Way back when this effort began - which we can almost count in hours instead of days, my thinking was that I'd find a welcome release in writing that would then allow me retain some level of sanity and clarity of thought. To prevent the loss of "too much" perspective. Given that I didn't start off with "too much" perspective, I don't really know how much there is to spare nor what might happen should I find myself running short. You can imagine my dilemma.
I also figured that I'd be writing a little bit about what's going on over here, and interspersing those entries with things that happened long ago that I (or someone) thought ought be immortalized in a medium such as this. Today is such a day. There's little to add about Temporary Life In Italy just now, and what little there is can be neatly summed: G continues to improve; D and I continue to endure; the weather is still hot; everything is going well. D reminded me today that stressful times bring out the best and the worst in people. She mentioned that amphora thing to remind me that I haven't completely gone off my rocker; and I'm still sitting here, hours later, wondering at what time she might demonstrate her worst. Something to look forward to.
Behind every good man is an even better woman.
Not long ago I was amazed to see that this blog had reached 200 visits. In the last 24 hours there have been nearly a hundred more and views are now coming in from seven countries on three continents. In the midst of what have been some trying times, this is a much appreciated ego boost. Thanks, all. I couldn't ask to be in better company.
So. At this point, you're up to date on the medical events over here as well as my thanks for your interest. If that's all you're after, you need not read further. Starting now, I'm heading off on a tangent. There’s a lot to this, and if I were better prepared I’d 1) make it into a few installments or chapters; and 2) make it funnier. There’s a lot of room for humor in here. But I also want to keep it somewhat concise, as neither of us has a whole lot of time to spare with these trivial blog things. (And yes, I realize that if I stopped talking about keeping this short that it might actually be short. Pff.)
While I was in college [this is called "university" by people outside the US] money was tight. This is true for most college students, though I had friends whose financial challenges consisted of waiting for a substantial check from home to arrive in the mail each month. At the end of one school year, a friend of mine suggested that we sign on to become Wildland Firefighters. The pay was pretty good, and with the very long hours we thought this would be a fine way to earn some much needed money to get through the following school year. And so we did it.
The training consisted of us learning about different kinds of equipment, how to guess which way a fire might go (this is not as simple as "downwind" or "uphill" or even "where it hasn't already burnt stuff." You'd be surprised what fire can do).
This was before people had cell phones or GPS, so keeping in contact with family was very sketchy. To make things even trickier, we never knew where we were going until minutes before we departed. Of course, we never knew when we might depart, either, so each of us kept our gear packed and ready to go, next to the front door. Bills were paid in advance, laundry was done ahead of time, and life at home consisted of having as much fun as possible because - literally - at any moment you could be called away for a period of time ranging from one day to three and a half weeks. Federal law stated that after fourteen consecutive days of work we had to get one day off; and that after seven more consecutive days we were required to have three days off. These rules were duly enforced by the casual question "y'all taking time off like ya should?" to which our response was a convincing "uhh yeah."
There were rules about things like "fresh drivers," meaning that if you'd just worked, for example, 120 hours in one week that they didn't want you to then drive a three ton truck full of chainsaws for twelve hours overnight on your way back home. Naturally, we always had [cough] fresh [cough cough] drivers on hand [cough].
The first [post-training] thing you learn as a Wildland Firefighter is that fire is really scary. Not for you (you're super macho and eager to be near - or in - the fire), but for the people who handle funding and resource allocation. Should a fire threaten a human population, state and federal entities will throw endless amounts of money around. If it costs a lot, it must be effective, right? Upon arrival at a typical fire camp, you'll usually see several million dollars worth of firefighting equipment, (if you were extremely fortunate) tractor trailers converted into kitchens or showers or laundry facilities, dozens (if not hundreds) of portable toilets, and scores of firefighters.
Firefighters, at least during the time that I was among them, came from a variety of different backgrounds. Many were displaced timber workers. In the Pacific Northwest (where I lived and my company was based), timber had been a very strong industry for a very long time. As the trees thinned out, timber workers were displaced - part of this was the result of a long and bitter battle between the timber industry, who had been cutting trees down on publicly owned land for decades, and conservationists, who believed both that publicly owned resources shouldn't belong to private industry; and that industry ought to leave some forest areas intact for the rest of us and for subsequent generations. I'm drastically simplifying this whole 'forest debate' issue - it was a really big deal. For an excellent read on the subject, pick up a copy of Showdown At Opal Creek. It might be the only in depth book that people on both sides of the issue feel accurately depicts their own perspective. More on Opal Creek another day.
