'Take Us Out of Here, Grandfather': Scary Tales of Adults and Children Trapped in a Fire Tornado in California

Incinerating everything in its path, the fire temperature in a Carr Fire in California reached 2700 degrees Fahrenheit (1482 Celsius). A deadly fire blew east, driven by a wild wind, dispersing flames across the foothills and across the river, scattering flaming coals everywhere. At this time, Don Andrews worked in a bulldozer. A fiery storm burst with the sound of a rushing train, the windows of the car broke and glass hit his face. Shards were everywhere: on the floor, inside the helmet, on the skin and in the eyes. He was completely alone and blinded. The man decided that he could not survive.

Фото: Depositphotos

60-year-old Andrews did not expect that this day would be between life and death, writes Reader's Digest. On July 26, 2018, he was hired by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to work with two other bulldozer drivers. Their task was to dig a wide ring of earth around houses near the city of Redding. It was a fairly routine mission - the containment lines were supposed to stop the advance of a forest fire that was still far away.

What Andrews didn't know was that the Carr Fire—at that point a fairly common California blaze—had spawned something monstrous: a fire tornado the likes of which had never been seen in the state. It was an air whirlwind, sweeping away power poles in its path and uprooting trees.

Andrews squatted down and pulled his shirt over his nose and mouth, heat burning his throat. Temperatures inside the tornado soared to 2700 degrees Fahrenheit. A nearby fire truck exploded. The man dialed 911 with his burned hands. The dispatcher answered him, barely holding back tears - dozens of other people called the hotline.

“If you can, leave, okay?” they asked at the other end of the phone line.

"I can't. Everything around is on fire. Don’t risk anyone’s life for mine,” he told the dispatcher.

"Nobody will believe this"

The fire started in a typical way - human error plus a dry landscape ready to burst into flames at any moment. Low precipitation in winter and no rain since May. With more than a dozen other wildfires already burning across the state, resources to fight this one were stretched thin. On July 23, an elderly couple was driving home from vacation through Redding. The tire on their trailer shattered, leaving the wheel trailing along the asphalt. Sparks flew into the dried grass. The fire spread quickly.

Incident commander Tom Labas, a Cal Fire veteran, and his colleagues set up a command center, called in more firefighters and cut out containment lines. But then the fire spread from 4599 acres to almost 30 000.

Shortly after noon, Labas gave up his position as incident commander and left base camp. He worked on his day off and now planned to take a shower and relax. From the window of his truck, Labas watched as a 30-foot (000 km) high convection column - a plume filled with ash, debris and hydrocarbons - shot into the sky, sucking in hot air as oxygen fed the fire.

While he was driving, his truck recorded the temperature outside: 113 degrees (45 C). On the coast, 95 miles to the west, there were 59 degrees (15 C). When the cool coastal air blew over Mount Bully Chop and into the Sacramento Valley, the difference in 54 degrees caused a surge of warm air in the whirlwind. When the day turned into twilight, the convection column rotated faster and faster, turning into a cyclone.

After about 17: 30, when Labas finished shopping, the sky darkened. The behavior of the fire alarmed him, so he returned to work and rode up the hills northwest of Redding to help evacuate the inhabitants. But an hour later he stopped, trapped.

A tornado spun ahead of him. He seemed to fill the whole sky. Flames soared at 400 feet (120 m) into the air. A tornado grows to 1000 feet (300 m) wide, the size of three football fields, and creates a temperature twice the temperature of a normal forest fire. His howl destroyed all other sounds.

Tom Labas was shocked. “No one will believe this,” he thought.

On the subject: 'This is just the beginning': how long the California fire season will last

Фото: Depositphotos

"I'll take you out"

Cal Fire Captain Sean Reilly issued a radio evacuation order around Sunset Terrace. The sky was red and the wind howled, shaking leaves off the trees. New flashes lit up in the bushes and on the roofs. Reilly, a wildlife service veteran, saw almost everything, including vortices of air called vortices of fire. But he did not see anything like it.

Near 19: 15 he drove to units hidden in wooded hills. He believed that residents would need help to evacuate. His headlights barely pierced the smoke, but he could see three bulldozers a stone's throw from him on two-lane boulevard Buenaventura. One of them was led by Don Andrews, who was not aware of the dangers; contractors Terry Cummings and Jimmy Jones rode in two others. They were under electric lines that swayed in the wind, and Railay shouted to the men to drive away.

On the driveway of the house, Rayleigh spotted Tesla with a man driving. 62-year-old Dr. Nanda Kumar raced home from a hospital in Northern California. His wife, 58-year-old Yashoda Tiruvoipati, and daughter, 29-year-old Sushma Tiruvoipati, did not receive evacuation alerts, and when the power was cut off, their garage doors did not open, locking the car inside.

"Come back!" - Rayleigh shouted to Dr. Kumar, turning on the siren.

“My wife and daughter are there, can they fit in with you?” Dr. Kumar asked, pointing to Raleigh's car. He decided that they would be safer with the captain.

The women jumped into the back seat, coughing. Nearby, flames rising 100 feet (30 m) devoured the homes of their neighbors. Soon their home will fall too.

“I’ll get you out,” Rayleigh shouted to Dr. Kumar. - Take your car.

Debris flew into the truck, breaking Rayleigh's windshield and other windows, and the wind blew the car off the road. The captain rushed through the passenger seat, covering his face as the fire passed over them. Yashoda and Sushma screamed. Now everyone was in glass and blood. Behind them, Dr. Kumar's Tesla caught fire.

“I need a drop of water!”

The radio signal from Redding Fire Inspector Jeremy JJ Stock couldn’t be more urgent: SOS!

An 37-year-old man interrupted a family vacation with his wife and two children in order to return home and fight the fire. When a tornado formed, he was driving his truck along Buenaventura Boulevard. The ferocity of a natural phenomenon challenged all of his experience.

