Thermal Airport tenants react to Shady Fire containment efforts

Firefighters are making progress on a brush fire that broke out over the weekend in Thermal that forced the airport there to shut down temporarily. The Shady fire currently stands at 130 acres burned and 60 percent contained.

“It was such a beautiful entryway into the Palm trees and everything was really neat and now it’s just all blackened up,” Jasper de Hertog, Flight Instructor at SoCal Flight School, said.

That’s how he described the fire, blazing through Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport where the flight school is located, forcing it to shut down and worrying tenants.

“We were getting a little afraid of what was happening to the school and the aircraft so we hopped in our cars over here just to look if our planes were okay,” Olivier Claes, a flight student, said.

“I’ve never seen an airport fire before. I’ve seen a lot of wildfires, but particularly at the airport with the closure, that’s pretty extraordinary,” de Hertog said

The fire came close to a few hangers, but firefighters were able to save them by making enough progress for the airport to reopen Sunday night. A flight student described the scorched earth as apocalyptic.

“It wasn’t a good feeling. The smell is still very persistent. It’s really taking our breath,” Claes said.

Despite their scare, they wanted to thank the firefighters for their work, helping protect the airport and most importantly, their livelihood.

“If we don’t have planes, we don’t have our airport, we can’t do our training here, and our training is very crucial,” Claes said.

Training that will thankfully continue.

CAL FIRE says so far only an outbuilding and some machinery worth $1 million was destroyed by the fire.