Fires of hell burning south of here

 Patty Hearst Not At Crystola

A mysterious telephone call early Tuesday morning temporarily put the Teller County Sheriff''s Department into kidnap/fugitive investigation and search for missing California newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst.

Undersheriff Robert Allen said a Colorado State Patrol radio dispatcher in Colorado Springs received a call after 1 a.m. from a man identifying himself only as "Chuck."The caller said he was "heavily armed" and he had Miss Hearst "cornered" inside a cabin at Crystola near the Teller-El Paso county line.

The patrol dispatcher relayed the information to the Sheriff's Substation office in Woodland Park. Deputy Royce Dean, with assistance from the Woodland Park Police Department, then went to Crystola to investigate the report.

Dean was able to determine the armed and inebriated caller had mistaken a motel tenant, who somewhat resembled descriptions and photographs of the missing heiress , had been living at the Crystola cabin since early April.

__ Courier, Thursday, May 23. 1974 -Page 3

Certain things "capture" you, over time and distance

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

For most of my life, certain news stories have seemed to reach out, grab me by the collar, and shake me for attention. Not surprising, I guess — as I spent an inordinate amount of time in the business. But it seems weird how certain things "capture" you, over time and distance. Steve Plutt,  from the Pikes Peak area, sent me the preceding clip recently, when he noticed a blog story I wrote about — among other things— the unfolding saga of kidnap victim turned bank robber Patty Hearst and Sybionese Liberation Army.  The story tied all the way back to my childhood. And this was not the first time Steve was able to pluck seemingly unrelated snippets that turned "profound," when slipped into my own little history.

Waiting for the paper was a pretty regular thing for the folks on my paper route through that summer of 1974, as President Nixon faced possible impeachment and eventually resigned in early August. Among other events, there was the Dixie County sighting of a Florida Skunk Ape in July that year. It really wasn’t what you would call a slow news period.

But the Patty Hearst story was compelling.
“Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people,” was the slogan of the SLA and a seven-headed cobra snake its symbol. The members of the army were known on occasion to use cyanide-laced bullets.

Patty Hearst’s conversion from the straight-laced heiress of the Hearst newspaper fortune to a bank-robbing “fundraiser” renamed Tania, sporting automatic weapons at various robberies and car jackings with the terrorist group was a hot topic. In May, Patty (a.ka. Tania) fired a series of warning shots at a storeowner that was trying to detain SLA members, Bill And Emily Harris, when they were caught shoplifting in sporting goods store in Los Angles.

The next day, in a two-hour gun battle between the SLA and 500 Los Angeles police officers, where nine thousand rounds were fired, and six SLA “soldiers” were killed, the SLA sealed their international notoriety. Hearst was eventually arrested in 1975 and brought to trial in a sensational legal event, in which she was defended by superstar lawyer F. Lee Bailey.

Nesting in the weirdness of Steve's pass-along of the clip, was the relationship to big news happenings that  over time,  pushed around my life.  For years, on two separate stints, I was publisher of the Courier, and the account resurfaced crazy stories I had encountered at that operation with tangents and fragments my own history there.

It had a familiar ring, as it had been more than 20 years since members of “The Texas Seven,” a group of prisoners who escaped from the John B. Connally Unit near Kenedy, Texas, on Dec. 13, 2000, and later killed Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins on Dec. 19, 2000, were arrested about a month later on a cold January Monday, right in Woodland Park. 

While I was considering that,  massive wild fires began destroying large portions of the Colorado cities of Superior and Louisville in Boulder County.  I was reminded of coverage of three successive "largest and most destructive fires in Colorado" I had covered, while at the Courier.  First the Hayman, then the Waldo Canyon, and then on to the Black Forest Fire. The trauma witnessed of all three was still a part me.

I also had reservations in Boulder, for New Year's Eve. 

Talking with survivors of Hayman and Waldo Canyon, and the Black Forest Fire, hearing about their experiences still brings back images in my mind of that weird pink, smoky glow on ridges above Woodland Park, and separately Manitou Springs. And then to the east of my one-time home in Gleneagle.

And now, the fires of hell burning over the ridges just south of here, in Boulder County.

