Wildfire

by Rodman Philbrick

  “Hang on.” I put the Jeep in gear. “We’ll be going slow, but it’ll be bumpy. If you feel us tipping over, try to throw yourself clear.”

  Delphy nods vigorously, but doesn’t say a word. I don’t have to tell her how dangerous this is, plunging down a steep hillside without a path or trail to follow. There’s no going back once we head over the edge.

  I pat the dashboard for luck. “Take care of us, dear lovely old Jeep, and we’ll take care of you. That’s a promise.”

  Over the edge we go. For the first hundred yards or so, the steep slope is relatively wide open, with only a few trees and stumps to avoid. I hardly have to touch the gas pedal as we roll over the rough ground, rocking side to side. Then, suddenly, we’re tearing through low bushes that block our view. I try riding the brake, but it barely slows us down. Besides, if we slow down too much, we’ll get stuck for sure.

  Don’t touch the gas or the brake, I decide. Concentrate on steering, on seeing what’s beyond the next row of bushes.

  “You’re doing good!” Delphy shouts. “To the left, see that tree? Then you’re clear!”

  That’s how we do it, all the way down the slope, me steering like a maniac with my hands welded to the wheel, Delphy shouting out which way to turn. Bushes and saplings smacking the sides of the vehicle as we go by, as if urging us along.

  Suddenly we break through the underbrush, lurching onto a rock-strewn ledge. The Jeep starts to skid sideways. I steer into the turn and we straighten. Finally the tires get purchase on the slippery rock.

  Back in control, I steer around the bigger boulders. Then there’s grass under the wheels, and the ledge is behind us. We’re picking up speed, and Delphy is shouting out which way to go.

  A grove of thin little saplings ahead, too many to avoid. We roll right through, mowing them down. Branches whip at us, trying to snatch us out of our seats. But we hang on. We keep going, bumping over hard ground and soft dirt, rolling through bushes, skidding around bigger trees and the occasional boulder that comes out of nowhere.

  I’m so focused on steering that I don’t really get it that we made it to the bottom of the slope until the Jeep slows down and starts to roll backward. I look over at Delphy. She’s clinging to her seat with both hands. If her eyes were any bigger, they’d fall out of her face.

  “That was interesting.” She takes a deep breath.

  Working our way slowly up the next hill is way less exciting, but it takes just as much effort. A couple of times we have to backtrack when the trees get too dense, but we manage. Finding our own switchback pathways when it gets too steep, and barging straight ahead whenever possible.

  We finally get to the top of the hill. There isn’t any part of me that doesn’t hurt. My hands are so cramped I have to pry my fingers off the wheel. My legs ache and my butt feels bruised, but it’s all worth it, because we can see the radio tower looming over us. Close up, it looks old and rusty. The cables that anchor it in place moan with the gusts of wind.

  The air is thickening with the eye-watering stink of fire. Even if we couldn’t see it—the line of black clouds closing in, the orange flames racing over the treetops—we’d know the fire wasn’t far away.

  We need to find a road, and fast.

  The Jeep bumps over the rough meadow around the radio tower. Delphy’s trying to stand up in her seat, searching for an opening that might indicate a road. Neither of us is saying much because we’re running out of time. I don’t know what’s going through Delphy’s head, but my brain is thinking crazy thoughts. Like if we don’t find a road, maybe we can climb to the top of the tower to get away from the fire. Might survive if the flames sweep through fast, but it’s just as likely we’d end up like chunks of barbecue.

  I know, disgusting, but I can’t help imagining the worst.

  We roll through the meadow, dead grass crunching under the tires, and steer around a small stand of scrawny spruce trees. Eyes watering as the smoke gets worse. Desperate for a road. At this point, any kind of road will do, even another road to nowhere, just so we can stay alive for a while longer.

  “Hey!” Delphy shouts, pointing. “Over there!”

  What she spotted isn’t a road, it’s a building. A square, flat-roofed building made of cinder block, sitting in the middle of a clearing. White paint peeling and blistered on the sides, but the bold lettering over the door is still clearly visible.

