John currently serves on the City of Murrieta Parks and Recreation Commission and is on the Board of Directors of The Nature Education Foundation at the Santa Rosa Plateau.
He recently concluded two years of service on the Riverside County Civil Grand Jury.
John is a proud Vietnam-Era U.S. Navy veteran and a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
He and his wife Yvonne have lived in Murrieta for 35 years. Both of their sons graduated from Murrieta Valley High School.
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- Honoring Those Who Battle Our Dangerous Wildfires - August 1, 2025
It was once called wildfire season. Not anymore. Wildfires are a fact of life in California, and across the West, year round.
As of mid-July CalFire reported almost 4,000 wildfires so far this year that have scorched almost 185,000 acres and destroyed over 16,000 structures, many of them in the Los Angeles area in January.
As you drive, or sit, in traffic, on the freeway you may notice signs designating portions of the roadway to men and women who have paid the ultimate price to keep us safe. This is the story behind one of them.
August 8, 1959, was a hot, humid day in Southern California. That afternoon two 19-year-old men were drinking beer with their buddies in the hills high above Lake Elsinore. The two left the party in a pick-up truck about 6 p.m. and headed down the twisty Ortega Highway toward Lakeland Village. The driver lost control of the truck and it plunged 200 feet down an embankment sparking what came to be known as the Decker Canyon Fire.
More than 500 California Department of Forestry and U.S. Forest Service firefighters battled the blaze which swept out of the Cleveland National Forest and forced the evacuation of Lakeland Village.
John Guthrie grew up in Perris and always wanted to be a firefighter. After a two-year hitch in the Navy, Guthrie returned home and signed up with the U.S. Forest Service as a firefighter. The next year he was hired by the California Department of Forestry. In 1959, then married with two small children, Guthrie was assigned to the Temecula Fire Station, located in Old Town Temecula.
When the call came in that August evening Guthrie and his crew left Temecula and headed toward the smoke column rising in the hills west of Lake Elsinore. When they arrived they stationed their firetruck on the highway above the flames and began to fight the blaze.”The winds were blowing the fire rapidly down the canyon,” according to a report. “The down canyon winds slacked off and for perhaps half a minute the fire appeared to be burning in a vacuum.”
The fire suddenly started moving back up the canyon walls at speeds up to 100 miles per hour.
“As soon as the fire changed directions a general warning was shouted,” the report stated. “It was only a matter of seconds after the warning until the fire reached the highway. All of the men on the upper part of the firing operation were critically burned.”
The firefighters on the highway above the fire, including Guthrie, had no chance. Five of them died at the scene. Dozens more were injured. Burned over 85 percent of his body, Guthrie was taken to a hospital in Hemet. Six weeks later he died from his injuries.
In 1999 the section of the Ortega Highway where the Decker Canyon Fire burned was designated as the “California Wildland Firefighters Memorial Highway.” A decade later a memorial honoring the more than 300 California firefighters who have died fighting wildland fires across the state was dedicated just off the Ortega Highway, west of El Cariso Village.
Finally, in 2010, more than a half century after his death, a 5.8 mile stretch of Interstate 215 in his hometown of Perris was designated the “CDF Firefighter John D. Guthrie Memorial Highway.”