Hathaway Fire Command: 'No Way of Knowing Exactly When We Will Finish Our Work'

Don Garwood, incident commander for the Hathaway Fire burning in mountains northeast of Banning, has released a letter addressed to the public on behalf of the Southern California Incident Command Team.

Agencies on the fire - the U.S. Forest Service, Cal-Fire Riverside County, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Morongo Band of Mission Indians, and Morongo Tribal Bureau of Indian Affairs - have been using Noble Creek Park since Sunday June 9, the day the blaze broke on the Morongo Reservation.

Garwood's letter was submitted to Patch by Diane Gonzalez, of Beaumont-Cherry Valley Recreation & Park District, for Garwood:

On June 4th (sic), 2013, the Hathaway Fire started around noon above the City of Banning. The fire spread rapidly in fuels that were dried from years of drought and bark beetle disease and grew rapidly.  At six pm, the San Bernardino National Forest ordered a Type 2 Incident Management team to deploy along with orders for firefighters, equipment, aircraft and support personnel.  Noble Creek park was picked as the site for the Incident Command post and now two days later over 1,000 personnel work around the clock fighting the Hathaway Fire.

Noble Creek park was originally developed to become a site for Incident Command Posts in the 1970’s.  It provides all the things that are essential to support fire effort requires:

Large areas for parking….shade and lawns for sleeping areas….the ability of have pre-plumed sources for water, electricity, internet and phone service that can be activated rapidly.  It enables the team to be able to up and running overnight and providing the myriad of services they do for the firefighters.  It is one of the finest pre-planned facilities in Southern California.

We are very aware that our presence in your community creates an impact.  We try to be good neighbors by respecting traffic laws, spending money locally where we can and by doing what we can to get the fire out as quickly as possible.  We know that there will be an impact on those who use Noble Creek park on a regular basis.  We will try and minimize that inconvenience by working as hard as we can to put the fire out.

There is no way of knowing exactly when we will finish our work.  Wind, weather, terrain, slope and humidity will dictate when we can complete our lines and move on.  We appreciate your patience and are thankful that we have such a wonderful facility to take care of our firefighters.  We’ll give it back the moment we can leave the fire safely.

Respectfully,

Don Garwood

Incident Commander

Southern California Incident Command Team 2

Thursday update: Click here to follow updates on the Hathaway Fire posted Thursday, June 13.