Gambling With Their Lives

BAKER, Calif. —  Millions of motorists who drive to Las Vegas each year put their lives in the hands of people like Richard Lessenden, a former oil derrick worker serving time in state prison on a drug conviction.

For half a year, the Bakersfield resident worked as a volunteer firefighter out of San Bernardino County Fire Station 53 in Baker, a tiny outpost 180 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

Day or night, when there’s a head-on collision or some other horrific crash on Interstate 15, a call goes out to the prison. Inmates are rousted and sent to the front gate, where they shed their prison blues for yellow rescue jackets.

“Working in the oil fields, I’ve seen fingers ripped off and guys crushed,” said Lessenden, 30. “But I wasn’t expecting the number of deaths and tragedies I’ve seen here.”

On the road to the gambling mecca, peppered with billboards boasting about the best and biggest of everything, there’s one lonely fire station for 4,000 square miles -- a territory about the size of Los Angeles County, and larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined.

At any given moment, only two of the four firefighters are on duty. The small cadre of rescuers is spread so thin that the county is forced to rely on the charity -- and sweat -- of inmates at the minimum security Baker Community Correctional Facility.

“They’re not extra help,” said Bobby Pope, a tall, baby-faced 19-year-old firefighter. “We really need them.”

The inmates help bridge a logistical gap: The nearest trauma hospital is 90 miles away in Las Vegas. Hourlong rides to crash scenes are common, even when firefighters push the 35,000-pound fire engine to more than 75 mph.

The firefighters aren’t licensed to carry or give pain medicine; paramedics, who are licensed, are sometimes more than an hour away. There are times when the only thing a firefighter can do after administering first aid is sit beside the injured and urge them to hang tough.

“You just tell them, ‘You’re going to have to cowboy up and take some pain,’ ” said firefighter Tom Wetterman, 46, “ ‘because there’s not much that can be done for a while, and we don’t push drugs.’ ”

There’s no sense in offering hollow promises.”It can take three hours from the time a person crashes to the time they get to the hospital,” said Capt. Warren Crandall, 49, ranking firefighter at the Baker station. “You don’t lie ... but you don’t tell them everything’s going to be OK either.”

In many rural, lonely expanses, the dearth of emergency services might not be such a problem: Small populations usually mean fewer people requiring paramedics and firefighters, police officers or hospitals. But more than 10 million cars and trucks go through Baker on I-15 every year, a daily moving city that makes the route the main economic and tourism link between California and Nevada.

While more than 150 people have died since 1999 along the 82-mile stretch of I-15 covered by Fire Station 53, from Afton Road to the Nevada border, the surrounding desert is so sparsely populated, and therefore so tax poor, that San Bernardino County can afford only the one tiny station here.

And with the staff so small, convicts from the prison usually make up the bulk of the rescuers.

When a 911 call comes in, a pager in the prison guard control room goes off, and the guards rush to alert a select few inmates. The inmates hurry to take their places on the fire engine.

“If they’re on the ball, they’re at the front gate and ready to rock ‘n’ roll in two minutes,” said Wetterman, a rancher from Hinkley, 73 miles away.

But this being a prison, complications arise.

When a riot broke out in early December, the institution was locked down -- depriving the fire station of its extra manpower, said San Bernardino County Fire Department representative Tracey Martinez.

So far this year, a chickenpox outbreak, a drug investigation and the riot have temporarily reduced the number of inmate rescuers, Martinez said.

Fire Station 53 itself is a reflection of its forced penury: squat, beige 1960s bungalows next to the prison yard. For a time, it was a room at the Wills Fargo Motel, a horseshoe-shaped inn with a gray, weather-beaten wagon out front.

The firetruck sits under the merciless desert sky in this town known for having the World’s Tallest Thermometer. Occasionally, an accident on the interstate draws wider attention to the challenges of rescue here.

In March, more than 50 people were injured when two tour buses coming from Las Vegas crashed about 13 miles northeast of Baker.

Dozens of fire engines, ambulances and helicopters, including military helicopters, swooped to the site. Rescuers from Nevada crossed the state line. But for at least an hour, the only people working the scene were the firefighters of Station 53 and six inmates. They pulled the injured out of squashed seats and sorted the most seriously injured from the walking wounded.

Last year, the state shut down the prison to help close a budget deficit. Fire Station 53 also closed.

The prison reopened six months later, and so did the station. But Crandall, who trains the inmates, said the number of fatal crashes jumped during the time both facilities were closed.

California Highway Patrol accident statistics show more fatalities than normal along the I-15 stretch from July to December 2002. During that time, 21 people died there, compared with 14 deaths in each of the previous two years and 12 in 1999.

Many of the worst injuries are a result of excessive speed and a failure to buckle up. “We see a lot of high-speed rollover crashes, commonly affecting several members of the same family,” said Dr. John Fildes, medical director at University Medical Center in Las Vegas.

