Approaching Fire

Note: This post doesn't really have anything to do with biking, but during my my three rides of last week I revisited the tragic 2006 burn and it reminded me how terrible it was being on the fireline and seeing so much incompetence disguised as bravado. So I thought I would post this story that I wrote shortly after the fire that took place on the ranch in 2006.

This first paragraph is a little snippet of story that I wrote about a week before the big fire.

The citizens listened for helicopters all day. The horizon was gone gray and black, denser than any storm, roiling over the pine silhouettes at the edge of town. Exhausted yellow engine crews arrived in the midmorning and disappeared on the road into the desiccated muff. They tracked along the wildfire’s flanks, but its head reared and plunged along understory and crown. In the coal dark afternoon it announced itself with the click of a cricket horde, and through the shifting ash mist it appeared.

My account of the fire:

Fire last week. Started Monday afternoon on pyramid-shaped peak above the Snow Creek plain. It was seven thirty or eight when I heard. I was in Reno sitting in the backyard beating my new disc [I'd just been at Hats, Hops and Hucks in Santa Cruz!] and drinking a beer with Yac. Went in for the second round and the phone rang. Heard Snow Creek was burning and left immediately. Drove up I-80 along violent thunderstorms, as though heaven were caving in.

From the turn of Highway 140 I could see the glow of the fire behind Sentinel Peak and knew it was bad. The ranch was dark and quiet—Susan was just going to sleep but gave me details. Changed into Nomex and drove to Snow Creek Flat, already a burned plain; the fire was already through the tall brush and poplars at Kapelli’s and growing toward Snake Hill. From the seeding crews were otherworldly lights among a sea of glowing embers. I went by one crew after another, tentatively pushing toward the head of the fire, a blazing line along the ridge top. I found Glynn in his tank truck along the old car at the bottom of Snake Hill, the crews and dozer were pulling back for the night.
It was nearing dawn and unable to sleep I sat in the cab of Glynn’s pickup and watched the fire’s advance—it slowed, seemed to sleep with us and waited for the fresh morning breeze having used up all of the night.

By the time the dozer man was awake the fire had gotten more intense, but we still thought we could stop it at the top of Snake Hill. I followed along behind Will and Glynn with Leonard still asleep on the passenger seat. By the time we reached the top of the hill the flames had spread into a broad wall bearing down on the road. We left the dozer to dig itself in and retreated down to start backfiring along the thick underbrush of the draw, crews moved up dripping drip torches while we to guard against flare-ups. Will disappeared for a moment into the underbrush and we’d caught up with the dozer while the fire burned along the ridge toward Chicken Creek. We cut a line up the hillside until it got too steep and we had to pull back and watch the fire burn alongside out of our reach.

Fire burning toward Chicken Creek basin.

Nothing more to do at the fire’s head, Will and I took his truck up the hillside behind Kapelli’s with an engine following. On the black with fire burning all the way around us, we watched small planes and a great helicopter swarm the fire but do nothing to halt its movement toward Chicken Creek Basin. Along the saddle between Chicken and Snow creeks it had built a massive head and plunged toward the cabins. As it blew up into a mushroom cloud along the ridgeline we could only follow along its back edge and beat down flames licking toward upper Snow Creek. Finally too steep to continue, we nearly panicked when the truck wouldn’t turn around, visions of trapped in the fire’s advance only an engaged emergency brake, although that did get me out of driving for the remainder of the fire.
At the top of the mountain, surrounded by black and burning brush, watching the fire build its head of steam we were both in the middle and at the periphery, in a charcoaled outpost of ineffectual safety. At some point Leonard and Jennifer appeared on horseback on the far hillside, between us and the blowing up fire, but we reported to him that the fire was burning right toward him.

I couldn’t find my sunglasses when I left Reno and I had to borrow some from Will to wear through the burning smoke streams as we followed the flames generally north and west along the spine of the midslope. The earth black scorched and barely smoking minutes after the fire passed. Life melted away in wind-driven fire.

Flames as tall as a man on horseback, or taller, washing over sagebrush, flames ripping and leaving a black dust storm in their wake.

The roads by the second morning were dust swamps through black landscape. When Will and I came down the mountain from Kapelli’s word was we were relieved, pushed out, confused signals of idiots. We passed Mike on the way out, freshly arrived from Reno and bound to conquer his own fire. OK with me, I brought Renee’s Jeep back to the ranch and collapsed. The afternoon was lengthening by the time I drove the 4-wheeler back up the mountain. I passed Glynn on my way up, finally going for sleep. When I got back to the fireline the backfires were growing and Mike was talking to a crewboss from Eugene.

