ATV Failure Cause Death, Injury During San Diego Fire?

Filed in archive ATV , ATV Safety , News , Rants on November 9, 2007

An apparent failure of an ATV resulted in the death and injuries of several individuals, including fire fighters in the Harris Fire in San Diego County last month.

In conflicting reports from from southern California newspapers, CalFire (aka CDF (California Department of Forestry)) states that an ATV being ridden by one (or two) people who were ordered to evacuate their homes during the fires failed, causing the fire fighters that the ATV was following to have to stop and render assistance. Shortly after, fire overwhelmed the crew and civilians as they hid in the fire truck, killing the adult ATV rider and seriously injuring his teen aged son and 4 fire fighters.

I wouldn't think riding an ATV in a raging fire would be a good idea, and it was especially bad considering the outcome. It seems the actions of those two people trying to save their house may have caused the father's death and the other 5 people's injuries, most of those injuries severe.

I just found out that my brother and his wife are tied to one of the injured fire fighters, and to the father who was killed, so this kind of hits home for me on multiple levels. For one thing, I agree that the actions of the two civilians was a tragic factor in the outcome, and could possibly have been avoided had they listened to instructions. I can understand why the fire fighters tried to help them, even though they ignored evacuation orders as well as direct orders to go in the opposite direction. People are like that, it's natural.

But I also understand why they may have ignored the evacuation order in the first place; I was evacuated from fires at the same time in a different part of the county, and it was a complete failure trying to get home afterwards. I will be the one deciding when to leave my house from now on, since I can't depend on the so-called authorities to handle the situation properly. (I'm not referring to fire fighters, I'm referring to city officials and the sheriff's supervisor for personally lying to me about why they wouldn't let me back home afterwards.)