Copter pilots call wildfire rescues ‘by far’ their toughest flying ever
SAN FRANCISCO — Even over the crackling roar of the wildfire surrounding them, Daniel Crouch heard the hum of military helicopters emerging out of the smoky darkness.
“The smoke was so thick, you couldn’t see anything — but you could hear the blades of the helicopter,” said Crouch, who was among dozens of Labor Day vacationers trapped by a fast-moving wildfire in the forests south of Yosemite National Park on Saturday.
“That thump-thump-thump of the helicopter out in the distance,” Crouch said.
In a scene that played out multiple times over the weekend and into Tuesday afternoon, the California National Guard airlifted hundreds of civilians, their exits trapped by a dense ring of fire.
Before the helicopter’s arrival, Crouch had waded into a lake up to his neck to escape the smoke and whipping embers, shivering in the cool water. “It was go underwater, come up, take a breath,” he recalled.
Two pilots who led that rescue, both military veterans, said it was the most harrowing flying they have done in their careers.
Crew members became nauseated from the smoke. They flew up a valley in strong winds, surpassing ridgelines illuminated by fire. They contemplated turning back.
“Every piece of vegetation as far as you could see around that lake was on fire,” said Chief Warrant Officer Kipp Goding, the pilot of a Blackhawk helicopter.
“I’ve been flying for 25 years,” he said, removing a cloth mask to speak. “We get occasionally shot at overseas during missions. It’s definitely by far the toughest flying that I’ve ever done,” he said of the rescue missions in California.
More than 2.2 million acres of parched lands have burned this year, a record for the state, and fire season is far from over — California is entering what are traditionally the most dangerous months of fire weather.
As of noon Tuesday, 362 people and at least 16 dogs had been evacuated by air from burning forests of cedar and ponderosa pine. The Creek Fire, which ignited Friday evening, had burned 143,929 acres — five times the size of San Francisco — and was still raging out of control.
For those who became trapped by the wildfires, the weekend began as an ordinary retreat into the Sierra National Forest, a vast expanse in the Sierra Nevada northeast of Fresno.
Sal Gonzalez, 38, a high school athletics equipment manager from Madera, Calif., has an annual tradition of meeting up with wrestling teammates from college each Labor Day weekend.
This year, they piled into his Toyota Tacoma loaded with dry food, cooking gear and fishing poles, and a 16-foot pontoon boat in tow. They arrived to a crowded campsite near the Mammoth Pool Reservoir on Saturday, where vacationers were swimming in the lake and carousing on Jet Skis.
It was crowded, Gonzalez recalled. “Everyone is going about their day like nothing is abnormal.”
The first sign of fire didn’t come until the afternoon, when ash began falling on their tent.
When they saw flames in the mountains, they threw their supplies in the boat and sped away. Back in the parking area, Gonzalez pressed an alarm again and again to find his car, but heard nothing. His truck had been torched. They had no way out.
Crouch had been camping in the Sierra with his wife, daughters and grandson when they first heard word of a potential fire late Saturday morning. By midafternoon, he said, flames had surrounded the lake.
With the roads blocked, he raced toward the water. He spent about 30 minutes gulping for air amid the smoke. His 3-year-old grandson floated on the lid of an ice chest.
“We were stuck,” said Crouch, who spent the next several hours taking cover in his car and on the beach. He later met up with Gonzalez’s group, and offered to store belongings for them in his car.
“We thought we were going to be there for several days,” Crouch said. “We had no knowledge of any kind of rescue.”
After dark, from somewhere in the smoky, orange sky, they heard a roaring hum, and later saw a bright spotlight. The two helicopters were landing.
“People started cheering,” Crouch said.