Revisited the burn this morning. It’s the same world, only now fire-blackened and has a new geography—maybe not the same at all.

Out of control fire abandoned.

Passed but never able to identify the exact place where the firefighters were burned over. I’d come down the mountain after being relieved and fell into a deep dreamless sleep, heavy dust-soaked afternoon sleep and then woke and wandered, pausing in the Seeding for a break and to find my headlamp. It seemed like the fire was over but for mopping up. At the line, now overrun with trucks and handcrews and all manner of stuff, lined yellow-helmeted warriors guarding their victory, society’s victory. Mike and Miguel tattered camp followers of this glistening army of Hotshots and crews from all over—but there was action, growing cascading flames from an idiotic backfire.

It was within minutes of arriving at the fireline, seeing the backfire burning out of control when a line of dust devils circled through the fireline, twisters of smoke and cinder stretching two hundred feet or more above the fire and sweeping across the road and through the yellow-shirted sentry line. I thought they were engulfed and a ripple of fire spread in a few seconds a hundred yards through the sagebrush on the east side of the road. At our place at the end of the line we watched and I thought the firefighters would have been burned then, but they hadn’t and they started to rush in. I asked the crew boss from Oregon if we should lead and I ran the hose while Mike drove and we were ordered to pull out, I thought it was because the fire was too dangerous, but Mike grumbled and we reluctantly drove wide around and got back to the fireline to hear on the radio that the firefighters were burned and that they would need to know how badly for the careflight attendants being called from Reno. We had an order to stand down and we retreated as though silenced and within minutes (not before nearly running me down as I pulled a drip torch out of their headlong flight) all of the firefighters had disappeared and Mike unable to stay calm disappeared with the radio walking down toward the now blackened road toward the scene of the action—the new helispot being made for the Careflight. And Miguel and I were alone with our truck and the now deserted trucks of some hotshot crew. One had its radio turned on and we opened the door and listened to the approaching helicopter while the fire burned uncontrolled across the flat, jumped Leonard Creek and continued headlong up the far hillsides toward Ice Cream Mountain—across the world. It was as though we’d reached an end, a place with no exit. Miguel and I talked a lot about the ranch then, and my dad. Maybe mainly Miguel talked about how good the ranch could be, how much he’d admired my father, how his mother had died at nearly the same time as my father (I was ashamed I hadn’t known this). It took an hour or more for the helicopter to arrive. Finally, as the sun was starting to lift from the desert floor and climb the Jacksons, we heard its rotors and watched it trace a line along Leonard Creek above the fire’s long smoke column and then over the same rise that Mike had gone along so long ago. I had no desire to see the scene of the action so I sent Miguel with the truck to fetch Mike and drove the 4-wheeler down Snake Hill and around to the Leonard Creek crossing to see how far the fire had gone. It was scary and looming and I drove with one eye on it behind me, especially down Snake Hill where it still hadn’t completely burned around to meet its old tracks, the place where we had begun the morning, a flanky hillside of sagebrush doomed to burn, when the only question. From the bottom it seemed the fire had already nearly reached the road crossing. Twenty or so cattle on the ridge grazed away from it and here being something I could latch on to I drove the 4-wheeler home and roused my mother and Leonard.
Glynn was still asleep and I told my mother to saddle a horse with Leonard and she turned her face down in an ugly and conspiratorial whisper and told me she didn’t want to. I left and she awoke Glynn anyway. It was nearly dark by the time we got back and all the firefighters were leaving. It was as though fucked we were now left alone. The fire was a bright line all across the northeastern horizon. It was completely dark by the time we reached the burned branding corral and there was nothing to stop the fire all the way down Leonard Creek until it reached the ranch. We raced back in the dark, I drove the Big Bear down the canyon so that Leonard and Mommy would have light. We went through Upper Ranch in complete darkness. I was sure it would be burned when I returned.
At the ranch there was nothing to do while a stream of neighbors passed through to offer advice. I drove back up to the fire, it was still a line across the horizon at 2:00 A.M.
I went home and slept a couple of hours and drove back up. Somehow the southern fingers of the backfire that had jumped the road had mostly burned themselves out between two and six-thirty, it was only smoking in one dead end draw toward Ice Cream Mountain and I left that and drove toward Chicken Creek.
The fire was gently picking itself along the Leonard Creek Meadow road and I followed it putting it out while the main body of the rejuvenated fire corps very snalepaced the rock-bound finger above Tepee Creek. By the time anyone else arrived at the main body of the fire it had picked itself up and was running along the ridge toward Chicken Creek basin.
Glynn and Will were the first to arrive. I left them at the big hole in the road and went toward Chicken Creek on the Big Bear. The fire had already crested the ridge and in a long line above the gully bound road and I rode back through feeling it close on my back, certainly not stopping although it wasn’t as close as it seemed. It was too late to build a line there and the dozer started cutting line. Once again nothing was between the fire and the cabins and branding corral in Chicken Creek basin. Before we’d even really started it blew up and ran straight uphill across the saddle to Chicken Creek basin and devoured the big hillside above Chicken Creek while we followed its flank spraying down hot spots.
I rode with Will again and we passed Glynn, Miguel, and Suzanne (she’d arrived late the night before) when their fire hose broke and went across the meadows between Chicken Creek and Leonard Creek and up to the massive flank of Pine Forest. The fire was already in the mahoganies at the mountaintop. If it crossed and the high mountain was dry enough to burn there was nothing to stop it from burning the entire high wilderness. We stopped and contemplated the steep hillside the dozer had crossed. A long portion of unburned sagebrush lay between us and the line and while we thought we could get the pickup up the hill, there was no good way down. Still, if the fire jumped the line there it could go all the way down to Leonard Creek meadow and so we jumped boulder and dug through the loose sand thrown up in the dozer’s wake as far as we could and stopped to make our stand.
The fire burned across the hillside below us and flames licked underneath the pickup’s chassis while we sprayed down the sagebrush with water and foam. The wind picked up and a dustdevil whipped across the hillside above us, but didn’t change and blow the fire into our faces and suddenly, it’s light fuel gone it burned itself down and, sweating and still pumping we backed the pickup off the hill and went back to Leonard Creek to refill.

