TRAPPED IN RAVINE

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 259, 2 November 1933, Page 10

TRAPPED IN RAVINE

RELIEF WORKERS' END

FIERCE SCRUB FIRE KILLS 75.

LOS ANGELES HOLOCAUST.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, October 6. Following the big earthquake of a few months ago, another scries of violent tremors occurred in Southern California this month. Two people were killed, and less than a score were seriously injured. This earthquake, however, was almost forgotten owing to the events of the following day, when about 75 men were burned to death, and 125 others seriously burned, in a fire in Griffith Park, near Hollywood. Those New Zealand athletes, who participated in the recent Olympic Games at Los Angeles, may recall the topography of the district near Hollywood. The rolling hills near the park run into a deep ravine, and it was in this region that the blaze was centralised in the hills and ravines of Griffith Park, the main playground of Los Angeles. The victims were Reconstruction Finance Construction unemployment relief workers on park roads, who were called late in the afternoon to fight a small blaze of undetermined source, starting near the golf course. Most of them were trapped in a box-like canyon. The wind shifted and sent the flames toward them. Scenes of horror followed, as they struggled to escape. More than 1000 acres of park land were burned over.

A Wall of Flame. ! William L. Kerr, one of the welfare workmen, said: "We were working on one of the roadways when a park man drove by and ordered us to grab shovels and get down in the canyon to help light a lire. We went down through brush which was over a man's head. I was at the far end of the canyon, near the swimming pool, when we started. When I got about halfway down the canyon I heard men screaming and yelling, and through the brush T could see a wall of flame. The fellows with me and myself started running back toward the swimming pool. We couldn't go very fast, the brush was too thick. We had gone a considerable way when I heard somebody cry, 'I can't make it.' I looked around just in time to see a negro's knees buckle. He fell some way or another.. I got him 011 my back and made it to the swimming pool. The flames didn't get that far, but all this time we could hear cries of pain and despair coming from the canyon." Frank Shearer, the park superintendent, said a force of workmen were employed along the slope and the fire seemed to burst out suddenly some 50ft or more from them. Around tlie hill the blaze swept. Men were running from it —the wrong way, up the hill up which the fire was running at a speed of 35 to 40 miles an hour, while the fastest the hurrying workmen could climb was two or three miles an hour. The wind suddenly seemed to spread the fire in all directions at once. The men ran, stumbled and dragged their bodies through the jagged brush. Others coming down blocked the return of the first who went and they found a narrow cow path their only avenue of escape. The flames belched upwards. "I can still hear them yelling and shouting for help," said one man. "It was an oven-hell. Everything was red. As I staggered on I began to count the bodies. One, two, three—when I finished I had counted 32. I could smell the scared flesli, the acrid smoke, the singed hair. My arms began to hurt. I didn't know then they were burned. The man next to me dropped. I pulled him to his feet and we began to run, stumbling, praying. We found a side trail. I fainted."

' Scene of Tragedy. When the fire had passed, those whose chance it had been to live looked Few of them cried. Tliey were past that. They stood 011 the canyon top, brains numbed by horrible tragedy, and they looked down the elope. On the blackened, ash-strewn ground, devastated as though by the fire of artillery, they saw what was left of the men with whom only a few minutes previously they had shovelled dirt and swung picks littered upon the smoking earth. They were all faced toward those who had lived. Their hands were stretched out as though in their dying moments they had made one last, desperate effort to come up there to the safety of the ridge. And they had failed. Some of the men died, their arms locked together as they had struggled forward, aiding each other. But the fire had prevailed. Another -survivor said it was all over in less than seven minutes. The flames roared into the oily manzarita brush, and leapt 50ft high. A'ficrce wind, created by the heat, swirled through the canyon. Nobody realised the speed of the fire. Piteous scenes were enacted at the county morgues, which were besieged by families and relatives of those of the park workers who were still unaccounted for. It was feared that many of the bodies were so badly burned that they might never be identified. Those who were identified were recognised only by key rings, watches, jewellery and knives, Fire Chief Ralph J. Scott attributed the tragedy to the fact that men inexperienced with forest fires were sent to quell the park blaze. "Had there been anyone with experience in fighting brush fires," he said, "or any experienced firemen, the men who dropped their work on the road grades to battle the blaze would have been ordered to safety. The men who first saw the fire were deceived because it appeared to them to be small. Little they knew how fast. dry brush can spread a fire." All that the families of some of the men will ever know is that their men went away in the morning to work to earn money for meat and bread —and never came back. All the men, having been unemployed for months, bad been given temporary work by welfare associations to enable them to keep body and soul alive.