behind tending to duties in Glendale.
The temperature neared ninety degrees by 7:00 a. M. on Wednesday, June 27. By noon it was topping one hundred degrees. Santa Ana winds were blowing into the Los Angeles basin from the desert, and with humidity down to 10 percent, that spelled trouble. Every year there had been brush fires in the foothills of Glendale during the hot dry summers, when the hills were parched and brown. The arson unit had been called upon to investigate all of them, but never had much luck in locating or arresting likely fire setters. This year was hotter and dryer than usual, and the Santa Anas were blowing thirty-five miles per hour. This was the season to fear. This was the time of fire.
At 3:15 p. M. that day, with the temperature in Glendale at 110 degrees, it felt like someone was firing a hair dryer in your mouth every time you took a breath. The Santa Anas were swirling through Chevy Chase Canyon and all along North Verdugo Road, where the local news media had covered brush fires every year, fires that John Orr had told them were probably set by the same person.
And then a call came in. There was a brush fire sweeping up the hillside by North Verdugo. At 3:24 p. M. the first alarm was dispatched. One of the firefighters with Engine Company 226, the second to arrive, was rookie James Frawley. His truck raced along Verdugo Road on the wrong side while cars scrambled out of the way of an onslaught of emergency vehicles blowing air horns and sirens. Just as Truck 26 was turning the corner to the reported fire location on Sweetbriar, the young firefighter saw a man standing at the base of the hill where the fire had reportedly been set, "sifting through things." He recognized the man to be Captain Orr of the arson unit, and Frawley figured that he must have come with the very first engine. He thought no more about it and they set about helping Engine 25 deal with the several homes that were already threatened.
Engine 29 had arrived at the fire scene with orders to set up structural protection from the leapfrogging flames that were being swept by the Santa Anas across the 134 Freeway. Captain Greg Jones, a contemporary of John Orr, saw him standing by his white Blazer on Swarthmore Drive. He wondered how his colleague could have driven to that uphill location near the area of origin without Jones seeing him arrive. Then John approached Captain Jones and asked if he needed help.
Jones told the arson investigator to grab a line and take it to the adjacent house, where a fire was very close to the structure but had not yet reached it other than burning the wooden fence in the backyard. Jones then went next door and began working on a house whose roof was on fire.
A few minutes later, when he returned to the street, Jones saw that John had removed a salvage cover from the engine and was dragging the tarp into the house that Jones was hosing down. Captain Jones was puzzled. Protecting the contents was a low priority when the attic was still involved in fire and the whole damn area was threatened. But John Orr simply covered a living-room couch with the tarp, walked out of the house, and drove away, with embers falling into every room. And he had not hosed down the house next door.
Jones later said that he'd seemed "agitated and not in control of what he was doing."
There were outbreaks everywhere in College Hills. The land was smothered by smoke and the skies were full of low-flying aircraft: helicopters belonging to the police and fire services, others from networks and local affiliates, and even fixed-wing observers, all of them having to veer and climb and dive to avoid one another in the blinding smoke storm.
The College Hills fire was described by Los Angeles newscasters in terms both hyperbolic and sensational. One claimed that the devastation resembled a Vietnam carpet bombing. But John may have looked with a more aesthetic eye. As he later described the scene:
The winds had again subsided as the
The temperature neared ninety degrees by 7:00 a. M. on Wednesday, June 27. By noon it was topping one hundred degrees. Santa Ana winds were blowing into the Los Angeles basin from the desert, and with humidity down to 10 percent, that spelled trouble. Every year there had been brush fires in the foothills of Glendale during the hot dry summers, when the hills were parched and brown. The arson unit had been called upon to investigate all of them, but never had much luck in locating or arresting likely fire setters. This year was hotter and dryer than usual, and the Santa Anas were blowing thirty-five miles per hour. This was the season to fear. This was the time of fire.
At 3:15 p. M. that day, with the temperature in Glendale at 110 degrees, it felt like someone was firing a hair dryer in your mouth every time you took a breath. The Santa Anas were swirling through Chevy Chase Canyon and all along North Verdugo Road, where the local news media had covered brush fires every year, fires that John Orr had told them were probably set by the same person.
And then a call came in. There was a brush fire sweeping up the hillside by North Verdugo. At 3:24 p. M. the first alarm was dispatched. One of the firefighters with Engine Company 226, the second to arrive, was rookie James Frawley. His truck raced along Verdugo Road on the wrong side while cars scrambled out of the way of an onslaught of emergency vehicles blowing air horns and sirens. Just as Truck 26 was turning the corner to the reported fire location on Sweetbriar, the young firefighter saw a man standing at the base of the hill where the fire had reportedly been set, "sifting through things." He recognized the man to be Captain Orr of the arson unit, and Frawley figured that he must have come with the very first engine. He thought no more about it and they set about helping Engine 25 deal with the several homes that were already threatened.
Engine 29 had arrived at the fire scene with orders to set up structural protection from the leapfrogging flames that were being swept by the Santa Anas across the 134 Freeway. Captain Greg Jones, a contemporary of John Orr, saw him standing by his white Blazer on Swarthmore Drive. He wondered how his colleague could have driven to that uphill location near the area of origin without Jones seeing him arrive. Then John approached Captain Jones and asked if he needed help.
Jones told the arson investigator to grab a line and take it to the adjacent house, where a fire was very close to the structure but had not yet reached it other than burning the wooden fence in the backyard. Jones then went next door and began working on a house whose roof was on fire.
A few minutes later, when he returned to the street, Jones saw that John had removed a salvage cover from the engine and was dragging the tarp into the house that Jones was hosing down. Captain Jones was puzzled. Protecting the contents was a low priority when the attic was still involved in fire and the whole damn area was threatened. But John Orr simply covered a living-room couch with the tarp, walked out of the house, and drove away, with embers falling into every room. And he had not hosed down the house next door.
Jones later said that he'd seemed "agitated and not in control of what he was doing."
There were outbreaks everywhere in College Hills. The land was smothered by smoke and the skies were full of low-flying aircraft: helicopters belonging to the police and fire services, others from networks and local affiliates, and even fixed-wing observers, all of them having to veer and climb and dive to avoid one another in the blinding smoke storm.
The College Hills fire was described by Los Angeles newscasters in terms both hyperbolic and sensational. One claimed that the devastation resembled a Vietnam carpet bombing. But John may have looked with a more aesthetic eye. As he later described the scene:
The winds had again subsided as the
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