Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Lakeside Firefighters Assist with Vegetation Fire

El Monte Valley -

A fast-moving vegetation fire drew a multi-agency response to Lakeside on Tuesday, July 2, 2013. Firefighters from Lakeside, Santee, CalFire, and U.S. Forest Service were alerted just after 1:00 p.m. for the fire in steep, rugged terrain just northwest of the El Capitan Reservoir dam.

Because of the difficult access, ground resources assigned to the fire were limited to Type III (wildland) engines, water tenders, and hand crews. Firefighters were assigned to put in two hoselays that extended several thousand feet up the side of El Cajon Mountain. Both hoselays were supported by handcrews including several Interagency Hotshot Crews.

A CalFire S2T makes a steep decent to make a drop on the western perimeter of the fire.
In addition to the ground forces assigned to this incident, several air tankers and helicopters made both fire retardant and water drops to keep the fire in check until ground crews could put in fire line.

The fire was managed utilizing unified command due to the multijurisdictional response. The lead agency was the U.S. Forest Service as the fire was within the boundaries of the Cleveland National Forest.

Lakeside units assigned to this incident included: Chief 4101 (Parr), Division 4105 (Tockstein), Brush 1, Water Tender 7251.

Fire viewed from Blossom Valley. Note the very rugged terrain.
The "Peutz Fire" followed the same basic footprint as the "El Monte Fire" back in 2010

Post by: Captain Scott Culkin, Lakeside Fire District
Photo by: Captain Mark Grow, Lakeside Fire District

1 comment:

  1. Thank you Firefighters for a terrific job.

    ReplyDelete