Experience of fire

I wrote this a little less than a year ago, as we once again marked the anniversaries of three devastating fires I experienced in the Pikes Peak area. Drought conditions through much of the state and fires already realized on the Western Slope and elsewhere, indicates we might be in for a rough fire summer.  As always, I am grateful for those that answer the call and fight those fires on our behalf.

Thank you for answering the call

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Fighting fire is something I am familiar with. My dad fought them all of his life. My younger sister spent years battling them for the United States Forest Service. I mark various watershed events in my own life by the experience of fire.

All the time I was growing up in a small town in southwestern Colorado, a strange, faceless phone with no dialing mechanism hung right on my dad’s side of my parent’s bedroom. I think there might have been as many as eight of them (exactly alike) hanging in various locations (homes and businesses) around the small town of 800 residents.

All of them were the property of the local volunteer fire department.

Whether it be night or day, the loud, unremitting, urgent ring would sound continuously at the breakout of a fire -- until someone picked up and answered the call.

If the call was judged not to be a prank, or false alarm, then the lever on the black box next to the phone was shoved over, all the way to the right, and the fire siren down at the town hall would begin its mournful summons of the 25 or 30 volunteer firefighters in the area.

Later, of course, heavy, boxlike pagers were worn on volunteers’ belts and the siren (that also served as the noon whistle, because it was necessary to test each day), became obsolete. I am not sure what they use today in that town.

The volunteers serving on that department – all by choice – and all continuing to work their regular jobs or at businesses to pay the bills and feed their families, would drop everything when the siren wailed.

I considered that carefully this week, as we continued to evaluate how fortunate we are, and what a debt we owe, regarding firefighter’s response and effectiveness when called to serve. When everyone else is running out, they are unselfishly, and usually anonymously, running in.

Of course, this month we are marking the 15th anniversary of Hayman Fire, the fifth anniversary of the Waldo Fire and fourth anniversary of the Black Forest Fire, three of the most destructive fires in the history of Colorado.

I suppose we should be out lining the roads, making signs and remembering to mark the firefighters recent efforts, as well.

Wouldn’t it also be appropriate to also recall the locals, and on a regular basis, the efforts of people like Pineville Hot Shots Kathi Beck, Tamera Bickett, Scott Blecha, Levi Brinkley, Douglas Dunbar, Terri Hagen, Bonnie Holtby, Rob Johnson, Jon Kelso or Missoula smokejumper: Don Mackey, and McCall Smokejumpers: Roger Roth, Jim Thrash and Helitack Robert Browning, Jr., and Richard Tyler who all perished on Storm King Mountain in 1994?

Or perhaps Oregon wildland firefighters: Zach Zigich, Retah Shirley, Jacob Martindale, Danial Rama, and Bart Bailey who suffered the same fate, in the van crash near Parachute, as they were coming to help us out during Hayman?

After all, it might be night or day, and they may have to drop what they are doing to hear our urgent ring.

Much like that faceless phone of my youth, we might forget about them for the most part, and never remember their names, or what kind of sacrifices they may have to make.

A battle, unfortunately, way too familiar.

