3 from city helped battle Yosemite blaze

By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

When Benicia Fire Department’s Capt. Greg Petersen, firefighter Adam Malbrough and engineer Jeff Toynbee left here Aug. 24 to join others battling California’s wildfires, they weren’t sent immediately to the Rim Fire.

Initially, Toynbee said Wednesday, they became part of a strike team that was dispatched to Butte County to tackle the Swedes Fire.

Then, after two days, they went to Plumas County to fight the fire in the Plumas National Forest, he said.

But two days after that the Benicia trio arrived at the enormous Rim Fire that has attacked Yosemite National Park and the Stanislaus National Forest, and that has been described as the third-largest wildfire in California history.

The fire, reported Aug. 17, has grown to burn more than 250,000 acres. More than 3,000 firefighters are still fighting that fire.

The Benicia men became part of the effort until Sept. 1, when they finally returned home, Toynbee said.

For Toynbee, it wasn’t a new experience: he has been involved in battling other wildfires. The difference?
“It’s bigger,” he said. In fact, once in the area he learned that 4,000 homes in multiple communities were under immediate threat of being consumed by the fire.

The Solano County firefighters’ strike team was sent from Plumas County to a staging area at Tuoloumne City, and pulled in at 10 p.m. at night, but “It was bright coming out of Manteca,” Toynbee said.

Joining the local strike team were firefighters, trucks and other equipment from throughout California. Toynbee heard along the way that the main command post at Yosemite had had to be moved, though common practice in fighting large fires is to set up multiple base stations so operations can continue.

Firefighters don’t simply plunge in to battle a wildfire. Instead, they face a lot of preparatory work, studying weather, topography, wind and other factors as equipment is prepared and set in place for the fight.

“Something of this magnitude, you’ve got a lot of steps before you fight the fire,” Toynbee said. You have to know where the fire is, and how to get to it. It takes some time.”

Initially, the fire was spreading at a rate of 6 mph. “For a wildfire, that’s like a freight train,” he said.

Burning edges were spotted a half mile ahead of the main fire, he said. “You have to find out where it’s going,” he said.

Getting to the fire meant traveling through any passageway available — “forestry service roads, logging roads, little dirt roads nobody knew about, and dozer lines,” he said.

But firefighters also had to prepare before launching the counterattack of back fires. “That takes two days of preparatory work,” Toynbee said.

Firefighters built contingency lines and put hose lines and people in place, just as military forces would prepare weapons for war.

The work was hard and constant. “We didn’t shower for three days,” Toynbee said.

Unlike the stories of firefighters being threatened by quickly advancing fires, Toynbee said the Solano County strike force was, at its closest spot, a half mile from the main fire.

That didn’t mean they were lax or overconfident. “We felt comfortable,” he said, but they remained alert, “maintaining our awareness and our communication.”

The firefighters had safe escape routes set up, and knew where their “safety spots” were, Toynbee said. “You maintain vigilance, because things can change in a heartbeat.”

Though the Benicia firefighters were working alongside those from Dixon, Vallejo and Vacaville fire departments and Vacaville Fire Protection, “everybody’s on the same wavelength,” Toynbee said.

A strike force — one leader and five pieces of apparatus and their crews — is assembled at the county level, he said. “You don’t want to be in charge of more than five,” he said.

He described his strike team as a “type six request,” a brush unit.

Statewide, firefighters are trained similarly, so when they arrive at such massive wildfires they work seamlessly together, he explained.

He did see differences in the way Cal Fire and U.S. Forestry approach firefighting.

Under Cal Fire’s direction, firefighters work 24 hours, then are off the next 24 hours. The Forestry shift was supposed to last 12 hours, though at times the firefighters worked longer.

Cal Fire’s approach is to attack and put out the fire, while “Forestry looks at it from the management perspective,” Toynbee said.

“They’re cool with letting it (underbrush) burn out,” he said. “It’s healthy for the forest to let the fire burn a couple of days.” Under that strategy, the focus was on preventing the fire from reaching the crowns of trees.

“The Department of the Interior will let 50,000 acres go, so it can rejuvenate itself,” he said.

He met a trainee from Southeast Texas who found himself unused to California topography, but Toynbee said the Forestry Service was skilled at “surgical back firing” as a counter-measure to the fire.

“It was cool to see the management style,” he said.

Another cool thing was residents’ reaction to the firefighters, who saw posters and signs that welcomed and thanked them for their service, Toynbee said.

During his deployment, he received a text that a Benicia firefighter’s cousin in Sonora was cooking barbecue for Los Angeles firefighters and was advised, “See if you can go for a meal.”

He was 20 miles from Sonora when he found a parking lot of a Christian school’s gymnasium. “Someone came up with bagels and fruit, and told us, ‘We’ll open the gym so you can shower,’” he said.

While Toynbee was there, a man told him about a barbecue at his home. “You come on down,” the man said.

When Toynbee and other strike team members arrived, a woman saw his Benicia T-shirt and exclaimed, “I’m supposed to be looking for the Benicia firefighters!” Toynbee was surprised. “It was my buddy’s wife’s cousin!”

It wasn’t the family’s only barbecue. They set up tables in their front yard and began by feeding 50 firefighters; as the evenings continued, the rolling barbecue event grew to 200 to 250 a night at its peak, giving the exhausted visitors a chance to have a home-cooked meal.

“It was nice to sit in a relaxing atmosphere and have a hot meal. It helped things feel normal,” Toynbee said. In addition, “there was an outpouring of money from the community,” to keep the event going and to assure firefighters of supplies.

Once he and the strike team returned to Solano County, Toynbee was glad to have three days off before he had to return to work.

“It was nice to get home, be in my own bed, and get real, clean clothes,” he said.

He said his life is “almost back to normal,” but added, “Our brush unit got beat.” He’s been spending mornings going over it “with a fine-tooth comb,” making sure it’s ready for service.

And with multiple fires going on in the state, it needs to be ready. Benicia firefighters have spent four days fighting the Morgan Fire in Mount Diablo State Park, he said.

Toynbee has heard the Rim Fire may not be contained completely unil Sept. 20, “and they’ll be working on that a long time.”

Some of the chopped wood will be chipped, some of the damage caused in the fire fight will need to be mitigated, and dozer lines will need to be watched because they’re susceptible to wash outs, he said.

However, much of the burned wood will decompose, enriching the soil, he said.

Meanwhile, Toynbee is getting ready for softball. He’s one of Benicia Fire Department’s participation in the Solano-Napa Firefighters Foundation Charity One Pitch Tournament.

The tournament begins at 9 a.m. Sunday at Benicia Community Park, 2 Hillcrest Ave., and will raise money firefighters will use to help those in need in communities in both counties.

“I played first base last year — I’ll probably do that again this year,” Toynbee said.