Seven Boys Killed In Fire

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31767, 26 August 1968, Page 13

Seven Boys Killed In Fire

(N.Z. Press Assn—Copyright) GLENDORA (California), Aug. 24. Seven teen-age boys, working as fire fighters while on probation from the Los Angeles Juvenile Court, and a team leader were burned to death today when bush in a canyon suddenly exploded in flames in a fire in the San Gabriel mountains.

Three other boys, all ranging in age from 15 to 18, were burned and only two escaped as the mountainside erupted in an inferno near the Azusa College of the Pacific in Glendora, about 22 miles northeast of Los Angeles. There were more than 1000 men and boys trying to control the fire. The team of 12 boys was led by a fireman from the Los Angeles County Fire Department. He also was fatally burned. The boys, many of them convicted of offences ranging

from petty larceny to manslaughter, were wards of the Juvenile Court. They had been put on probation and given jobs with the Fire Department until they were released as rehabilitated. The boys had all received 80 or more hours instruction in fire-fighting techniques. The probation camps were established in 1932, and this was only the second time one of the trainees had been fatally burned. The injured were flown out In helicopters to a medical centre where one was in critical condition with burns on the back and head.

Winds and temperatures soaring up to 100 degrees made attempts to control the blaze a nightmare. Another man had been injured earlier in the day. Thje efforts of the firemen, including experienced men flown in from Oregon, Arizona and Northern California, so far had averted damage to 442 hillside homes in an expensive area between Azusa and Glendora. No families were evacuated but many spent the night in garden chairs on their lawns watching the fire work its way slowly down the mountainside toward them. |