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Fighting fire is something I am familiar with. My dad fought them all of his life. My younger sister spent time battling them for the United States Forest Service. I mark various watershed events in my own life by the experience of fire.
"Andrew Zajac was a well-liked and active student at Downers Grove North High School, where he played football, performed cello in the orchestra and signed up for exciting trips abroad with fellow classmates," writes Annemarie Mannion and Gary Gibula of the Chicago Tribune.
"As news spread that Zajac, 26, was one of the three firefighters with the U.S. Forest Service killed this week while battling a fierce wildfire in Washington state, friends, family and former acquaintances in the west suburbs mourned the loss of a local kid who grew up to do heroic work," said the Tribune story last week.
"Zajac and two other firefighters — Tom Zbyszewski, 20, and Richard Wheeler, 31 — were killed and four others injured when what authorities described as a “hellstorm” of flames driven by shifting winds overtook their crew Wednesday after they crashed their vehicle while fighting a wildfire in north-central Washington."
Almost 30,000 firefighters are taking on 100 large fires in drought-stricken, and heat-ravaged Washington, California,  Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and other parts of the West.
The three, took their last firetruck ride along Twisp River Road,  as hundreds in smoke-stained Nomex removed their hard hats to honor the procession for the fallen — before heading back to the fire lines.
I noted, (not for the first time) that there is connection among those battling blazes. 
An unlucky 13 firefighters have been killed fighting Western fires this year.
Locally, Divide Fire Protection District, North East Teller County, and perhaps others, each have sent trucks west to fires.
The 13 recalls the South Canyon Fire on Storm King near Glenwood Springs in 1994 unfortunately, and makes me recall the 14 killed there.
Prineville Hotshots: Kathi Beck, Tamera Bickett, Scott Blecha, Levi Brinkley, Douglas Dunbar, Terri Hagen, Bonnie Holtby, Rob Johnson, Jon Kelso.
Missoula Smokejumper: Don Mackey
McCall Smokejumpers: Roger Roth, Jim Thrash.
Helitack: Robert Browning, Jr., Richard Tyler.
Five firefighters died from injuries sustained from a June 21, 2002 traffic accident en route to the Hayman fire in Colorado from Oregon: Zach Zigich, Retah Shirley, Jacob Martindale, Danial Rama, and Bart Bailey. I will never forget the disconsolate, but determined, looks on firefighter's faces when they announced those names at a Lake George fire briefing, then.
It is important to remember — always, I think.

Photo information:
The lone helicopter on the South Canyon Fire on Storm King Mountain, shown here before the blowup on July 6, 1994, shuttled the Prineville Hotshots from Canyon Creek Estates to the fire. Courtesy of Bowman Museum.

Appreciate you picking up the phone.

All the time I was growing up in a small town in southwestern Colorado, a strange, faceless phone with no dialing mechanism hung right on my dad’s side of my parent’s bedroom.  I think there might have been as many as eight of them (exactly alike) hanging in various locations (homes and businesses) around the small town of 800 residents.

All of them were the property of the local volunteer fire department.

Whether it be night or day, the loud, unremitting, urgent ring would sound continuously at the breakout of a fire -- until someone picked up and answered the call.

If the call was judged not to be a prank, or false alarm, then the lever on the black box next to the phone was shoved over, all the way to the right, and the fire siren down at the town hall would begin its mournful summons of the 25 or 30 volunteer firefighters in the area.

Later, of course, heavy, boxlike pagers were worn on volunteers’ belts and the siren (that also served as the noon whistle, because it was necessary to test each day), became obsolete. I am not sure what they use today in that town.

The volunteers serving on that department – all by choice – and all continuing to work their regular jobs or at businesses to pay the bills and feed their families, would drop everything when the siren wailed.

I considered that carefully this week, as we continued to evaluate how fortunate we are, and what a debt we owe, regarding firefighter’s response and effectiveness when called to serve. When everyone else is running out, they are unselfishly, and usually anonymously, running in.

Of course, this week we are lining the roads, making signs and remembering (quite correctly so,) to mark the firefighters recent efforts.

Wouldn’t it also be appropriate to also recall the locals, and on a regular basis, the efforts of people like Pineville Hot Shots Kathi Beck, Tamera Bickett, Scott Blecha, Levi Brinkley, Douglas Dunbar, Terri Hagen, Bonnie Holtby, Rob Johnson, Jon Kelso or Missoula smokejumper: Don Mackey, and McCall Smokejumpers: Roger Roth, Jim Thrash and Helitack Robert Browning, Jr., and Richard Tyler?

Or perhaps Oregon wildland firefighters: Zach Zigich, Retah Shirley, Jacob Martindale, Danial Rama, and Bart Bailey?

After all, it might be night or day, and they may have to drop what they are doing to hear our urgent ring.

Much like that faceless phone of my youth, we might forget about them for the most part, and never remember their names, or what kind of sacrifices they may have to make.

But local volunteers, paid professionals, and others who travel from across the country to help -- pick up, and answer the call anyway.

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Familiar ground: perspective, not a bit of comfort

Ten years ago I said it this way.

