 On November 1, 1966, a fire was reported in a canyon near the boundary of the Angeles National Forest just outside the city of San Fernando. Fire danger had been above normal for most of the fire season, and at least six strong periods of San Ana winds had occurred during the last month. The general weather forecast for the day included a high temperature of 90 degrees and relative humidity is as low as 12 percent. Prevailing winds were out of the northeast at 10 to 15 miles per hour. The first resources arrived on scene at 0600 and quickly set the fire suppression objectives. They determined that the west side of the fire was approaching an area burned in 1962, and the south side would be taken care of by the LA County and City Fire Departments when the fire reached the bottom of the slope. All federal resources were to be expended on the north and east sides of the fire, and the north end was to be held on the Santa Clara fuel break which was identified in a pre-attack plan. At 0830, a special weather forecast was issued which called for San Ana conditions with winds from the northeast to east at 30 miles per hour with gusts up to 50, maximum temperatures in 95 degrees and a minimum relative humidity of 10 percent. The fuel type consisted of chemise, sage and sumac. The moisture of live chemise was only 60 percent, which is the minimum possible for this species. The Del Rosa, Dalton and Chileo hotshots along with two counting crews were building fire line downhill along the east flank. The El Cariso hotshots arrived at 1430 and the superintendent Gordon King was told by the line boss to leapfrog the Del Rosa crew and coal trail the fire edge if possible. Mention was made for the steep terrain beyond the point where the Del Rosa crew was working. They were told that the main ridge could be used as an alternative if it was impossible to follow the burned edge. There was no radio available for Superintendent King. The crew worked past the Del Rosa hotshots and continued coal trailing the fire edge to a point where the fire edge dropped into a steep chimney canyon. At this point, King had to make a decision. Please get into your groups and discuss alternative courses of action. Welcome back. Let's walk through what actually happened and take you to the next pivotal decision point for the El Cariso hotshots. King led the first units of his crew carefully down and across the steep, rocky face along the fire's edge. The division boss, unable to contact King directly because King had no radio, made his way down to point A on the main ridge. Since he could not see King at the time, he radioed a liaison officer for the county who was positioned on the road below the fire. The division boss was told that King and his crew were coal trailing the edge of the fire, and they would be able to construct line down the rocky chute in the chimney canyon. The division boss waited until the remaining members of the El Cariso crew cleared the rocky face and instructed the Del Rosa hotshots to wait at point A until he checked to see if this was the best way down. He would call them on the radio and advise them to either come down the chute and leapfrog the El Cariso crew or go down the ridge and come in from below. The division boss then proceeded down the rock face. When he was about halfway down, he could see down the chimney most of the way. Most of King's men had crossed the rock slide at the head of the chute and worked their way down to a small bench that paralleled the chute. The fire had back down the bench and gone out. It was not a clean burn. King and his men were at a place later known as the Diamond, with the rest of the crew strung out up the chute coal trailing. At the time, a helitanker was working in the lower part of the deep canyon to the west. The fire situation at approximately 1530 was as follows. From the Diamond, the burned edge dipped into and across the deep canyon to the west and then down to where the county crews and dozer was working. King could see that the terrain was too steep to coal trail from the chimney canyon into the deep canyon to the west and the bottom of this gully was obviously a difficult and dangerous place to hold the fire. Now let's get back into our groups and complete the second part of this exercise. Welcome back. We recently had a chance to talk to Gordon King and he shared with us his recollection of that tragic day. It was steep, and I knew it was steep. Yeah, when you picked up that last pitch, I mean it's a good drop. That's when I told Raymond Chee, that was my head hook, and he was, you know, right, I said, Chee, wait a minute, do you stay right here? And I'm going to go take a look at this slide area. And when I got over to it, walked down, but then the fire was stopped over the other side of the slide area. But up above, it burned up right up to the very crown of this slide area and burned all the brush out. But that had been put out. There was no fire up there at all. But I could see rocks coming down. And they weren't coming down, you know, all the time. One or two would come down. Something would kick loose, grab me, and pull it down like that. And I pulled Ray down and I said, you know, we're going to have to cross this thing to get over to the other side right over there, because that's what we're going to have to start. I'm going to pick it up along that ridge line. It looks like we could go right on down that ridge line and go to the bottom. And, you know, he said, okay, he said, I'm going to go across. You stay right here, and I'm going to go across. If you see anything coming, you let me know. You know, and so I had my shovel up, and I started across. Nothing came down. We'd worked our way down, and I