  WRPZ 98.6 FM

  “It’s him.” I’m astonished. “Phat Freddy.”

  Delphy shakes her head. “He must have got rescued somehow. He said it was his final broadcast, and that was last night. He’s gone.”

  “Maybe not.” I lean on the horn.

  The man who stumbles out of the cinder-block building is a lot older than I expected from the sound of his voice. He’s got a short white beard and a long white ponytail that goes almost to his waist. The ponytail reminds me of Willie Nelson, but Phat Freddy has a potbelly, and that spoils the resemblance.

  Wheezing from the smoke, he barely makes his way across the unpaved parking lot. “Oh my Lord!” he exclaims, his red-rimmed eyes taking us in. “You sent me two angels in a Jeep!”

  “Is there a road?”

  “Access road! Hasn’t been paved in years!”

  “Hop in! Show us the way!” I have to shout, because the roar of the approaching fire has gotten so loud. It’s not a normal sound. More like the trees are screaming. Must be my imagination, because trees don’t scream, do they?

  Freddy scrambles into the back.

  We tear around the building and sure enough, there’s an old, pothole-riddled road just wide enough for the Jeep. My heart soars—we’ve got a chance!

  From the back seat, Freddy leans forward, pitching his radio voice to be heard above the roar of the approaching fire.

  “Thanks for the ride, kids! Figured I was a fried chicken for sure!”

  “Everybody hang on!” I yell. “I’ll be going as fast as I can, and the road looks bad!”

  We’re just starting down the bumpy access road when the fire sweeps up over the hillside, igniting the meadow and the underbrush and the stand of scrawny pines all at once. More an explosion than a fire. Like the world was doused in gasoline, and God was holding the match.

  But the only thing in my head is trying to stay alive. Too late to get ahead of the fire, so we have no choice but to find a way through it. The access road is steep, and the potholes are deep. Steer hard, yanking the wheel to avoid breaking an axle. All around us, trees ignite from the top down, jumping from crown to crown. As if the wildfire has been lifted into the air, into the treetops.

  A wave of scalding heat makes it hard to breathe.

  “Give me your under shirt!” Delphy shouts at Freddy. “Quick!”

  I can’t quite see what she’s doing, but a moment later, she ties a water-soaked rag over my mouth and nose. Then does the same for herself and Freddy.

  We probably look like scruffy bandits, but it really helps. Breathing through a damp cloth is the best we can do under the circumstances.

  Maybe you think it’s brave, what we did. But courage had nothing to do with it. We were terrified and we kept going because we had no choice. Down that winding access road, avoiding potholes. Keeping as close to the middle as possible because fire is racing down both sides, exploding from tree after tree.

  I may have been screaming, not that anyone noticed or cared. Screaming as much in anger as fear. Because I couldn’t help thinking about what happened to my dad when the Hummer hit his truck in Afghanistan. How the gasoline tanker he was driving rolled off the shoulder of the road, turning the rig upside down. How he was trapped in the cab as the gas poured out and then exploded.

  They say he was probably unconscious when it happened, but nobody knows for sure. Mom didn’t want me to hear the details, or read the report from his company, but I had to know. I had to, because my imagination made it even worse than the report, which concluded he perished in less than thirty seconds.

  T
hirty seconds can be an eternity if you’re inside a fire. Believe me, I know. That’s probably how long it takes to get all the way down the access road, which is only a few hundred yards.

  It finally levels out at the intersection with a paved road.

  I scream, “Which way?” and Freddy points to the left. We barrel down the middle of the road—a real road, not a trail—hitting fifty miles an hour on the speedometer. Pedal all the way to the floor, with me hunched over the wheel, urging it to go even faster. That old machine purring like it’s young and brand-new. Maybe it thinks we’re on a battlefield in Korea, but wait, machines can’t think, can they?

  This one can, in my imagination, because it was like the Jeep took over. I was holding the wheel, but the Jeep was steering because I was so distracted by the exploding trees that I couldn’t think straight.

