Turkey vultures and red-tailed hawks circled lazily over the Weir Canyon
Wilderness Area, gliding on an air current that breezed through the
canyon with the smell of charred vegetation from last weekend's Windy
Ridge fire.
The 2,036-acre fire was declared under control Wednesday evening, but on
Thursday two fire crews were still in the area. They were not keeping
watch for flare-ups, but to erase any sign that dozens of firefighters
had tromped through the area in the last few days.
They were doing fire repression repairs, fixing damage firefighters had
done to the land.
"If a fence burns, Mother Nature did that. If we cut the fence to fight
the fire, we did that," said George Ewan, wild land fire defense planner
for the Orange County Fire Authority. "The same thing with 'dozer
trails. Any imprint we left behind fighting the fire, we repair or make
good before leaving."
Bre Tillman, 24, and eight other firefighters trudged single file up a
hill, walking in the scars left by bulldozer treads where the machine
climbed to cut a firebreak. The incline proved too steep for the driver,
who inched the dozer back down to the access road below.
The tread marks left behind defiled a rustic scene of oak trees, prickly
pear cactus and grasses.
Tillman was wielding a chain saw Sunday when her crew was cutting
firebreaks that helped stop the blaze and save hundreds of expensive
homes in Anaheim Hills and Orange. But on this day, their job was to
obliterate the bulldozer trail on Irvine Co. property, a protected
wilderness area adjacent to Irvine Regional Park.
Using rakes and shovels, the nine-person crew rubbed out the tread marks
in about 10 minutes, camouflaging the ground with grass and branches
from oaks, lemonade berry and sumac. The job was tame compared with
Sunday's experience on the fire line, but for Tillman, a seasonal
firefighter, it was another step in fulfilling her dream of battling
fires full time.
"I like fighting fires outdoors, being in front of the line with my
chain saw, making openings wide enough to control a fire," said Tillman,
a firefighter for less than a year.
Nearby, Trish Smith of the Nature Conservancy watched as a California
Department of Forestry crew from Oak Glen in San Bernardino County
removed a dirt berm that had been shoved against a group of oaks lining
one side of the access road. The road had been widened at that spot to
accommodate two vehicles.
The conservancy manages wild lands for the Irvine Co., and Smith must
approve all landscape repairs.
About half of the burned acreage is on Irvine Co. property. Because it
is a protected area in an unincorporated part of Orange County, the work
is being paid for with public funds.
Landscape repairs began Monday by crews who trailed firefighters pushing
the fire back. The crews doing repairs Thursday were expected to be
released in the afternoon, officially closing the book on the Windy
Ridge fire.
"The glory side is fighting the fire. People think that when the fire is
out we just go home," Ewan said. "The other side is cleaning up and
taking care of the environment. That's when we leave."
(Por H.G. Reza,
Los Angeles Times, 16/03/2007)