had just gone through a pretty good size stand of chemise. And it was kind of been a v-shape, you know, dropped off on the other side. And I almost dropped off with it when I went through. I was holding on. I saw it, and I bent the rod. Some of them were going to have kept through, and I rolled back to raise it. That's a watch to drop on the other side of that. They would cut that thing out of there so everybody could see that it was about a five or six foot drop. And he would, he cut through it left a little bit, because that's the way we used to do things. Don't cut, one guy doesn't cut the whole thing down. Just cut a little bit, move on. Next guy cuts a little bit, move on. Pretty soon you get the fourth or fifth hook. It's all gone. And Ray came through. I yelled at him, he says, I'm going further on down, Ray. And he said, okay. And I went on down, and I was in a sort of a draw, just a tiny little thing. And I could, I could look up, I could see the county guy still down below me, and I could look back, I could see Ray up behind me there. And I heard a helicopter. I didn't see it, never did see it, but I heard it. And at first it didn't dawn on me or anything, you know, okay? You can't see it, so, you know. And it, then, you know, I heard the noise later on, I assume, but it passed below me in that draw. I didn't see it because it was below me. And that's when I heard somebody say something down below there about he missed, or he didn't do it right, or something like that. I can't really remember what, but they were yelling. And, you know, then the copter, I saw the copter after that. It was heading on out the valley, and it was climbing up and going around. It didn't dawn on me what he did at the time. It just, you know, he was not on the fire line. He was inside the fire going down, and I didn't pay much attention to it. And about three or four minutes later I saw a smoke, and I looked down, and it was still like over there. You know, we were here, it was like over there. I heard something that I've heard before. It's always put a little fear in me. It's, it's fire going through brush. When you hear it once, you'll always remember it. And I heard it, and I thought, now that's not right. There shouldn't be any fire over here, you know, something like that. Then I heard the guys across the way yelling. They were yelling at one another. They were yelling at me. They were yelling at one another about something. And I wouldn't pay him a whole heck of a lot of attention about it, because I was more interested about what I was hearing. And I turned around and looked at Ray, and Ray was just above me, and he all of a sudden, he was higher than I was. All of a sudden he yelled out, I said, Gordon, get out of there. And I turned around to look at him, because, you know, again, and I, you know, I said, oh man, there's something going on here. And he'd already called reverse tune order. Because there wasn't just my job to do that. He, if anybody could do that. And they were on their way out. When I could hear this coming, no fire. I could just hear this coming. And the first thing I remember was, I had dark glasses on, sunglasses. They went poof and fell off my face. Then I knew that what was happening, there was not right. You know, it just, I didn't dawn on me the time when it was. Couldn't feel anything. Okay, then why'd your glasses come on? They melted. Hot air. I could hear this hot air coming in, this noise coming through the brush. And I could see more smoke down below. And I thought, yeah, that's it. It's amazing what you think. But that's exactly what I thought. That's it. And the next thing I remember, I was in the brush patch. And I had my hands above my head because I had, my sleeves were rolled up then. And all the skin was just hanging off my hands and arms. And I was in the brush patch. And I couldn't figure out how I got there. I mean, it just, you just don't know how things happen. Your brain just shuts down and you just do things. But I was there and I remembered that there was a, there was a truck down below me, a pickup truck. And there was a guy going like this, you know, at me. And I couldn't hear him, but I could see him. When I got down below things, I could start hearing things again. At that time, all I could hear was a roar in my ear. And, you know, I was thinking to myself all this time, you know, it's quiet. But I could, I could remember there was a roaring going on in my ear. And then I began to hear a helicopter. And I began to hear people yelling and things like that, you know. And I turned around and looked up where they were. There was a helicopter up there, two of them up there actually. One of them was just lifting off. I stood there for a while watching that. And, you know, thinking to myself, damn, what did I do wrong? You know, what the hell happened? We were looking for fire. You weren't looking for hot air. Oh, buddy. You know, we were looking for fire. That's, that wasn't the first time I've ever felt hot air. But that's the first time I was ever in the position to feel it like that. But I don't know how to describe it. I don't, I hope, I never, nobody ever gets into that position again to have to describe how it sound or how it felt. Never take anything for granted. The most seemingly innocent event could be tragically deadly. You know, you have more control over a firestorm than you do thinking that you're in the clear and not preparing yourself for it. That's basically what I think. I wasn't prepared for what happened because I wasn't in that mode. I was thinking cold trail down the bottom hill. No big deal. Just work our way down slowly. Don't get hit by the rocks and we'll be out of here in a couple hours.