With flames swirling all around them, four firefighters trapped on a narrow Lake County ridge during the first hour of what would become the state’s third-most-catastrophic wildfire made the last-ditch decision most avoid at all costs: Seek refuge in emergency fire-resistant shelters.
“The ground was on fire,” Cal Fire firefighter Niko Matteoli said. “It didn’t need to be verbalized; we all knew immediately the intensity of the situation and we all just acted. There was no hesitation.”
But at that critical moment, with their faces already burned, firefighters Matteoli, 24, of Santa Rosa and Logan Pridmore found the outer packaging of the standard-issue shelters carried by wildland firefighters across the country had melted. Matteoli removed his gloves and tore away the molten plastic with his bare hands, and eventually he and Pridmore hid from the heat under one aluminum cocoon. The failure of the shelter packaging to withstand the powerful radiant heat on Sept. 12 at the start of the Valley fire is a key element of a Cal Fire inquiry into the chain of events leading the four firefighters to suffer significant burns. The review is also examining whether tactics need to change in the fourth year of a historic drought in which massive wildfires have defied predictions and models for fire behavior.