When a Fire Burns Hot

by Corey Richard

  “Go ahead, shoot.”

  “Aren’t there some commercially profitable trees that need fire to reproduce? Something about when fire hits the cone, the seeds pop out and the burnt ground’s all open and ready for ‘em?”

  Shroeder displayed no emotion and answered, “Yeah, there are some. Giant Sequoia’s like that. Can’t really reproduce well any other way.” He continued to stare out of the window.

  Frank manufactured feeling of genuine discovery. “So fire that helps that must be good.”

  Shroeder turned and studied Frank. Frank’s eyebrows were raised, and he saw that Frank wore a sincerely plaintive look on his face. Shroeder buried his perturbation and seized the chance to exhibit his knowledge. “Yeah, then fire is a part of keeping a forest in good shape. Sometimes we also use it to clear land and thin out the brush.”

  Frank quickly interjected. “So we have to let that forest type burn... don’t we?”

  “Yeah, but it’s got to be carefully controlled so as not to spread, or the public’ll give us some shit, I’ll tell you that.”

  “So the Forest Service should do the controlled burning?”

  “Yeah, in some places they should. But I’ll tell ya, Frank,” Shroeder leaned towards a surprised and slightly embarrassed Frank. Frank opened his eyes wide hoping to appear eager to hear Shroeder’s words of wisdom. He was pleased to have finally captured Shroeder’s attention, and to have established a common link between them.

  “It’s like this,” Shroeder continued, “The Forest Service needs to do some prescribed burning, but... it’s a government agency.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Well, it means that it’s too slow in this case. The government is so slow approving plans for our District that by the time we get down to the business of burning a unit, we’ve spent a hell of a lot of money and wasted a hell of a lot of time.”

  “God, it’s that bad, huh?” Frank unexpectedly found himself interested in Shroeder’s information.

  “I don’t mind saying that it is. A lot of people don’t like it when I say so, but I speak my mind. I tell ‘em they waste too much money when it comes to things like prescribed burns, and believe me, they don’t usually want to hear it. And then when there is a fire, they spend all their effort and money trying to save people’s property. They forget about protecting things like watersheds until later. And that kinda stuff is certainly more important than some guy’s second home that he was stupid enough to build in a fire zone to begin with.”

  Frank agreed heartily with Shroeder’s reasoning for the first time in the discussion. He smiled, seeing a chance to further solidify a bond with Shroeder. “Wow, that’s cool that you tell ‘em what you think anyway.”

  Shroeder took notice of the appreciation. He leaned back smugly, and his mouth turned downwards in a selfassured frown.

  Frank felt that he was finally in a position he wanted to be in in the conversation. “So then, what can we do if the government is ineffective? Stop managing things no matter what they tell you, and let nature take its course?”

  Shroeder looked puzzled. He had never actually considered subverting the management system in place, even if it was somewhat dysfunctional. For a brief moment he thought about the idea, but chose not to share his underdeveloped thoughts. “Don’t know about that,” he said, hoping to close the conversation.

  During the discourse, Frank had managed to stir up his own perceptions as well, and new questions had formed in the mix. Why was he putting out fires when he wanted to benefit the environment and society? He could help people plan ahead instead of let them believe, as people perched on their hilltops in Malibu had believed, that fire couldn’t touch them if cursory precautions were taken. Frank considered how a tiny spark at the bottom of a canyon could do so much damage. He had seen pictures of burnt house sites on hillsides where the hardened steel that helped make up a house’s foundation had melted. But even with proper planning, people were only as safe as the natural system allowed them to be. The experts he had studied in school had taught that where fire was a part of the ecosystem, repeated disruption was a constant. No ecological niche in such a system was entirely separate and immune from change; each had to be seen in the context of the whole. So the mantra went.

  The yellow bus pulled up in front of the Forest Service District station nearest the fires. The lot was filled with an assortment of green Forest Service vehicles, the compound marked by a Smokey Bear sign that welcomed visitors, its movable arm pointed to the words ‘extremely high’ at the top of the fire danger chart. From there, the entire sky was solid blue, lulling the firefighters into a sense of normalcy. All attention inside the buildings and throughout the District, however, was focused on the burning areas of the forest, and the logistics of the massive firefighting efforts underway.

  Each member of the Willamette crew stumbled out of the bus, squinting in the bright sunlight. Squad Two soon separated from the rest of the crew like a drop of mercury, to lounge on the grass in the shade of the brown and green government buildings. Soon all the firefighters’ thoughts and words began to drift from the fire.

  Paul re-boarded the bus and emerged with a Frisbee. Julio jumped up first. Frank hesitated, but when he saw Alice and Derrick rise, he forced himself to stand and claim a spot for himself on the grass.

