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The call came at 4 on a morning in October 2022. Paul Kalchik was a member of a Larch Corrections Center firefighting crew that was roused out of bed early to respond to a 2-acre fire on the south side of Larch Mountain, near Nakia Creek.
For two weeks, from dawn to dusk, Kalchik and his crewmates carved deep into the earth, trimmed brush and extinguished hot forest debris in their path.