Anyway, many Firefighters shared the perspective of conservationists while equally many were former loggers who had lost their livelihoods, thanks in part, to our efforts. Now throw in a few score of National Guardsmen, and several busloads of inmates from various state prisons. Keep them in close quarters for a week or three, living on institutional food (most of us carried our own tabasco - it makes everything taste better) with three or four hours of sleep per night and you have a recipe for excitement. Fistfight over who gets the last paper cup for their morning instant coffee? Sure. Someone getting tipped over while in a portable toilet because they snore too loud? Yep. Members of each group had reason to dislike members of most of the other groups. With so little sleep and such long hours, we didn't really need any reason to dislike one another. Everyone pretty much disliked everything. Despite this, we were somehow able to work together (usually) and I often found myself in the odd position of readily allowing my life to depend on someone I completely disliked and hoped to never meet again. It was during this time that I learned that I can trust someone even if there's no single thing about them that I like. But I don't really like anyone that I don't trust. One of those A equals B and B equals C but C doesn't equal A things. Or something like that. Algebra isn't my strong suit. Nor is logic.
About half of the fire camps didn't have showers. About one in four didn't have kitchens. Thus, there were many times that we'd be out for two or three weeks at a time without once having a shower nor a hot meal. Of course, we each had only one Nomex [fireproof] shirt, so clean clothes were also out of the picture. We were a snarly, smelly, rude bunch of crass and impatient toughs. We were also really fit, which was kind of cool.
There were federal crews, which consisted of federal employees. These had the nicest gear and the newest trucks. There were state crews, which consisted mostly of firefighters who usually worked in rural areas but had been called to whatever conflagration deemed their presence. There were military crews, made up of young men and women who'd been assigned to this typically civilian activity and could work all day long but often didn't have any relevant training nor experience (which did little for their status among the rest of us, I'm afraid), and there were the inmate crews. I never did work alongside the inmates.
At the bottom of the barrel were those of us who worked for private contractors. We had the crummiest gear and the worst trucks, and the additional burden of being in competition with other private contractors. Whoever did the best job stayed on site the longest, and thereby earned the most money. It was in our best [financial] interest to work hard. Unfortunately, some companies took this competition a little too far. I can honestly say that we never sabotaged anyone else's vehicles, equipment nor work. I can also honestly say that spending three days setting up gear in the woods only to find that someone has demolished your water pumps and cut your firehose into bits is beyond frustrating. Should you complain to anyone in the command center, you're quickly identified as a whiner and sent home. Same thing if someone removes the drain plugs from all the oil pans in your trucks. I was stunned to realize that we had to smuggle spare ignition parts and cases of engine oil into our camps in order that we could undo any sabotage that might happen in the night. Fortunately, firearems were strictly forbidden in the camps by anyone other than law enforcement. Even if you had a concealed weapons permit, you were not allowed to bring your guns to the firefight. This was enforced every bit as effectively as the "day off" and "fresh driver" requirements.
A single season of firefighting holds more than enough activity, treachery, idiocy, heroism, drama, luncacy and profanity to fill a book. Indeed, there are several books already written on the subject. I've already typed up more today than I intended - I set out to tell a story of one single night, but because I want you to have some frame of reference I went ahead and filled out the preceding paragraphs.
One afternoon, my crew was called to a fire that had started the prior night, just about an hour from Eugene, Oregon (which is where I lived and we were based). The area to the east of Eugene - near Oakridge - often experienced dry lightning in the summer months, and after many decades of the ill-advised practice of fire suppression, those strikes no longer caused brush fires that would flash through an area and leave big trees intact. These were fires that fed on substantial amounts of fuel that had accumulated over decades. Twigs burn in seconds and trees don't mind. Downed logs take much longer, and the fire stays in one place long enough to dry out - and ignite - standing trees. It's a little ironic that the reason our forest fires include such complete burns is that we've spent so much time preventing fires in the first place.
Anyway, we went up into the hills outside Oakridge and were very promptly dispatched to some area on some hill, accessible by a logging road. We drove to the top of the hill, with the task of moving downhill as we made a fire line that would meet with another crew's fireline that was moving up the hill toward us. A few miles away there was a fire that was expected to move in our direction - putting fire lines in place is how you go about containing a fire (and they like to put lines behind and alongside the fire, too - not just out in front). The idea here is that you cut a swath through whatever the forest has in front of you, then dig into the dirt until there's nothing burnable (that is, no fuel) between where the fire will be allowed to burn, and where it won't. This is the equivalent of drawing a line in the sand and daring your opponent to cross it.
We worked in a line, with different roles along the way.
The first firefighter is the sawyer. He (or she, though I never did see a female sawyer) stomps into the woods and cuts down anything that's standing up. He walks a fairly straight line and cuts whatever he can reach to his left and his right, with a 36 inch (that's about 7cm short of one meter, for the metric thinkers) blade fitted to his chainsaw.
Next in line is the swamper. This person's job is to hold things so that the sawyer can cut them, and to move things out of the way once they're cut. Crew members who have scars caused by chainsaws are most likely sawyers (or former sawyer who have learnt their lesson and realize the wisdom in carrying, say, a shovel).
After the swamper are a few people with pulaskis - those things that have a narrow hoe blade on one side of the head, and an axe on the other. Though these are the most macho looking of the hand tools, they don't make a very good hoe nor axe.
Then come the grub hoe people. These hoes are stout enough that you can swing them with your full force a million times, and heavy enough that they'll cut through roots and branches a few inches in diameter.