Making stand on the saddle between Chicken Creek and Leonard Creek Meadow.

We borrowed MREs from the division superintendent’s pickup (he had boxes of them and cases of Gatorade, obeying the firefighter’s first dictum: hydrate) and ate on the grass and watched the bombers drop heavy continuous red lines of retardant across the mahogany-crowned ridge, while the dozer cut a steep line along the mountain’s base, dislodging giant boulders and sending them rolling down the slope. A group of Hot Shots (dip shits is what they should be called) passed, swagger and disdain unabated after yesterday’s debacle. I wanted to punch them in the mouth.
They made the last line along the steep drop of Leonard Creek. By the late afternoon it didn’t seem the fire had any energy left and we parked with the dozer and contract crews and bullshitted nonstop and watched as the big bomber’s scout plane lined itself up for a steep drop, and then as it wheeled itself around and, right overtop our heads sprayed retardant across the hillside, the wind picked it up into a bloody red cloud and it drifted slowly while I videoed its progress and then shut down my camera as the edge of the load splattered my face and camera and left the trucks, dozer, and everyone encrusted and fire proofed.
The hot shots had been backfiring along the ridge and as an encore they descended on us like fire-breathing locusts, studiously ignoring us and spraying the dying natural fire with enough of their manmade version to have everyone in the safety zone, us and the contract firefighters from New Mexico, cursing their recklessness. They lit a massive backfire, shooting their fire mortars all across the hillside to kill a fire we could have walked up and put out with a shovel. Then, the last bit of the hillside turned into an inferno and the sun disappeared behind behemoth Pine Forest they posed in front of us for a picture (god how I wish I’d taken a picture of that, but in truth I was too angry and disgusted to take advantage of the moment) and then disappeared again, leaving the contract crews to mop-up.
And the fire behaved for them, today no dust devils whipped through the line and within a half hour it was apparent that it was over. Exhausted, hungry, in shock at the massive mountainside of black stretching all the way back to Snow Creek plain, we regrouped ourselves, pushed down the hill to waiting beds. The fire trucks poured in the next day, and the fire’s commander came and drank coffee in Glynn’s house and incidentally told me I should go with a hot shot crew to see some “real big” fires. No fucking thanks—I should have told him what I thought but I just nodded and went out to irrigate.

The fire's last stand, before the dipshits tried to make it bigger, that is.

And slowly it returns. I hiked across the burned mountainside a few weeks later to Leonard Creek Lake and already lupine and a few other pioneers grew under the blackened stumps of the sagebrush hillside. At the scene to the dipshit’s last stand a strip of red sage and rabbit brush remained from the big bomber’s drop—they hadn’t been able, despite their best efforts, to burn the entire hillside.

P.S. In the intervening years, our volunteer firefighter corps has been disbanded because it was too effective at actually putting out fires, and now the landowner out to protect his or her own property is entirely at the mercy of government firefighters, prosecutable in fact, for trying to protect his or her own property.