  I could hear Delphy and Freddy chanting, “Go! Go! Go!” but it was like something in a dream. Like they were part of a soundtrack my dad used to play, a thrilling passage that for years I thought was called “Flight of the Falconries.” I used to imagine flocks of falcons diving into battle, claws outstretched, but it was never falcons at all. It was something from old Norse folktales called Valkyries. Female angels of death who ride into the battlefield, deciding who will live, and who will die, and who will go to heaven.

  I wasn’t ready for heaven. None of us were. We wanted to live, and it was the Jeep that helped us, never hesitating as that seventy-year-old engine hit RPMs that under normal circumstances would make it seize up. That day it ran cool and smooth, and somehow it kept accelerating—okay, that was me, standing on the pedal as we headed downhill—and we flew down that road something beautiful, catching up with the flames and passing them, blowing through clouds of hot black smoke and emerging unscathed.

  Well, not quite. Burning cinders lit my hair on fire again, and Delphy jumped to put out the flames with her bare hands, shouting that we’re going to make it, just keep going, you’re doing great, you crazy little brother! Go! Go! Go! And I’m driving through the pain and the fear and coming out the other side.

  Even now I have no idea if it was me or the Jeep that found our escape route. All I remember is that the road ended and the fire was catching up, surrounding us. We came off the paved road at sixty miles an hour, practically airborne, and then we were bouncing over a hard, grassy surface. I remember a couple of cottages flashing by and knew we were close to a lake, but I couldn’t see it through the seething clouds of hot black smoke.

  If we’d stopped on the shore, we’d have been toast, like all those cottages and cabins. But we didn’t. The Jeep never slowed down, and when the wind blew the smoke away, just for a second, there it was, right in front of us.

  A long dock heading straight out into that beautiful lake.

  A long dock that was as good as a road, wide enough for the Jeep, and we tore down that dock at full speed, racing like no tomorrow as the fire swept around the lake, turning everything to flame, incinerating an entire evacuated village.

  Maybe you heard how we flew off that dock and out into the lake and landed in the one and only spot where we had a chance to survive. Shallow enough so we couldn’t drown, and situated in exactly the right place. The Loon Lake Miracle Spot, they called it. The one place in the entire lake where the air was far enough from the fire so it was possible to breathe without searing our lungs.

  The water was only about three feet deep, but that was just enough to protect us, and to keep us cool as the rest of the world went up in flames. Two kids and an old man, sitting in a sunk Jeep with the water up to our armpits, laughing our heads off, glad to be alive.

  How cool is that?

  Delphy told me later that I was yelling, “Nobody dies! Nobody dies!” all the way down the mountain. Honestly, I don’t remember that part. All I remember is the tops of the trees exploding like artillery shells, and the flash of super-hot air that wanted to melt us, and Freddy clinging to the Jeep like his life depended on it. Which of course it did. They say at the core of a crown fire the temperature can exceed 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit. One breath of air that hot and you’re dead.

  Later I learned that the Great North Woods Fire was the largest ever in the history of the state, and that at times it spread almost as fast as the dry windstorms that pushed it. All we knew that day was that the fire kept chasing us, and no matter how fast we raced to get away, it was faster catching up.

  They tried to make out like I was a hero. Ha! Some hero. I was scared the whole time, from the very first day. There were lots of real heroes in the Great North Woods Fire. The long-haul trucker who drove his rig through ten miles of blazing highway to rescue his wife and children. That team of volunteer firefighters from Belfast who died trying to evacuate those people who had taken refuge in the church cellar. Dozens of real heroes. Hundreds, probably, and most of their stories were never heard.

  Personally, if a thing can be a hero, that old Jeep deserves a medal. By the way, the grandson of the man who owned the Jeep towed it out of the lake and had it completely rebuilt and presented to his grandfather, Captain Aldrich Brown, U.S. Army (Retired), on his ninetieth birthday. I know because I was invited to the birthday party. The old man looked so much like the young man in the photograph it was eerie. I guess running a logging operation for forty years keeps you in shape, because his old uniform still fit! The coolest thing was that after Captain Brown climbed into the Jeep to try it out, he saluted me.

  And then he handed me the ownership papers.

