MOST were college students and adventure seekers, young men who spent the summer of 1966 choking off forest fires across the West, cutting trees and brush for days on end for about $2 an hour.
One day that fall, the crew was dispatched to a narrow ravine near Sylmar to help contain a blaze in the Angeles National Forest.
This was the 18th fire of the season for the 31-member El Cariso Hotshots. It looked like a mop-up operation, removing what little fuel remained in the burnt-over chute.
Gordon King, the crew's leader, told his men to travel light, to grab tools but leave their portable fire shelters in the truck. Their $5 government-issue fire-retardant shirts were useless after repeated washings had leached out the protective coating. Most of the men didn't put on gloves, and they rolled up their sleeves in the afternoon heat.
The 32-year-old King was a no-nonsense commander who led by example, outworked everyone and didn't say much because he didn't have to.
He was a student of fire, attuned to the way the fluctuating forces of sun, slope, smoke, wind and heat determined its course. King believed he could predict what a fire would do.
As he led his men into the abyss, they believed it too.
A faulty power line near Pacoima Dam sparked the fire before dawn. Fueled by 60 mph Santa Ana winds, the blaze blackened 2,000 acres around Loop Canyon and filled the northern San Fernando Valley with thick plumes of smoke.
When the El Cariso Hotshots entered a rocky ravine east of the canyon about 3 p.m., the fire was largely contained.
At 3:35 p.m., an unexpected shift in wind caused a small spot fire to develop below the crew. Within seconds, super-heated gas had raced up the 2,200-foot canyon and exploded, trapping the firefighters in 2,500-degree heat.
In 60 seconds, it was over.
Twelve hotshots died, among them three 18-year-olds, three 19-year-olds and two brothers. Ten others were burned, many critically.
The Loop fire of Nov. 1, 1966, was a watershed in wild land firefighting. It led to a clearer understanding of the perils posed by narrow canyons, of the way they could, with the slightest meteorological provocation, become chimneys poised to explode with the tiniest spark.
The fire resulted in safety protocols still used today that spell out how crews should -- and when they shouldn't -- enter such terrain. The rules urge the use of lookouts and radios, which the El Cariso Hotshots didn't have that day. The fire accelerated development of better communications and lightweight safety gear.
Its legacy also can be seen in the gnarled hands, leathery arms and scars that serve as constant reminders to its survivors. And it can be found in the mind of one man who, despite the fact investigators blamed no one for the disaster, holds himself responsible.
WITH his jet-black hair, thick 6-foot, 2-inch frame, brooding eyebrows and square jaw, Gordon King cut an intimidating profile. The young men who worked for him trusted and respected King. His crystal blue eyes revealed little except that he knew what he was doing.
King started fighting forest fires at 17, the summer after graduating from high school. He had been given no instruction on how to be a "ground pounder." A football player looking to stay in shape for college ball, he had been told simply to cut brush until he was told to stop. He was immediately hooked. He had worked seven fires before a supervisor discovered his age and told him to come back when he was 18.
After stints in the Army and construction, King had gravitated back to the fire line. Because most hotshots then had little or no experience, King's brief stint working fires as a teenager had qualified him to be a crew boss.
King had about 90 major fires under his belt when he was made superintendent of the El Cariso Hotshots in 1965. The crew, based in the Cleveland National Forest, had a C-46 transport plane on call, a rickety piece of military surplus that inspired its logo, a ruptured duck.
King ran his crew like a military outfit. After a man served a full shift on an active fire -- not a mop-up job -- he was awarded a green beret to wear off-duty. King's aggressiveness didn't sit well with some other hotshot superintendents, who thought he took unnecessary risks.
On the Loop fire, King believed the biggest danger his men faced was loose rock tumbling down the nearly sheer 2,200-foot-long slope. There was no fire in sight, just light smoke a few ridgelines away.
The crew carefully descended the ravine. Halfway down was a rock slide. The men would have simply scampered across it in the past. Now, with safety becoming more of an issue in the profession, King ordered his men to cross two-by-two to minimize the threat of a slide.
Rich Leak was toward the rear of the strung-out crew. The son of a fire captain at the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base, Leak had wanted to be a firefighter since he was boy. He was in his second year with the El Cariso Hotshots and was having the time of his life.
