2003 Old Fire Anniversary
When:
Friday, 25 October 2019
Where:
San Bernardino Mountains - San Bernardino County
Description:
The Old Fire was a large complex wildfire that started on October 21, 2003 (the original Old Fire began on October 25), near Old Waterman Canyon Road and California State Route 18 in the San Bernardino Mountains, in San Bernardino County, Southern California, United States. The Old Fire caused at least $1.2 billion in damages.
The Old Fire was one of 15 wildfires throughout Southern California that month, which became known as the "2003 Firestorm" and the "Fire Siege of 2003." This included the huge Cedar Fire, what was then the second-largest fire in California's history after the Santiago Canyon Fire of 1889.
Fanned by the Santa Ana winds, the Old Fire burned 91,281 acres (369.40 km2), destroyed 993 homes, and caused six deaths. The fire threatened San Bernardino and Highland, as well as the mountain resort communities of Cedar Glen, Crestline, Running Springs and Lake Arrowhead and forcing upwards of 80,000 residents to evacuate their homes. Part of California State University, San Bernardino burned during the fire.
The fire was fully contained on November 2, 2003 with the help of rain and snow. The final cost of fighting the fire was $42 million. The Lake Arrowhead community is now part of a Redevelopment Agency which is controlled by a Board of Supervisors.
The Old Fire victims identified were Charles Howard Cunningham, 93, of San Bernardino; Ralph Eugene McWilliams, 67, of Cedar Glen; Chad Leo Williams, 70, of Crestline; James William McDermoth, 70, of San Bernardino; and Robert Norman Taylor, 54, of San Bernardino. All five victims died from indirect consequences of the fire, due to heart attacks brought on by physical or emotional strain.
In 2009, Rickie Lee Fowler was charged with igniting the Old Fire. Authorities charged that he was a passenger in a white van seen leaving the area where the fire started, and that Fowler was the person seen throwing a lit flare into brush by the side of the road. The driver of the van, Martin David Valdez, Jr., died of a gunshot wound in 2006. A grand jury indicted Fowler on October 19, 2009, with one count of arson of an inhabited structure, one count of aggravated arson, and five counts of murder, based on five residents in the burn evacuation areas who died of heart attacks. Although a sixth man also died of a heart attack after the fire was set, prosecutors were unable to directly link that death to the stress of the fire. Similarly, although the fire stripped the soil of vegetation and destabilized the slopes, no one was charged in the deaths of fourteen people killed two months later when a mudslide ripped through a camp in Waterman Canyon.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Fire
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