“For three intense weeks in June of 2002, the Hayman fire, Colorado’s largest wildland fire in recorded history, ravaged our circulation area. Hayman burned over 137,000 acres of prime forest in five counties, destroyed at least 132 homes and reduced over 800 other structures to ash piles.”

Highway 24 snakes its way up through Ute Pass and the communities of Manitou Springs, Cascade, Green Mountain Falls, Chipita Park, Woodland Park and then meanders over the ridge at Divide and drops down into Florissant.

Eventually it finds its way to Lake George. The fire started a few miles northwest of Lake George and then traveled, mostly along the South Platte River watershed, torching, scorching and threatening subdivisions and our readers homes and land.

For weekly newspapers, covering breaking national spot news on deadline in the same environment with radio, TV and daily newspapers was an awesome challenge. With four full and part-time news employees covering six or seven communities 60 or 70 miles apart, it was tough getting the papers out every week. Now try to beat outfits that send teams (larger than our whole staff, publisher and paper carriers included) out for up-to-the-minute reports.

If Highway 24 was closed, we were to drop mail deliveries at the U.S. Postal Service’s Fountain distribution center at the south edge of Colorado Springs and carriers would originate from there instead of two post offices in Woodland Park and one in Cripple Creek.

Tuesday night, the fire burned up to the Manitou Experimental Forest about seven miles from town and then fell down and went to sleep. Our offices and other businesses and residences in Woodland Park were removed from standby evacuation warnings two days later.

Our fire coverage ran through much of the main news sections in the coming weeks but we also tried to dedicate four broadsheet pages in the center of the paper as an information guide for relief efforts.

As that was updated, and as needs changed, the pages became more of a forum for people in the community to give their take on what was happening.
In addition to our own staff coverage, we felt it was important to offer our readers a mix of submitted material as well. Some of the voices brought forward in our pages included a diary of the first weeks of the fire as seen through eyes of local volunteer firefighter, exceptional photos from those documenting the loss of their homes, and excellent accounts of animal rescue efforts from those involved.

For three weeks during the height of the coverage, we overran our primary product, The Ute Pass Courier. About half of the overrun was distributed free at Red Cross and Salvation Army shelters in Woodland Park, Divide and Lake George. The rest of the additional papers sold on the newsstands and to locals who continued to wander into our office for months after the fire, saying they missed the paper during the conflagration.

This time, with the onslaught of Waldo Canyon fire as I returned from Donkey Derby Days in Cripple Creek on Saturday, the fire trucks had already started to roll in Northern El Paso County. That night, I went down to Garden of the Gods to see what I could see, and started trying to figure out what we were going to do as a newspaper.

Intending to head up the Pass again by 10 a.m. Sunday, I ran into a few road blocks. Frustrated, I watched the ridges burn, Manitou Springs Evacuation and early evacuations in the Colorado Springs area.

A friend that we have known for years, loaned me her “binos” to gaze at the blaze from a parking lot in Manitou. She said they were on pre-evac notice where they lived in northwest Colorado Springs and I offered a place to stay.

Not long afterward (the days tend to run together), with a wind change, tinder-dry fuel and weeks of record high temps, the fires of hell were burning over the Queens Canyon Ridge, into Mountain Shadows subdivision, our friends were taking us up on that offer.

We watched the evil red glow that night from my backyard, and the epic towers of flames, as the reporter explained to his son what to hope for, in terms of survival of their house. Additional evacuations and pre-evac notices, watching, waiting, trying to think of ways to make a difference.

We talked also of the historic significance -- perhaps the use of dynamite, like they did in the Gold District 100 years ago.  The Waldo Canyon Fire, like the Hayman, would obviously be one for the record books, but perhaps leave an even deeper scar in our collective psyche.

In the case of Hayman, for years afterward, we continued covering the fire in various aspects. The effects on the tourist-reliant business community, the government responses, the cleanup, the flooding, and all the evaluation and Monday morning quarterbacking were continuous elements of our weekly products. Personally, I know I will always remember how ragged we felt, even months after the intense initial three weeks of baptism by fire.

Today, talking with survivors of Hayman and Waldo Canyon, hearing about their experiences still brings back images in my mind of that weird pink, smoky glow on ridges above Woodland Park, and now, the fires of hell burning over the ridges just south of here.

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