We were trying to stop a several-acre fire in thick, dead timber when our only source of water, and what seemed like our best chance to make a dent in this thing, drove away.
A lightning storm had rolled through the woods, leaving behind it more fires on the forest than there were firefighters to take care of them. The fire engine we arrived with had to go to another fire, leaving the three of us to keep the fire, which had a lot of potential, from spreading.
The few campfire-size flames were starting to get taller. Corey went to the far side of the fire to cut away small trees and thicker brush. Tom, one of the two other firefighters there, turned to me.
“Give me your hard hat,” he said.
Tom was the safety officer, after all, so I complied.
Before the engine drove off, its pump still ran long enough to fill the hoses we’d laid out to wet down the fire. Tom took my hard hat, opened a valve on the hose, then filled the hat with water.
I don’t remember what he said, exactly, but his face had the “Well, there you go” look a near-retirement school lunch lady might have after serving up the day’s mystery meat.
We spent several hours at this, fighting fire a hat-full of water at a time. By the time our relief came, long after the water ran out, Tom had taken a seat for fear of dehydration. The captain who arrived with another engine took one look at me and told me to sit down before I fell down.
I spent three seasons fighting fire for the U.S. Forest Service, mostly in Central Oregon. No fire I ever fought burned any homes, no one ever got hurt, and only a few probably ever made the news.
We went on a lot of fires like the one that day, where I spent hours running from hot spot to hot spot trying to fight one-third of a fire using an ax and hard-hat loads of water.
A day at the office
In a lot of ways, fighting wildfires isn’t much different from any other job. There’s paperwork, office politics and personality conflicts like anywhere else. The work is hard and the labor intense, but that doesn’t make it much different from other jobs, either.
See, the actual act of fighting a wildfire isn’t necessarily complicated, but it’s not intuitive, either.
I had an engine captain who joked that his father, who grew up in a big city, never really understood what his son did, or how he did it. “Wait,” his dad would say. “You dig a hole to fight the fire?”
Combustion can’t happen without three things: adequate heat or a spark, fuel, and oxygen.
The heat comes from human carelessness, or from lightning, and there’s nothing to do about those after a fire starts.
Inside a city, structure firefighters might suffocate a fire with water. Water helps immensely out in the wild, but it isn’t readily available, and certainly not in the quantities available in a town.
Even if there was a hydrant in the middle of the woods, a fire doesn’t have to get too big before it’s virtually impossible to summon enough water to drown it. Many of the big fires burning now probably won’t be completely out until the snow comes.
So, firefighters starve fires.
Even with infrared cameras, tanker drops and fire-retardant foam, much of the work of firefighting hasn’t changed substantially for more than 100 years, whether it’s done by smokejumpers, hotshots or basic hand crews.
By digging a trench down to mineral soil and cutting out trees and brush around the fire, or taking advantage of natural breaks in vegetation, firefighters attempt to keep the fire from growing.
And dig they do, miles at a time, for in the nation’s forests, prairies and ranges, there’s a lot more fuel to burn than there are firefighters, bulldozers or air tankers.
The most basic resource in firefighting is the 20-person hand crew.
Firefighters line up single-file and shuffle along, taking a little bit of dirt as they go. A couple others might work ahead of the group cutting away trees or brush.
In a group, alone, or with one or two others, the process works the same, and it’s grueling. A boss of mine compared it to the work of a chain gang.
If done correctly, the crew leaves behind it a shallow trench dug down to mineral soil.
Walking to work
Before any of that, a firefighter has to get to the fire. Some jump from airplanes, hop out of helicopters or drive, but multi-mile hikes in and out of fire areas in heavy leather boots while carrying a full pack are everyday occurrences.
Blisters, bloody socks and the smell of Gold Bond are not uncommon at work. Fire camps probably stock blister padding by the roll.
In most cases, once the fire is ringed with control line, firefighters patrol the perimeter of the fire deeper toward the interior. On foot and sometimes in vehicles, they hunt for individual hot spots, signaled by tiny tufts of smoke.
The interior sections of fires can burn for months, so the idea is firefighters can secure larger portions of the edge to secure a wider control line, making the still-burning interior less of a threat.
