The heroes who face down the flames
FATE came howling down from the northeast skies last week and took the lives of four brave men in the San Jacinto Mountains.
It blew flames as high as heaven toward them on a rough forest road, so quickly, so furiously, that they had no time to react.
Duty had sent them rushing into peril, but it was an arsonist's torch that manipulated their fate. Wind and fire at a killer's hands were more deadly than a bomb. And so their names are added to a heroes list of 80 other firefighters who have died so far this year across America, challenging one of nature's most elemental forces to save others.
At this writing, four are dead in the Thursday flames and a fifth remains connected to a whisper of life that every moment threatens silence.
Those of us who live in canyons and forests know up close how committed are the men and women who face the flames that periodically sweep through vegetation sucked dry by the Santa Anas, as they did in the parched foothills west of Palm Springs.
While we flee, packing photos and pets in our rush, they remain in harm's way, their sirens screaming defiance, their hoses shooting water like cannon fire into heat so intense that it can melt steel, rushing toward the enemy like an army of saints.
The men who died knew the danger of the foe they had come to subdue. They knew the capacity of the devil winds. They knew how quickly fire could roar through brush and fly through treetops, but they went anyhow because what they do is more than a job -- it's a moral commitment.
No amount of training can predict fate's uncertainties when the mountains are ablaze. Like a force wise to our vulnerabilities, fire and wind can attack from the front, the rear and both sides simultaneously, doing a witch's dance around its sacrificial lambs.
As a canyon dweller for the past 30 years, I have viewed with awe the immensity of flames coming toward our home. I have stood on the rooftop to watch a night sky red with fury, holding a garden hose that would have absolutely no effect against the forces that ruled the darkness.
Even miles from the flames, I could feel their heat on my face and could only wonder at the blowtorch intensity the firefighters confronted in the maw of the inferno. There is no way to know the last thoughts of the four firemen Thursday as the wind roared toward them and the arsonist's flames possessed them.
