Reports from two Central Coast firefighters battling the Southern California blazes offered a contrast in conditions, with one helping direct the fight on the Harris Fire east of San Diego, the other doing mop-up in the wake of the Slide Fire near Lake Arrowhead.

Both blazes were still raging Friday night, with populated areas being evacuated by the continued threat of the Harris Fire, while the Slide Fire burned away from populated areas toward land already charred by a wildfire a few weeks ago.

Rob Lewin, a Cal Fire battalion chief for Pismo Beach and now deputy incident commander on the Harris Fire, said efforts on that 84,000-acre blaze were being hampered by a shortage of resources.

But Felix Camacho, a Cal Fire captain at the Nipomo station and now a strike team leader on the 12,000-acre Slide Fire, said resources were pouring into that battle, which he said is the “No. 1 priority in the state.”

Speaking by cell phone from the command post as radio calls filled the air behind him, Lewin's voice betrayed the exhaustion of the weeklong fight, even though he said he's been getting more sleep than firefighters on the line.

“I'm probably more fortunate than most,” he said. “I'm getting about four hours a night. The first two days, I got no sleep. The first three days, I got no showers and no meals.”

Lewin said firefighters on the line are not coming in to sleep, he said, but are resting next to their engines when they can, and eating in the field, either MREs - military-style meals-ready-to-eat - or hot canned food when it can be delivered.

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“These firefighters are amazing, I've got to tell you,” he said. “Considering they're not getting proper food or rest for a number of days, I've not had one firefighter come up to complain. They are extremely amazing.”

He said he's been trying to get as much rest as possible.

“When you've got 2,000 firefighters under you that are in a dangerous situation, you want to make sure you do all the right things.”

Proof of that danger came when four firefighters suffered serious to critical burns rescuing four civilians, one of whom died. In all, 22 firefighters have been injured on the Harris Fire.

“We've had five civilian deaths,” Lewin said. “Four were discovered yesterday in the brush. We've had 22 civilians injured. Most of those people are undocumented immigrants coming across the border who got trapped.”

But help has been coming across the border, too.

“We have a task force of 30 bomberos from Tijuana who volunteered to assist us, and they've done an excellent job,” Lewin said. ‘Unfortunately and very horrifically ironic, they were the ones who discovered the four (dead) civilians.”

More help is also on the way.

“We have some engines en route from Arizona and Washington state,” he said, adding that help is also pouring in from the U.S. military, although the military aircraft don't have the same radio frequencies as the firefighting forces, making communication difficult.

“So we're using a National Guard helicopter, which does have our communication frequencies, to lead a trio into the fires,” he explained. “It leads two other military helicopters in, they make their drop, and then they fly out.”

Still, a total of 4,500 people have been evacuated at one time or another - two more were evacuated Friday - and 155 homes have been destroyed in a fire only 20 percent contained.

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Up on the Slide Fire, Camacho sounded more rested as he made his way to a hilltop in Running Springs for better cell phone reception.

“Things are going pretty good,” he said. “Since this is the No. 1 priority, we've got a lot of resources. When I get back to the camp at night (at Snow Valley Ski Resort), the parking lot is full of fire engines, not only from California but from all over.”

The Slide Fire is Camacho's second this week. His mixed strike team - engines from Nipomo, San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport, the city of San Luis Obispo, Cayucos and Pismo Beach - spent the first three days on the Buckweed Fire near Santa Clarita.

With resources pouring in and the winds just “a light breeze” Friday afternoon, the decreasing threat was allowing Camacho and his team to recover a little from their initial assignment.

“The last two nights here, we got to sleep at night,” he said. “The first few days up by Santa Clarita, we worked straight on through. But now, they've got us on 12-hour shifts instead of 24-hour shifts. We go into camp and get a decent night's sleep.”

The team's assignment wasn't quite as harrowing, either.

“We're in the process of going through cleaning up now,” he said. “There are little creeping fires under the homes that can pump up and set the homes on fire, even though they've burned.

“We just came from a street where we lost quite a few homes,” he said, guessing unofficially that 300 have burned. “But we saved more than we lost.”

Mike Hodgson can be reached at 739-2221 or mhodgson@santa

mariatimes.com.

October 27, 2007