  That’s right. The Jeep is in our garage, under a dust sheet, waiting for me to turn sixteen. As for Delphy, we talk all the time, and we see each other whenever. Yesterday she told me she was in love with some guy she met on line—in the grocery store, ha ha, is how she put it.

  However it happened, good for her.

  We were both relieved to hear that the dirt bikers survived and were arrested for arson. Charles and James Binney, who destroyed dozens of homes and helped the wildfire spread, and whose hatred of outsiders landed them in jail.

  Good riddance, I say.

  Oh yeah, you’re probably wondering what happened with my mom. That’s a really long story, but the short version is, at the height of the fire she promised herself that if I survived, she’d complete rehab. Which she did. She’s back home now. Managed to keep her job at the physical therapy clinic, too, and has really thrown herself into it, helping other people. Says it takes her mind off feeling sorry for herself, and that’s a good thing. When she’s not working or looking after me, she’s out in her garden, weeding like crazy and bringing it back to life. Today a rosebush she thought was dead started to bloom.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her so happy.

  The truth is, she’s still pretty shaky about what happens next. I keep telling her, Mom, nobody knows what happens next until it happens. All we can do is take it one day at a time.

  I first heard about the devastating effects of wildfires from my mother. She had been a college student in Boston in the fall of 1947. That’s the year Maine burned from the mountains to the sea, and the smoke from those fires tinged the skies all over New England. Desperate for help, the state of Maine sent trucks to Boston to round up young men willing to join the battle. Hundreds did, but despite their best efforts, the fires were out of control. They swept through coastal towns like Bar Harbor, to the north, and destroyed most of Shapleigh and Waterboro, to the south. An eight-mile wall of flames threatened to reduce the community of Kennebunkport to ash. Hundreds of homes were lost, and the forests of Maine were changed forever, with effects that still linger into the present century.

  Later, friends of mine enlisted in hotshot crews in Montana, and they shared harrowing tales of their fight to contain fires that threatened to engulf the Bitterroot National Forest. They explained that going up against the Montana wildfires required courage, physical strength, strategy, and a certain amount of luck, much of it dependent on weather conditions.

  Wildfires
do not discriminate. They can erupt anywhere, if the conditions are right. In 2017, wildfires broke out in all fifty states. What sets them off? The vast majority are caused by humans. Drought and extreme weather conditions make fires much more likely, and one spark can turn a tinder-dry forest or grassland into a full-blown conflagration. Millions of acres of forest, and thousands of homes and structures, are lost to wildfires every year—and people lose their lives, including firefighters and other first responders. The U.S. Forest Service employs as many as ten thousand wildland firefighters during fire season, and they are joined by thousands of state and local firefighters. They all have the same mission: to save the lives of those threatened by fire, to prevent or contain wildfires, and to save structures when possible.

  Firefighters use many strategies to stop wildfires. Early detection can help manage the damage. On the ground, firefighters work tirelessly to stop the fire by hand, using chain saws, shovels, and other equipment to remove fuel from the path of the advancing flames. They use water trucks and hoses to wet down grass and trees in the path of the fire, and homes are sprayed to save them. As embers blow, firefighters try to prevent new outbreaks. The challenges can be unpredictable, overwhelming, and extremely dangerous. Fire trucks, bulldozers, and other big machines may be brought in. Large wildfires can also be fought from the air with planes and helicopters that drop fire retardant or scoop water from lakes or other bodies of water. Some “Super Scooper” aircraft can dump as much as 1,600 gallons per flight. When a fire can’t be otherwise reached, “smoke jumpers” sometimes parachute in. Their supplies are dropped nearby. More than 250 smoke jumpers fought fires in 2017.

  Three elements are needed for fire: fuel, oxygen, and a spark to set it off. Under certain conditions, wind and flames combine into a fire tornado. A big wildfire makes its own weather, sometimes creating hurricane-force winds. In a large fire, flame temperatures can exceed 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit. Fires can also spread at incredible speed, and wind can blow them any direction. Multiple reports said the 2018 Camp Fire in California was blown by wind gusts approaching 50 miles per hour, and 60 Minutes reported that “at one point the fire was spreading at a rate of one football field per second.”