NATIONAL FOREST WORK 



An Official Account of the San Bernardino 

 Fire 



In view of the many conflicting news- 

 paper reports on tiie recent San Bernardino 

 fire, District Forester Coert DuBois, who is 

 in general charge of the national forests in 

 California, has issued the following authen- 

 tic account: 



The fire started about noon on Tuesday, 

 July 25, from an unknown cause, on the 

 west side of the road up Waterman Canyon. 

 Within an hour and a half, three forest 

 rangers and seven citizens had reached 

 the ground and brought the original fire 

 under control with less than two and a half 

 acres burned over. A separate fire, starting 

 from a brand, blown from the main fire, 

 had also been detected and extinguished. 

 Another spark had evidently jumped across 

 the road from the original fire when it was 

 burning its hardest. This spark smoldered 

 but did not show up in flame or smoke 

 until some fifteen minutes after the first 

 two fires had been brought under perfect 

 control. The ten men on the ground at- 

 tacked this third fire promptly and except 

 for the high wind then blowing, they would 

 have had no difficulty in conquering it. 



Cases are very rare where fires escape 

 from control after being reached by the 

 rangers as promptly as this San Bernardino 

 fire. When the rangers and fire fighters 

 had this third fire almost under control, a 

 furious gust of wind came up the canyon, 

 scattered fire all over the hillside from the 

 one-half acre, then burning, and forced the 

 men to run for their lives. Except for this 

 extraordinary wind, which eye witnesses say 

 was a small hurricane, the fire would never 

 have escaped and would have represented 

 little more than a figure in annual fire re- 

 ports and other statistics. 



After the fire escaped, it burned with un- 

 trollable force during the remainder of the 

 afternoon and covered over 500 acres by 

 6 o'clock Tuesday evening. Realizing that 

 help was needed immediately, the ranger 

 in charge when the fire escaped promptly 

 telephoned to San Bernardino for men. 

 Right here the protecti'^ ' system broke 

 down. Naturally no forest officer was in 

 San Bernardino and no arrangements had 

 been made in advance for the immediate 

 dispatch of volunteer fire fighters or or- 

 ganized bodies of men in case of fire. The 

 men telephoned for by the ranger were not 



sent. The small force of men on the ground 

 fought without help twenty-one hours, or 

 until 11 o'clock on Wednesday, July 26. 

 Recognizing the hopelessness of the situa- 

 tion, two rangers then left the fire line and 

 went to San Bernardino for men. The 

 opportunity to conquer the fire had, how- 

 ever, been lost for lack of help during the 

 first twenty-four hours. During the second 

 and third days of the fire rangers and fire 

 fighters labored unceasingly to control the 

 blaze. They succeeded except in the head 

 of a fork of Cold Water Canyon where the 

 fire was burning fiercely on very steep 

 ground covered with a dense growth of 

 manzanita and thorn brush and where 

 there was very little dirt to use in fighting 

 the flames. Forest officers and fire fight- 

 ers who have been over this ground report 

 that the difficulties confronting the fire 

 fighters at this point cannot be understood 

 by anyone who has not actually been over 

 the ground. Friday night, when the fire 

 had been burning for a trifle over three 

 days, a fire line was almost completed 

 around the lower end and sides of the fire. 

 Before the circle could be closed, a high 

 north wind started to blow and scattered 

 fire in new directions, undoing much that 

 had been gained during the previous day's 

 fight. The north wind blew for only two 

 hours, but in this time fire was so scattered 

 that when the normal southwest wind again 

 started up, the fire was able to spread rap- 

 idly, despite the desperate efforts of the 

 hundreds of men then on the line. North 

 winds blew again at intervals during Sat- 

 urday night, Sunday and Sunday night. 

 Each time the north wind blew, the fire 

 was blown backward into positions from 

 which, when the southwest winds returned, 

 it could make uncontrollable rushes up the 

 steep front of the San Bernardino range. 

 By Sunday night the fire had spread to 

 such size that the task of working the 

 enormous length of the fire line was not 

 completed until Monday, August 7, almost 

 two weeks after the fire started. 



When the fire started, Mr. R. H. Charlton, 

 the supervisor of the Angeles National For- 

 est, was on one of his regular trips of in- 

 spection and field supervision. He prompt- 

 ly got in touch with his subordinates who 

 were in charge of the fight, but since they 

 repeatedly reported that they expected no 

 difficulty in conquering the fire, Mr. Charl- 

 ton did not leave his regular work for 



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