On the Monday scheduled for a midterm no one showed up for class. The students and adjunct instructor Dane Cawthon missed that day. Cawthon could not help it. His other job needed him. His city needed him.
Big time.
Captain Cawthon of the Poway Fire Department joined his colleagues in the firefight of their lives. Seventy mph Santa Ana winds coupled with 95-degree air and four percent humidity were the perfect mixture to send a wall of fire rumbling towards the "City in the Country."
"It was like a snow storm, except instead of white snow flakes there were red hot embers flying horizontally," said Cawthon.
Burning nearly 200,000 acres, the Witch Creek Fire was the largest of the San Diego wild fires, which, combined with the Harris Fire and 18 others, was the largest firestorm in California history. The Witch Creek Fire destroyed 1,040 homes and damaged 70 others. It killed two people and injured 39 firefighters and two civilians.
Cawthon, like virtually every other San Diego County firefighter, knew the region was susceptible to a large burn, but never expected the Armageddon that was to come.
"I wasn't concerned at the time," Cawthon said, "but looking back I should have been."
When the Witch Creek Fire broke out on Oct. 21, Cawthon was off duty.
Cawthon said he was able to see the effects of the Harris Fire from his Imperial Beach home. Like many firefighters he went in voluntarily to lend his services to the city.
"Ash is falling on my house," he said. "It's probably time to go in (to work)."
Cawthon did not start out as a firefighter.
After earning his degree in Marine Biology, he began working as a nuclear medicine technician.
"I just hated what I was doing," he said.
While working in Imperial Valley as a paramedic Cawthon began finding satisfaction in his job, but he always admired the firefighters.
"I thought to myself, 'Here I am doing the same thing these guys are doing and I am making a lot less money.'" he said. "I have the college degree but who's the idiot here?"
On the first night the fires were devastating the Poway region, Cawthon was assigned to lead a special unit force. He and fellow Poway Fire Captain Elliot Hunter traveled in the station's Red GMC truck and made the crucial decisions as to which houses they could save. The truck they were in was unequipped to handle the conditions they were facing. The fire engines, fire trucks and water tenders are fitted with an ember separator behind the grill to keep hot embers from entering the engine and setting fire to the paper air filter. Just one small ember is all it would have taken to cause Cawthon and Hunter's truck to stall, which would have stranded them in the middle of the fire.
Similar mechanical breakdowns led to fatalities in the 2003 Cedar Fire.
Cawthon and Hunter lived to see another day and fight another fire.
On Oct. 26, a fire broke out on Buck Skin Trail, unrelated to the wild fires. Once the crew received the call they pulled the truck over. The crew quickly put on their yellow fire oversuits and prepared their oxygen tanks. It was impossible not to feel the intensity.
Fire Engineer Michael Swanson drove the 52.5' fire truck through the windy narrow rural streets. When they arrived they were greeted by smoke and fire consuming the house. Poway and San Diego City firefighters were combating the blaze on the inside. Cawthon and Donald Pursley climbed a ladder to the top of the house. With a chain saw Pursley cut a hole in the roof and created a makeshift vent. Heat escaped from the hole, providing much appreciated relief for the firefighters inside.
By the next Monday Cawthon was back in class passing out the midterm for his students.
He recalled being a student of fire science himself.
Many of Cawthon's students are eager to join him in the ranks as firefighters. Southwestern College is starting to develop a reputation as a hotbed of future firefighters.
One thing you never hear from his students that you might hear in other classes is the bane of professors, "When will we use this in real life?"
Cawthon's life couldn't get any more real.
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