Mop-up is where the real work of firefighting gets done, and where a firefighter’s sanity is tested.
Long after the walls of flame on the evening news have died down, firefighters spend days marching through charred moonscapes looking for hot spots.
It may not seem possible — and to the grumpy firefighter who hasn’t bathed or had a decent night’s sleep in days, it frequently doesn’t — but small embers can kick back up into a full-blown fire.
I’ve seen firefighters spend the day digging out single stump holes to get at nagging smoke, until they’re in craters 4 feet deep.
On smaller fires, or single chunks of larger fires, crews sometimes get down on their hands and knees to “cold trail” a fire: They crawl around with their hands in the dirt to find and eliminate any trace of heat.
Danger abounds
That’s not the exciting, heroic work that hooks firefighters, but it’s necessary, and just as dangerous. Almost all firefighter deaths from burnovers share a common trait: The fire seemed calm at the time.
Most mornings, firefighters at my station would gather for a short briefing and talk on safety.
During August, a sad amount of those briefings are made to reflect on lessons learned from firefighter deaths on that date in the past.
Scary can be relative. My family has a pyromaniacal streak, so when I first encountered a wall of fire — it sounds like a jet engine — or had to dig line adjacent to an active fire, I was more excited than spooked.
What really made my skin crawl was snags, and broken limbs left hanging in the canopy; they’re called widow-makers.
Dead trees seem to fall whenever they want. One day, on a prescribed burn, the cry of “Tree!” from up the line sent us running several times.
Falling dead trees don’t make much of a sound until they hit the ground.
Sleep or shower?
For long deployments off-district, the day ends back at fire camp. Those firefighters who spent the day in the dirt and ash have the option to take a shower. Not very many do, and definitely not often. When the choice comes down to more sleep after a 16-hour day or the temporary reprieve of feeling slightly cleaner, sleep wins.
I say slightly cleaner because the grime builds in surprising ways.
I’d sport a beard during fire season, since there was no point in shaving, and it’d go from orange to past brown with dirt, even on a short assignment.
On several occasions, I and others would put down our gear to find a slow trickle of chain saw bar oil, diesel and gasoline had been dribbling down our backs as we carried saws or extra fuel over our shoulders.
Firefighters get what we’d call “black leg.” After days in the dirt and ash, firefighters’ legs, from above the sock to the upper thigh, turn dark with soot. After getting home, even with a thorough scrubbing, I’d spot ash draining into the shower for a couple of days.
For days after particularly smoky fires, I’d blow my nose and get black snot.
An honor to serve
For all the work, it’s a lot of fun. Wonderful camaraderie, helicopter rides, exploring the wilderness, using chain saws, setting things on fire — there’s no experience like it.
On the same fire where I was running from falling snags, I also got to spend an hour or so tossing incendiaries over a cliff. On one of my first fires, I ran a chain saw well past midnight clearing out a fire line, with little but my headlamp and the glow of the fire as a guide.
We’d say we were out saving homes and babies, and joke that our office was the entire national forest system.
It can be lucrative too, especially for the temporary workers who make up the bulk of the firefighting world, many of whom are college students off for summer.
Every firefighter’s experience is a bit different, like how each one carries a different tool or fulfills a different job on a different assignment. That day when I was a one-man bucket brigade, the only tool I had beyond the few quarts of water my hat could hold was a pulaski.
It’s a specialized ax with a small trenching blade welded to the back. On its own, it isn’t that useful. They don’t move much dirt so it takes that much more work.
No crew leaves the truck without one person carrying a pulaski, though, because how else would they cut through roots or light brush?
I wouldn’t presume to have any special insight into other firefighters’ experience. Although the training, vocabulary and tactics in local, state and federal agencies across the country are largely identical, every firefighter, community and region is different.
There’s no reason to expect the services of these men and women will be less in demand over time. My editors figured that my being one of the seemingly few reporters who’s done that kind of work might help put a human touch on a story about firefighting.
If that helps remind people and policymakers that the men and women at risk on the line are more than “resources,” to repeat the overused jargon, then I’d like to think I’m doing my job as a reporter, too.
