest.
By 3:31 p.m. the flare-up
was described as “3 acres
and running” by forest crews
working to douse it. Just five
minutes later, however, it
found fuel in an area of heavy
brush and spread to 10 acres,
according Los Angeles
County Fire Department re-
ports.
That was the beginning
of the Station fire, a confla-
gration that would go on to
consume more than 160,
acres over a 50-day period,
threaten 12,000 homes and
structures and cost the lives
of Fire Capt. Tedmund
“Ted” Hall and Firefighter
Specialist Arnaldo “Arnie”
Quinones of county Station
No. 129, who died in an Aug.
30 vehicle crash while fight-
ing the blaze.
On Wednesday, Hall and
Quinones will be honored
with the installation of me-
morial plaques at Acton
Park during a service held to
recognize the decade that
has passed since their sacri-
fice, according to L.A.
County fire spokesman
Capt. Tony Imbrenda.
“For a large number of
people whose lives were im-
periled that day, the actions
of those two guys were piv-
otal,” he said. “It could have
been a much worse tragedy.”
For La Cañadans, the
somber anniversary of the
Station fire evokes memo-
ries of a time when the city
was on high alert, reminding
residents how vulnerable
they are living so close to the
Angeles National Forest.
“It was like Vesuvius right
in your backyard,” said for-
mer La Cañada Flintridge
City Councilman Steve Del
Guercio, recalling the giant
nimbus of smoke that hov-
ered over the city for days.
“Ash was pouring every-
where. School was canceled
— it was bad.”La Cañada in peril
In the first days of the
Station fire, named for the
proximity of its ignition
point to the Angeles Crest
Station, experts believed it
would not cross the ridgeline
and move toward La Cañada
Flintridge.
But as it devoured dry
chaparral-covered hillsides
and continued creeping
southward, anxious resi-
dents on the north end of
town gravely weighed
whether to flee to safety or
stay and defend their
homes.
Among them was current
Mayor Pro Tem Greg Brown,
whose house on Vista
Miguel Drive was among
those evacuated as fire
crews lined residential
streets and fought an ever-
encroaching fire line from
the south.
“I took an SUV, loaded it
with all of the stuff that really
counted and was irreplace-
able, parked it down the
street and then got another
car,” recalled Brown, who
was in his second term on
the City Council at the time.
“We had to have a council
meeting to declare a local
emergency — it was unnerv-
ing.”
Brown served as part of a
small crew of city officials
and staff who kept watch asLa Cañada City Hall became
a 24-hour emergency opera-
tions center. Employees and
officials fielded calls, posted
updates to the city’s website
and served as a vital line of
communication between
citizens and public safety
agencies as the Jet Propul-
sion Laboratory closed its
doors and affected residents
evacuated to La Cañada
High School and boarded
their pets through the Pasa-
dena Humane Society.
Working alongside
Brown was Del Guercio, who
recalls then-Mayor Laura
Olhasso sleeping on the
floor in between shifts. He
said the city’s recently in-
stalled reverse 911 phone sys-
tem became a valuable tool
for delivering important
safety notifications and
evacuation orders to resi-
dents.
“That was one of the
things, looking back, I was
most proud of — basically
everyone was ready for the
emergency and played a
helpful role,” he recalled.
“We actually became one of
the best sources of informa-
tion for the community.”
By week’s end, the risk to
La Cañada Flintridge and its
inhabitants had largely
passed as the Station fire
moved westward — but for
La Crescenta and Glendale,
the threat loomed.‘I was amazed’
As flames moved across
La Crescenta and Glendale,scorching the hills of Deuk-
mejian Wilderness Park,
thick, gray smoke blanketed
the area. Officials issued
evacuation orders for hill-
side residents, and poor air
quality caused Glendale
Unified School District to
shutter schools for several
days.
La Crescenta resident
Joanna Linkchorst remem-
bers she was camping in
Idyllwild with her family
when she first heard the Sta-
tion fire had hit close to
home. They quickly re-
turned and were shocked to
see how fire had ravaged the
area.
“We saw all these moun-
tainsides burning and the
fire coming over toward the
mountains behind us,” she
recalled.
Rather than evacuate,
Linkchorst and her family
decided to hunker down at
home, figuring they were too
far away for the fire to reach
them. They blasted the air
conditioner as outside tem-
peratures approached triple
digits.
