Details emerged Thursday about a man who was severely burned in the Silver Fire shortly after it first broke out Aug. 7, but the incomplete account of where he was when firefighters found him and how he got there raised more questions.
As of 9:15 p.m. Aug. 8, five firefighters had sustained injuries in the Silver Fire. The civilian was the only fire-related casualty confirmed badly burned in the fast-moving blaze, and he was the only one who was helicoptered out for treatment, according to Silver Fire incident commanders.
Battalion Chief Tony Mecham of Cal Fire-Riverside County's northwest division was the assigned operations chief for the Silver Fire for Wednesday and Thursday. As operations chief, he said, he's "responsible for putting the fire out."
Mecham spoke with Banning-Beaumont Patch about the burned civilian Thursday afternoon at A.C. Dysart Park in south Banning.
"Details are still really sketchy," Mecham said. "We don't have all the information."
The fire was first reported at 2:05 p.m. Wednesday near Wolfskill Truck Trail and Mt. Edna Road, in the mountains northwest of Poppett Flats.
"About an hour after the fire started, we were moving fire units in on the Old Banning-Idyllwild Road when one of our units discovered a severely burned person," Mecham said.
"We're not sure exactly where the person was at the time of the fire, or how they got burned," Mecham said. "We immediately loaded the person in one of our vehicles, brought them down to paramedics, and he was burned severely enough that we airlifted him to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, their burn unit."
Asked for more details, Mecham said he was not sure how far up Old Banning-Idyllwild Road fire personnel were when they came across the man.
"I talked to them on the radio," Mecham said. "They said they had a burn victim. Because of the fire conditions we couldn't get an ambulance in there. They were going to load him and bring him out."
Firefighters took the man directly to Banning Municipal Airport, and from there a Mercy Air helicopter crew flew the man to Arrowhead Regional in Colton, Mecham said.
It was not clear how the man ended up on Old Banning-Idyllwild Road in the middle of a fast-moving wildfire that incident commanders said was spreading at "a critical rate." Mecham said there was no vehicle associated with the man that he knew of.
Mecham said the man is not a suspect in the cause of the fire, which remained under investigation. An update on the man's condition Thursday was not available.
In addition to six fire-related injuries, as of Thursday night, the Silver Fire had destroyed 26 homes and one commercial structure, damaged two other structures, and burned an estimated 14,000 acres, according to incident command.
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