The monkey made me do it

The Times I Almost Died (Part Two)

Firefighting is glamorous, dangerous, and full of situations where normal people (like you and me!) can step forward and save the world, or at least that really big tree over there. I remember times where we would drive across the mountains to a project fire (one over 10,000 acres in size) and as we approached the whole horizon would be an unsettling shade of orange and the smoke column could be seen for hundreds of miles. Fires that size create their own weather patterns, they change the environment for years to come. They make you reel, dizzy with the knowledge of their power and seemingly unstoppable might.

And then after the unstoppable is stopped (usually by rain, which kind of deflates the whole fireman/hero concept) or has moved on, there are days, sometimes weeks, where you get to mop up the bastard. Mop up is a long process involving walking around with a shovel and axe, looking for places that are still hot or burning. The fire itself is long gone, fizzled out or blazing over on the next ridge being fought bravely by people who are standing on ridge tops striking poses backlit with wind whipping through their hair. Those on mop up duty are hunched over, tired, and covered with soot, trudging through acres of burnt-over moon landscape poking at holes with the tip of their shovels, praying that no smoke will come out. Because if it does... Stump-holes are the worst. Picture a tree root system, with roots diving many feet under the ground and spreading around the perimeter of the main trunk. Now imagine the roots being replaced by air because they have been burned away by a bad, bad ol' fire. Not a very stable walking surface, plus most stump-holes still have burning pieces of root at the bottom of each suddenly empty root hole. I can't count how many of these my heavy-booted foot has plunged into, making me fall awkwardly to the side and curse heartily as the boot heated to an immediate boil. Gnats also love mop up sites, congregating around warm spots and welcoming weary firefighters by enthusiastically swarming around their heads. Overall, not the best task and one usually assigned to those too weary for front-line duty or who have had more than their share of active fire action during the season.

My team fell into the second category. I was the engine leader, and poor Jason was my crew. Jason was 19 and had been married over a year to the most shrewish woman I'd ever encountered. He was absolutely whipped, and then had the relative misfortune of being placed on the only engine in the district with a female boss. I felt for the guy and tried to be fairly equitable with our chores, training him and letting him do the showy stuff on occasion so the other guys wouldn't tease him so much. I had also gotten another team member for the fire, a man from the administrative side of the office who, while he had his fire training, had not been on many fires (I was often used to train admin. people in the way of the flames, since I spoke their language and was not as apt to mock them as the others). We were stuck doing mop up on a fire in Eastern Washington, in a part of the state full of dramatic valleys and steep mountainous terrain. Great for views, horrible for hiking over unstable ground.

(Side note: Also horrible for hiding when helicopters carrying retardant flew overhead. The terrain was not rocky enough to feature the large formations I would normally use for impromptu bathrooms and of course had recently been liberated by its covering of trees (the only reason I'd ever want to be a boy is to PEE STANDING UP - so much easier to do spontaneously and without need of leaning material). I was also wearing a bright blue shirt and a bright white hard hat that didn't even do me the courtesy of retaining any of the camouflaging soot. I stood out like a beacon in that grey/black barren world. Every time I would think myself in the clear and start to hunker down, a "whump-whump-whump" sound would come from nowhere and I'd rush to pull up my jeans and look innocent when the helicopter swung by. I think they were targeting me, feeding me insane amounts of water and Gatorade and then making it impossible to pee without an audience. grr.)

We had been assigned to mop up one side of a very steep gully. I parked the engine at the top and fed a hose line down a steep ex-deer path we had found, for fire support and for use in climbing (it was STEEP). As we were throwing hose down the abyss, a Forest Service Hot Shot crew pulled up in their van and introduced themselves (Hot Shots are supposedly their creme de la creme, though I've never been that impressed by what I've seen). By some oversight, they were assigned to mop up much of the same area. Their leader and I consulted our maps and ended up dividing the gully between our crews, letting mine take the bottom half since it looked to have the majority of the hot spots (more trees, more hiding spots for heat) and theirs take the top. I reminded him to not work over the top of where my team was working, since there were many large rocks around that could pose a danger. We traded radio frequencies and then went our separate ways.

Fast forward a half-day or so. My team hasn't found very much at the bottom of the gulf, we've been using a little water and foam in sections but most of it is pretty burnt out. We are deep in the midst of a discussion (about? who knows. We'd talk about everything and anything during mop up, having hours to kill and only holes in the ground to poke) when I heard a rustling coming down from the slope above. We all looked up, trying to find the source of the commotion, and a medium-sized boulder (8" or so) tumbled off the slope and slammed into the ground next to Jason. Our eyes got huge, we ran further down the slope as more rustlings started to become apparent overhead. The Hot Shots were working directly above us and causing boulders to loosen and come down the gully. I radioed their boss angrily and tried to chew him out, but he wasn't answering. We decided that we had to get out of there, our hose was in danger of being torn by the rocks (they were coming harder how) and our heads were in even greater danger. We hiked back up the gully to our deer trail, carefully dragging our hose out of the soot, dodging the tell-tale rustles and crashes the whole time. When we got to the base of the trail, we were worried. It was a steep trail that had been worn into the side of the mountain, and climbing it with our tools and hose would make us very vulnerable to anything coming down the hill. I volunteered to go first, just to get us out of there. I left the hose at the base to pull up later, and started to climb using my shovel in one hand and axe in the other. The guys below didn't dare start up until after I had reached the top, I told them to stand clear in case I personally dislodged anything in my ascent.

I kept an eye on the trail above me, since being a clear swath it didn't offer the luxury of rustling foliage to announce a tumbling rock. When it finally came, I was about halfway up the trail and on a particularly treacherous curve. I didn't hear it as much as feel a trembling in the ground (and a sudden sinking feeling in my chest). Without thinking, I threw my axe and shovel one way while I threw myself the other direction, barely missing the easily 2-foot-diameter boulder that flew merrily down the trail, enjoying the lack of arboreal resistance and rearranging the terrain as it went. I almost wet myself. The boys below radioed frantically, thinking that I had been flattened. It took me a few minutes to say anything decipherable to them. The incident filled me with resolve, nay, HATRED for the crew above that propelled me with amazing speed up the rest of the trail. I am not proud of the speech I gave their crew leader. I believe HE almost wet himself. It got the point across, though, and my crew made it up the trail with no incidents and away from the fire very soon after. And they gave me extra candy bars for the trip home. Yaaay, candy.

posted by LadyJay @ 9:38 AM