It was the early morning on Jan. 10, Oregon firefightersfirst day on the linefighting the massive Palisades fire in Southern California that went on to burn thousands of acres, scorch countless buildings and kill nearly a dozen people.
The Douglas County strike team, assigned to extinguish hotspots in the Palisades neighborhood on the western edge of Los Angeles, made its way through deserted streets. After driving down in their rigs from Oregon the previous evening, the team, which was one of 370 firefighters dispatched from all over Oregon to California, was unsure of what to anticipate.