Later, in the aftermath of
the fire, Linkchorst sur-
veyed the damage at Deuk-
mejian and described it as a
profound experience.
“I was amazed at how the
rocks broke from the heat. I
was amazed at how old the
Earth looked ... scorched
into some moonscape,” she
said. “There were actually
trees in the middle of all this
devastation that survived....It was all so beautiful.”
She said her lasting
memory of the Station fire
has been watching the re-
growth of the area as it re-
bounds.
“It’s nature doing what
it’s supposed to do,” Link-
chorst said.
Glendale Fire Chief Silvio
Lanzas — who served as a
battalion chief in Moreno
Valley with the California
Department of Forestry and
Fire Protection — recalls
leading a strike team made
up of five engine companies
in the first few days of the
battle.
For him, memories of the
Station fire are almost vis-
ceral. Lanzas and his team
tackled the blaze from the
Acton side before moving on
to Soledad Canyon and then
Mt. Wilson. They were on the
hillside the same night Hall
and Quinones lost their
lives. It was a moment
Lanzas said he’ll never for-
get.
“It definitely gives you a
sense of profound realiza-
tion, as a firefighter and
strike team leader, of what
you’re doing and what you’re
asking your people to do,” he
said. “These are people’s
husbands, wives, sons,
daughters, and you’re the
one who’s putting them out
there to protect structures
and stop this fire.”‘An intentional act’
Within days of its start,
investigators announcedthey believed an arsonist
was to blame for the Station
fire, but few details were of-
fered. According to a Sept. 4,
2009, Times article, a source
close to the investigation
said incendiary material
had been found near the
site.
By late November of that
year, investigators said they
had not found enough evi-
dence to arrest anyone.
“The conventional wis-
dom is that the incident was
an intentional act,” Im-
brenda said this week.
Whether or not an arson-
ist is lurking, the threat of
such a wildfire continues to
be real because of the ter-
rain, vegetation and
weather conditions in the
Angeles National Forest.
Once such a blaze gets go-
ing, it creates its own
weather system.
According to Imbrenda,
what made the Station fire
so difficult to combat was
the unpredictability of its
path. Unlike the Woolsey
fire, driven by Santa Ana
winds, the “plume-domi-
nant” wildland fire remained
stationary, sending smoke
and combustible material
high into the atmosphere.
“When smoke freezes, it
becomes heavier than the air
and collapses back into the
plume,” Imbrenda said.
“During plume dominance,
you see erratic winds
down in the operational
area.”
The key to the size and
spread of the Station fire, he
added, was the volume of
combustible fuel in the An-
geles National Forest, which
hadn’t seen a significant
burn-off in several years be-
fore 2009.
Although current brush
conditions are not quite so
dire — given that a wet win-
ter and spring have built a
layer of moisture into top
layers of soil — Imbrenda
said recent periods of dry-
ness and high temperatures
are drying out grasses and
creating a more threatening
fuel load.
“As we move into late Au-
gust, we’re starting to see
higher pressure and heat,”
he said. “When that mois-
ture in the soil starts to go
away, we start to see the
brush dry out and you get a
higher probability of ignition
— that’s where we’re head-
ing now.”
Brown says he’s glad
there’s heightened aware-
ness around the risk of fire
throughout California. But,
locally, the natural fire break
created in the wake of the
Station fire is all but gone
now, placing La Cañada
Flintridge once again in a
precarious situation.
“We’re probably very
much back to where we
were,” he said. “So we need
to pay attention.”Cardine and Nguyen write
for Times Community
News.THE STATION FIRE,initially reported as “3 acres and running,” quickly spread to 10 acres. It soon grew into a conflagration that took the lives of two firefighters.
Fire Capt. Tedmund “Ted” Hall and Firefighter Specialist Arnaldo “Arnie” Quinones, who died in a vehicle crash, will be honored with memorial plaques Wednesday.
Al SeibLos Angeles TimesStation fire is seared in local memory
Ten years ago, the blaze burned for 50 days, charring 160,000 acres and killing two firefighters
By Sara Cardine
and Andy Nguyen
“IT WAS LIKE VESUVIUSright in your backyard,” said former La Cañada Flintridge City Councilman
Steve Del Guercio. “Ash was pouring everywhere.” Above, a view of the Station fire from Marina del Rey.Genaro MolinaLos Angeles Times