  Paul first threw a short pass to Julio, and then strutted over to a spot near where Squad Two was gathered, giving the game its needed space. Julio’s throw sliced sideways, and Paul changed directions to catch the disk gracefully between his fingers, just before it would have touched the ground. While still in motion, Paul flicked the disc into the air with his right hand from the right side of his body, making his level throw look effortless. The Frisbee glided smoothly and steadily until it came to a stop in Frank’s hands. Frank congratulated himself on catching it in front of so many eyes. He threw it enthusiastically toward Alice, but to his horror it was overthrown; he desperately wanted to retrieve it as it sped away from him. Alice had to back up but managed to leap in time to grab hold of the revolving disc before it sailed out of the playing area. She alone wasn’t surprised she had caught it, and paid little attention to the murmur of compliments. The Frisbee next made its way to Derrick. Derrick’s long braids bounced spastically as he ran to pluck it out of the air. He threw it back to Paul, who nonchalantly leaned sideways and caught it behind his back.

  Frank winced at Paul’s showy display. No one else seemed to notice or care how Paul acted, except for a couple of members of Squad Two, who were commenting contemptuously at the game being played in front of them.

  The disc continued to shoot back and forth across the circle, eventually luring most of the crew into the game, save Squad Two and Alaska. Even an inexperienced Frisbee thrower like Scott had gotten up, with coaxing from Frank, and was laughing heartily at his tosses, which always seemed to deliver themselves to an unintended recipient.

  Frank was becoming increasingly confident with his throws and himself. He looked over and saw Jim make what he guessed by the nature of the laughs from the man’s cohorts to be a derisive comment regarding a person on the playing field. The next throw came to Frank, and he threw it back in Paul’s direction, but far enough over Paul’s head for it to sail towards Squad Two, some of whom cowered and stuck out their hands as it came near. Randy emerged abruptly from the middle of his group, faced the speeding disc, and grabbed it solidly in one hand. Frank faked an apology, and Randy came out to become another point on the circle’s radius. Frank again congratulated himself, this time on successfully achieving what he was fairly sure had been a preconceived goal.

  Randy eventually threw the frisbee towards his squad several times, subtly coercing them all to join the circle. The men felt slightly foolish at the onset of their participation, but were soon capping on each other and back in their element.

  Following Squad Two’s entrance in the gam
e, Alaska found himself the only one not taking part. He looked up occasionally from the piece of grass he was inspecting, feigning disinterest. Alice caught the Frisbee and threw it to him. He caught it, sitting up awkwardly to do so. He flung it back with a scowl before returning to his reclined position in annoyance. Verbally, Alice encouraged him to join the game, but his face instantly developed a look now familiar to all in his squad. He was displeased that Alice had singled him out, and felt that she had been purposefully trying to make him appear foolish. The nature of the glare he shot her made that it clear that he was firmly determined to remain uninvolved in so imbecilic a game at a time like this.

  Alice shrugged her shoulders, not much caring that Alaska had interpreted her intentions incorrectly. It was his problem, she told herself, and was more than ready to leave it that.

  The game continued, the majority of the crew making up for their athletic inadequacies with selfeffacing laughter. The only two who really seemed to care about their performances were Paul, who looked as if he thought he was on a television broadcast of a California Frisbee competition, and George, who swore each time his hard throws didn’t go straight, as if there were some inexplicable phenomenon involved.

  Frank exalted in the feeling of playing this game with so many different people who had not previously done anything resembling recreation together. He watched the disc spin from firefighter to firefighter, weaving a web that bound the whole.

  Fast Horse finally rolled out of one of the buildings, stopped, and watched the game with a temporary look of satisfaction and contentment, and then stepped into the middle of the circle with the exaggerated dignity of an aristocrat. Shroeder followed, hesitantly stepping into the circle himself.

  “Okay everyone,” Fast Horse called out, “I got our assignment. Let’s saddle up!”

  The firefighters broke out of their circle and gathered around their leader. Fully conscious of the eyes and attention directed at him, Fast Horse began walking slowly to the bus and left the bewildered crew behind. “So what’re you all waiting for?” Fast Horse asked loudly, without turning around.

  “What’re we doin’ out there?” someone finally asked.

  Fast Horse turned on his heels and said, “Well, seein’ as you all been working so hard, I tried to get us the day off, but they’re gonna make us work. Damn, can you believe that?” He gave the crew a squirrelly look and then resumed walking. Fast Horse had decided that his crew still cared too much about job assignments, and he wanted to break them in. They needed to treat each job as if it were important if he was ever to make them an exceptional crew. Even the little jobs, if done well, could make a difference in the eyes of the overhead, and, more importantly, imbue a feeling of selfworth in each firefighter.

  “Aw man, more mop up!” George whined.

  The bus lurched up the narrow, perilously-curved road. A sheer cliff bordered one side, and the crew found themselves level with the tops of enormous fir trees. On the other side, a steep slope shot upwards toward a mountaintop far out of view. The crew finally broke its silence.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “They expect us to fight a fire in this?”

  “Fuckin’ hate to dig a line up there.”

  A few uneasy laughs greeted this last comment.

  As the bus rounded a bend, the road leveled out at a saddle between two mountain peaks. The road soon curved sharply and began a slightly downward descent across the flank of the southernmost peak. Here the crew could see jagged hilltops in the distance, wedged against one another and standing in an uneven row. Occasionally, the bus passed through open areas that afforded a view of the partially-forested hills that stretched out for miles below; logging roads ran throughout, drawing and quartering the patchwork forest, ending any fantasies of remoteness.

