Write down what you recall happening today, he told members of the half-dozen or so crews, and what you may know about an unauthorized burn along narrow and winding Spring Mountain Road. Gary Uboldi, tore off pieces of paper and handed them out in the lot as smoke choked the hot fall air. On the day of the alleged backfire, the state investigator, Cal Fire Capt. “This is exactly what we fear with private and insurance firefighters.” “Private firefighters’ specific role should be nothing but defensive,” said Jack Piccinini, a retired Santa Rosa firefighter of four decades who reviewed documents related to the Napa case for The Chronicle. congressman who notified Cal Fire after he saw what he believed was a private crew lighting a backfire a large winemaker that deployed a small army of firefighters, including the one accused of wrongdoing and neighboring wineries whose vineyards were damaged.
The unusual incident would come to involve a U.S. Their role by law is to primarily focus on what is known as pre-fire treatment of the landscape.Īnd so, as it unfolded, the Napa case highlighted the growing tensions between agencies like Cal Fire, whose resources have been stretched by the catastrophic burns of recent years, and independent crews who officials say can obstruct firefighters, cause damage and risk lives. As government resources have been stretched thin, insurance companies, moneyed landowners, wineries and even Lake Tahoe ski resorts have turned to private crews to shield their properties.īut those crews aren’t allowed to light fires or to operate in evacuation zones without permission. "I just want to thank everybody who helped me, helped pull my son out, pushed the car back so we could pull my son out," he told WABC.The people summoned to the lot on the west side of the famed valley were part of a group that is becoming a bigger part of the wildfire crisis in California. The teen was rushed to the hospital with undisclosed injuries and is listed in critical but stable condition.ĭat Phuong, the teen's father, thanked DeMeo and the other Good Samaritans who rushed over to help his son. "As a team, we lifted up the car, and I see the boy, and he was bleeding from his head." "We were a little nervous, afraid if we lifted and God forbid it falls on him, or if it was attached to a part of his body," DeMeo said. Surveillance video showed around a dozen people surrounding the SUV and lifting it off Phuong. "We heard the boy screaming, and we'd seen his leg kicking his leg was visible."
"My producer, Michele Francesko, she grabbed me and said there's a kid underneath the car, and all of the sudden, it was chaos," DeMeo told WNBC. When actor William DeMeo heard what happened, he rushed over to help, along with other members of the crew. She struck a parked car and then ran over Phuong on the sidewalk, pinning him underneath the vehicle.
#The crew show driver
The boy, N am Phuong, was walking his dog about a block from where the TV show was filming when an 80-year-old driver lost control of her SUV. When a 14-year-old boy was run over by an SUV in Brooklyn, New York, on Monday, the cast and crew of the TV show Gravesend rushed over to help.