“I need a drop of water,” Stock shouted at 19:39 p.m., hoping a firefighting aircraft could rescue him. “I’m burning.”

The captain answered immediately, asking for his whereabouts. There was no answer.

Tornado picked up a Ford F-150 truck weighing 5 000 pounds (2,3 tons), as if it were a toy car, turned it over several times and dragged it along Buenaventura Boulevard. The truck scraped off the sidewalk, leaving a trace of red paint before falling into the forest.

The whirlwind destroyed everything it touched, bending the electric tower into steel piles, lifting the shipping container and tearing the bark from the oaks.

On the subject: What is the uniqueness of fires in California and why in the future it will only get worse

Фото: Depositphotos

"Take us out of here, grandfather."

At Quartz Hill Road, 70-year-old Melody Bledso soaked the blankets with water in the kitchen sink and threw them at her great-grandchildren, Emily and James Roberts, who were 4 and 5 years old.

Melody's husband, Ed Bledsoe, was a handyman who went for a paycheck. The family was not ordered to evacuate, and Ed did not know that the tornado was heading for them until he received a desperate call from James, stuck in traffic jam.

"You are going?" - the boy almost shouted. The vortex sucked air through the house, rattling windows and tearing up trees outside.

“Don’t worry, grandpa is coming,” Ed replied.

“Come in the front door, the back door is on fire,” the child said. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Tell Grandpa I love him,” Melody said, barely audible in the background.

“Everyone says they love you,” the boy said. - Take us away from here, grandpa. A big fire starts here.”

Then they fell silent in the phone.

“Make no mistakes”

Shortly before 20: 00, when the flame surrounding the Terry Cummings bulldozer in an open field near Buenaventura Boulevard, an 44-year-old man tried to attack the epicenter of a forest fire. The fire was supposed to scare him. In 2005, his mother, sister and brother died in a fire in a house that arose due to a candle. Since then, he has been hunting forest fires.

Now the field around him was blazing. He could not breathe from the smoke. He took the Andrews and Jones bulldozers back to Buenaventura Boulevard. He thought that they could wait between the steep banks on either side of the road. The air will be clean and their engines may cool.

But as they moved north, the tornado appeared again, its edges turning red. He slammed rocks into Cummings' windshield like they were breaking the glass with bullets. It was dark as midnight. He then lifted the front of the 25-tonne bulldozer, turned it clockwise and threw it onto the hood of a nearby truck, which was smashed and caught fire. The driver must be dead, Cummings thought.

He reached for the fire protection hidden behind his seat, but accidentally grabbed his bag with things. He held her in front of him to protect her airways. White bubbles swelled at his fingertips. His skin seemed to melt and melt.

“No, Lord,” he shouted. - Not this way!"

Now, it seemed, he was about to die, like his family. He grabbed the window frame. Serrated glass pierced his left leg. Rising, he tried to open fire curtains over the open windows of his bulldozer. But third-degree burns on his fingers prevented him from unfastening the clasps. He grabbed a knife and cut them. When he reached his fiery shelter, he pulled the cord as best he could.

"Calm down. Don’t make mistakes,” he repeated to himself.

“The fire is already here”

Steve Bustillos was in the seat of his truck, the one that had been mangled and burning under Terry Cummings' bulldozer. Retired San Jose police officer Bustillos, 55, was not evacuated in time. The fire was moving too fast. As he drove out of his gated community just after 20:00 p.m., he called his wife, who was undergoing treatment in the Bay Area for lung and endometrial cancer, both in terminal stages.

“It might be over,” he told her. “The fire is already here.”

Now he had serious problems. The fire spreading in his pickup truck ignited spilled diesel fuel, ignited documents, jewelry and weapons in the back seat. Bustillos's hair looked as if someone had blown it up. He knew that he could not stay in place and climbed out, grabbed a suitcase with clothes and desperately moved forward, crouching near the Cummings bulldozer, which provided some protection from the wind. He kept things in front of him. 15 seconds or maybe minutes have passed. He was not sure.

Embers floated through the air, fire danced through grass and trees, the wind changed. Then the temperature dropped. Bustillos saw Cummings running down the street under his half-open fire cover.

“Get me out of here! Cummings shouted to the man driving the Cal Fire truck, his voice breaking. “I was very badly burned.”

Bustillos jumped into the second truck. Then he saw the driver's face. He knew this facial expression: a man’s look in uniform, which should ensure the safety of people, but understands that this may not be possible.

Фото: Depositphotos

"Where's Don?"

A tornado swept through the fields, leveled the surroundings and made the landscape smooth and unfamiliar. 2,5 hours after the formation, the spontaneous phenomenon finally dissipated. Down on the slope, Commander Tom Labas watched as people ran out of the surroundings on a hillside. Their eyes were empty, like those of soldiers returning from battle.

Labas helped put out the back of Dr. Kumar's Tesla, which was still burning. The family survived, and now Labas ordered his savior, Captain Rayleigh, to create a sorting area for burned people. Labas called an 5 ambulance and then set off to continue the evacuation.

"Where's Don?" Andrews' colleague Mike Murdock continued to ask. Eventually, Murdock was able to drive onto Buenaventura Boulevard and find the bulldozer. He believed Andrews was dead, that he could not survive. But when he grabbed the back of the contractor's shirt to pull him out of the car, Andrews flinched.

Together they left the destroyed area. All that remained, as far as they could see, was ashes.

In total, 8 people died as a result of Carr's fire, including Jeremy "JJ" Stoke, Melody Bledso and her great-grandchildren Emily and James Roberts. More than 1000 houses in 38 days were also destroyed.

But when they left, all that Don Andrews could think of was: how could anyone survive this?

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