“There’s a huge time and distance problem in the uninhabited parts of the American West,” Fildes said. “For many patients, the ability to breathe on their own is impaired both by head injuries and direct injuries to their chest, head and face. In other patients, there’s internal hemorrhaging. Getting them to the trauma center before they bleed to death is very much in the spirit of the ‘golden hour.’ ”

Crandall said the injured people Baker firefighters aid never get to a trauma room in the “golden hour” -- the period in which those in serious condition need to receive hospital treatment to have the best chance of surviving.

If a patient’s injuries are life-threatening, air ambulances at Hoover Dam, Henderson or Pahrump, Nev., can be called in. They are 20 to 40 minutes away, he said, but traveling to the accident scene, getting the helicopters dispatched and reaching a hospital add more time.

And rescuers have to be judicious about calling in the aircraft, because they’re expensive, and patients with injuries that turn out not to be life-threatening could be stuck with bills of more than $10,000, Crandall said.

“We could even be liable for the bill,” he said. “I’m not talking about San Bernardino County having to pay the bill -- I’m talking about the personnel actually calling the air ambulance.”

In a busy month, helicopters are summoned about 20 times, Crandall said.

In August, San Bernardino County Supervisor Bill Postmus called a meeting of county, California and Nevada officials at the Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Center to discuss ways to increase safety along the corridor.

Nevada has an interest in making I-15 safer, not only to protect constituents but to keep commerce flowing into a state that relies on Southern California ports to get 80% of its goods, said Tom Stancke, a consultant who represents the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority

Over the last decade, Stancke said, Nevada has contributed about $20 million to road improvements in California along Interstate 15, Interstate 40 and Needles Highway, which runs between Needles, Calif., and Laughlin, Nev.

However, San Bernardino County has had no luck in finding sufficient funding for those far-flung areas with many commuters but few permanent residences. Most of the land is owned by the federal government, which can’t be taxed.

Of particular concern, Postmus said, are estimates that the number of cars traveling along I-15 and I-40 will triple in the next 20 years.

“We have a crisis situation along that corridor now,” Postmus said. “We had that big incident with the tour bus -- a huge incident that could have turned much worse if all the stars didn’t align properly that day.... As traffic continues to grow, we’re going to see more accidents, more medical aid calls, more need for fire protection. And that’s going to take more dollars.”

The lull of the seemingly never-changing landscape combined with wide-open roads, alcohol, road fatigue and an impatience to get to and from Las Vegas contribute to crashes.

There was the 19-year-old man who recently slammed his motorcycle into the back of a big rig at more than 120 mph. The crash was so violent that the back end of the motorcycle was found a quarter-mile ahead of the truck, having flown past the cab. “We never could find the front tires, the forks or the handlebars,” firefighter Wetterman said.

“The worst thing is seeing people trying to stay alive, trying to cling on,” firefighter Pope said. “That’s worse than seeing the dead bodies.”

Many of these motorists seem oblivious to the danger they’re in, rescuers said, often racing through narrow construction zones.

“Any way you want to die, it can be arranged here,” said Wetterman, a large man who bears a striking resemblance to the late actor Slim Pickens, down to the wheezing drawl.

For 17 years, Wetterman was a professional rodeo clown. He bears a crescent-shaped scar across his forehead, a souvenir from a deranged bull. He appeared as a stunt double for Clint Eastwood in “Honky Tonk Man,” rode a horse-drawn carriage in “Titanic” and portrays the stagecoach driver in Wells Fargo commercials, he said.

He doesn’t need to be a firefighter to earn a living; he does the work because it “keeps my adrenaline going, and I’m good at it.” The Baker firefighters do not belong to a union and earn not much more than minimum wage.

The men said they had confidence in the inmates who end up qualifying to work beside them, adding that their judgment in assessing the injured was trusted.

The inmates are all nonviolent offenders, arrested for drug offenses, commercial burglaries, driving under the influence. They get trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, extrication of injured people from wrecked cars, basic first aid, the bandaging of patients and other life-saving techniques.

Lessenden said one incident had particularly touched him. It was a rollover accident, and a mother and her small son were ejected from the car along with other members of their family.

The mother died instantly and landed on top of the boy, who clung to her arm, murmuring, “Momma, Momma.” Lessenden stayed with him, talking to him, trying to calm him enough to relax his grip from his mother’s body. Lessenden said he has a son that boy’s age and felt a strong impulse to do whatever he could.

“I’d sure hate to see my child in the same situation and nobody trying to make him feel better, trying to get his mind off what just happened, at least a little,” Lessenden said.

“I get letters from my kids, and they’re excited that their dad is doing this. They understand I messed up and that I’m being punished, just like they would if they got in trouble,” he said before he was transferred to a different prison. “But when they hear I’m working for the Fire Department, it makes them feel good.”