A year later, Mr. Hunt suggested that he join the volunteer firefighters. At 19, he was a little young. Most volunteers were at least 21, but Mr. Kretsinger was big and strong and reliable. Don Gilden, former chief of IFPD, said that all firefighters grow up after their first fire and they always remember it. His biggest structural fire was the Horace Hahn home in Alpen Woods Estates, and, of course, the largest vegetation fire was Bee Canyon.
Any fire is dangerous.
You don't know what it's going to do, but experience can help you guess where it's going. If the fire had climbed over one more ridge, we would have lost all the Westridge homes. His most memorable call was a structural fire in Pine Cove about five years ago. A young woman had been battered and then shot by her husband and he set the fire. Evidently, during the beating, the woman's 12-year old daughter hid in the crawl space between the ceiling and the roof.