  The road on which the bus traveled led to a junction with a smaller road whose entrance was partially blocked by bright orange pylons and a sign that read ‘authorized personnel only’. A Forest Service officer waved them by.

  They continued on that road for a few minutes before it turned to gravel as it rose up to the crest of a small hill. There the crew got its first glimpse of the fire, and their first collective shot of adrenaline. In the distance, a fat white and brown mushroom cloud, originating from a distant place in the valley below, rolled slowly upwards in eerie resemblance of a cloud from an atomic explosion. The crew came alive and craned their necks for a better view.

  “Fuckin’ A!”

  “That’s a fire, huh?”

  “It’s burnin’, all right!” Scott said, and looked at Frank, who smiled back, unable to contain his excitement.

  Fast Horse was affected differently from the others by the cloud’s presence. The sight did excite him in a way, but he was more interested in the possibility of facing a challenge than he was in witnessing the spectacle of a hot fire. Earlier in his life he had seen some of the fiercest fire activity ever reported, involving firestorms much larger than the one they were now viewing the telltale signs of. Those firestorms had created their own weather systems, lightning included. He had felt the beginnings of winds sucked into the infernos and spit back out at over 200 miles an hour. The fires then had seemed to seethe with conscious life. They had fed frenziedly, as if trying to swallow the forest whole, having been starved too long.

  Fast Horse thought back again on the worst of several experiences with firestorms. He had revisited the events in his mind over the years, and felt he had answered all of his questions, but still he traveled down that nefarious path. Reappearing were images of himself and his crew cowering as glowing embers were spewed out of the firestorm’s center. He again pictured spot fires springing to life all around their perimeter. The fire’s behavior had been so violent and unpredictable that he had known that no measure taken by humans could have had an effect. He had been almost entirely at its mercy. Its fury had shaken him and his huddled crew, hiding under their foil fire shelters as howling flames jabbed at them. He hoped that he would never again feel so powerless. He still shuddered at the memory. He’d done all he could, and had been resigned to his fate.

  But the firestorm had finally run out of energy. His crew had been able to get out of their fire shelters and escape through the waters of a creek. Since then, it took a lot to scare him on a fire. He remembered considering what he should have done differently as he lay there with the fire clamoring around him. He had decided that he had trusted the Forest Service too much in those days. He had ignored his instincts, which had told him that the crew needed to pull out long before the order from above reached him. He resolved then to hold fast to his right to use his own judgment whenever he felt it was best.

  After almost half an hour of driving, the distant plume looming larger at each new viewpoint, the Willamette crew came to a small pull-out area originally constructed as a staging area for logging operations. Their bus swung in beside five other buses, all belonging to hot shot crews.

  “All right, line out and wait for me an’ Shroeder,” Fast Horse ordered. The two leaders then stomped off the bus to talk to a uniformed man standing beside a little green Forest Service pickup. They returned a few minutes later to find the crew lined out and ready, trying not to feel intimidated in the presence of the elite crews. On Fast Horse’s command the line was set in motion, striking out stiffly toward the hill in front of them. Ahead, the path they were to take was clearly marked with a sturdy brown Forest Service sign. Gone from the sign were the usual messages on its front urging responsibility with garbage and caution with fire. Instead there was posted a large red warning that read: ‘DANGER! TRAIL CLOSED DUE TO FOREST FIRE.’ The firefighters glanced at it, some with unease, as they pushed up the trail and into the forest.

  Chapter 10

  “C’mon, ladies, you can do better ‘an that!” Fast Horse shouted at his exhausted crew.

  The straggling firefighters picked their way up the narrow
rocky path, Scott having the most difficulty with the journey, being somewhat unfamiliar with physical exertion at this point in his life. The rest of the exhausted crew was more than willing to stop several times to wait for him to catch up; and at one such delay, a hot shot crew arrogantly tromped by the panting, sweaty Willamette crew without offering a greeting, barely breathing hard.

  As soon as the hot shot crew was out of sight Fast Horse yelled, “Let’s go! I’ll retest a few people and give out some new fitness ratings if I have to!” Fast Horse was finally pushing them. They all guessed that he’d stuck his neck out some in getting them the day’s assignment. No complaints were voiced among the crewmembers.

  The steep trail finally connected to a cat track and began to level out on top of a broad hill. They marched along this track to encounter the burnt remains of a forest. There, small flames still gnawed at anything left that they might be able to digest, closer to appearing comical than menacing. On the opposite side of the line there still stood a green forest where trees were decorated with light wispy moss swaying in the hot breeze. In the distance, the mushroom cloud, slightly changed in shape, now hovered over the mountains at an altitude of over 15,000 feet, its roar faint but discernible.

  The crew halted behind Fast Horse at a large circular spot in the forest, which had been cleared by a dozer hours earlier. He walked along the flank of the line, stopped, and turned to face the crew. A large bush burst into flames behind him. Despite the intensity of the heat, which was felt on the faces of all the crewmembers, Fast Horse didn’t flinch or step away. He started speaking as the bush behind him popped and crackled. “All right... this is our safety zone. Our job is to put anything out in the green and just basically hold the line.”