Firefighting Equipment

Fire chiefs in tinder-dry Southern California, faced with lean budgets while more people squeeze into the region, are starting to rethink long-standing policies on ordering mass evacuations in a wildfire, debating whether it may be wiser in some situations to let residents stay and defend their homes. "We don't have enough resources to put an engine at every house in harm's way," said Ventura County Fire Chief Bob Roper.

The budget Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Tuesday canceled the contract for California's largest firefighting tool, a DC-10 jet, to save $7 million. But the long-term cost to taxpayers could far exceed the savings. Depending on the severity of this fire season, California could potentially spend millions more for aerial firefighting, already one of the most expensive components in wildland firefighting, according to a state analysis.

U.S. Forest Service officials underestimated the threat posed by the deadly Station fire and scaled back their attack on the blaze the night before it began to rage out of control, records and interviews show. In response to Times inquiries, officials for the Forest Service and Los Angeles County Fire Department said they probably will change their procedures so that the two agencies immediately stage a joint assault on any fire in the lower Angeles National Forest. Angeles Forest Fire Chief David Conklin said his staff was confident that the Station fire had been "fairly well contained" on the first day, so it decided that evening to order just three water-dropping helicopters to hit the blaze shortly after dawn on its second day -- down from five on Day One -- and prepared to go into mop-up mode with fewer firefighters on the ground.

Two retired firetrucks will head south of the border to departments needing equipment, officials said. Two nonprofit groups -- the Salinas Rodeo Rotary Club and LULAC Council 2907 in Castroville -- will each deliver one of the pumpers. Over the last 2 1/2 years, the Salinas Fire Department upgraded its fleet with six new engines, making the two older pumpers superfluous. "They're going to a community that doesn't have fire protection or doesn't have a fire pumper," Fire Chief Dan Hernandez said.

One of the most dangerous fires in Los Angeles history began when the owner of a novelty store left water to boil on an electric hot plate and took his dog for a walk. As towering flames engulfed the stairwell of the five-story Gray Building at Broadway near 3rd Street, thousands of people gathered to watch. Inside, 150 women, all millinery workers, were trapped. More than 100 firemen responded to the blaze Nov.

Congress has approved $910 million in emergency firefighting funding sought by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) during a year when more than 1.2 million acres have already burned in California. The money will go to the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to be used throughout the country. The bill awaits the president's signature. Given the severity of the fire season so far this year, Feinstein said additional fire suppression funding was needed. "This year California was hit by wildfires on a scale that was unprecedented in our history," she said in a statement.

Ared flag alert was on, making it a perfect time for one final water drop for the Super Scooper pilot who for 13 years has led Canadian firefighters' assault on Los Angeles-area brush fires. Chief water bomber pilot Jean-Pierre Guay is retiring from a 32-year career flying the unique plane that skims over lakes and the ocean to load water and then sprays it over flaming hillsides. He returns to snowy Quebec on Wednesday after a ceremony at which county supervisors will thank him for his service.

Water officials said Tuesday that pumps designed to push water to the upper reaches of a hillside Yorba Linda neighborhood failed during a Nov. 15 firestorm, possibly explaining why firefighters were forced to abandon the area and let homes burn after fire hydrants went dry. The disclosure came four days after Orange County fire officials blamed the loss of as many as five homes in the neighborhood on lack of water from fire hydrants.

The nation's largest firefighting aircraft will return to duty next week after repairs to a wing that was damaged after a near-crash. The DC-10 air tanker had been out of commission since June 25 as it prepared to drop fire retardant along a Kern County ridge. A severe downdraft forced the aircraft to sink and its left wing clipped several treetops.

For a tense couple of weeks, the 31,000-acre Zaca fire threatened to scorch more than 1,000 square miles of wilderness and reach the outskirts of communities as far-flung as Santa Barbara and Ojai. Now, the smoke is clearing but the long, dark shadow of the auditor looms over a massive operation that has cost an average of more than $1 million a day for nearly a month. Eye-popping wildfire expenditures aren't all that unusual -- this month's inferno at Lake Tahoe ran up daily bills of $1.