Last (and smartest, I think) are people with shovels. They throw all the loose dirt and bits of fuel out of the pathway (which is now ten feet/three meters across) and leave behind nothing but mineral soil. Something that won't burn. A line in the sand.
My job was that of swamper. So I had a backpack full of gasoline and two stroke oil, and was busying myself by staying as close to my sawyer as I could, without getting hit by his chainsaw. I kept one hand in the middle of his back most of the time so he'd have an idea where I was. With a crew of twenty, our pace was As Fast As The Sawyer Can Walk Downhill And Cut Everything Smaller Than 8 Inches Across. We managed about two miles per hour, which is really, really fast.
As our shift had started in the evening - about 7pm - we were destined to work overnight. This was fine with us, as it's not nearly so hot at night as it is during the day. It was dark before long. We stomped down the hill, leaving a nice wide swath of dirt, and in short order met up with the crew that had been working their way uphill. Once we met, they went back down the hill, and our job transistioned. Now, we'd lay out some hose, fire up the pump that was at the top of the hill next to a zillion gallons of water that had been brought in by tanker, soak the 'not to be burned' side of our fire line with water, and as the fire approached us, we'd spray it with more water to slow it down. When this works, it's really fun. Once you stop the fire, you can just sit there and look at it and take turns sleeping (which isn't a good idea, but that's what we usually did anyway).
The problem was that when the sun went down, the temperature changed, and a bunch of magic weather stuff that has to do with inversions happened. During the day, the inversion kept the smoke low, near the ground. After the sun went down, the heat of the fire poked a hole in the inversion layer and a Whole Lot of smoke went upward. If you've used a fireplace, you know the importance of a good draw up the chimney, and you also know how that creates a nice strong breeze toward the fire. Because our fire was bigger than the one in your fireplace, our wind was substantial; which gave the fire lots of new oxygen, which made it feel all bold and daring. Below us, down the hill, we watched the fire burn across the fire line as though none of us had done any work to stop it.
This wasn't good.
Now the fire was stronger than ever, and it was on both sides of the line, with nothing between it and us other than Fuel. We began to evacuate. All of the people and all of the gear went uphill. I was thinking about how cool it was to be carrying a plastic jug of gasoline through all this when we finally reached the landing above. We found that our vehicles had already been evacuated, which meant that we were now on foot.
This wasn't good either.
But it really wasn't that bad. We'd done a pretty good job of soaking the area around our line, so we walked back down the hill until we found a place that looked tame enough that we could run through the fire to the other side, where it had already burned. It's much safer in "the black" than it is in "the green." We had some trouble, though. While the fire between us and the black was only five or six feet (two meters) high in some areas, that was enough to give a few of us pause. As the fire moved up the hill on the green side (and it was much, much hotter there) some of us didn't like being faced with running through the fire or standing in it. Those of us with long hair tucked it into our hardhats or under our shirts and we ran. We ran sidehill across the loose debris we'd tossed aside as we dug our fire line, through flames nearly as high as our shoulders, through ankle deep embers that would have been perfect for roasting marshmallows at the beach.
This would probably be the worst possible time to trip and fall.
We got to the other side of the front and continued on until we found an area of ground that had burned thoroughly enough that we could sit and rest. A few people wanted to sleep, but we really couldn't - the problem now was falling trees. It's amazing how readily great big old trees will fall over after a fire has passed by. We sat, eyes upward in the dark night, and every minute or two we'd hear one start to crack. We'd jump to our feet and try to guess where this falling tree might be, and hope that if it were nearby that we'd be able to get out of its way. It’s easy to tell – when you hear the tree hit the ground and you realize you’re not under it, you know you’re safe. ‘til the next one, anyway.
Eventually, we all really did feel pretty safe. The fire had burned through this area pretty well and we could see daylight teasing its way upward to the east. Once it was light, we knew they'd send our trucks back up and we'd be able to get back to camp where we could brag about being 'burned over' while dining on the finest powdered eggs and potato flakes.
About the time that we could turn off our headlamps and rely on the dim morning light, the winds changed and we heard the familiar sound that pine trees make when they're crowning out. A tree that's "crowning" is one whose pine needles or leaves (or whatever fuel it grows that will burn in a single moment) have ignited. It burns from the bottom to the top like a roman candle; and trees that are a hundred feet tall can be destroyed in a matter of seconds. Crowning produces a huge amount of heat and wind; and once finished, the fire often remains to continue burning away at things like bark and branches. Just as often, the needles burn off and the skeleton remains, charred but without flames. It’s a big whooshing roaring kind of sound, with a lot of ‘campfire crackle’ thrown in.
The fire had switched direction and was now burning the canopy toward us. In this scenario, there really isn't anywhere to run - you can NOT run faster than a fire, regardless of what Tarzan may have demonstrated. Forest fires outrun horses, which can totally outrun me or you. People started yelling. A few ran off (which you should never do). As the fire came toward us, I sat next to an old hippie named Bob, who had leaned back against the slope of the hill, and we watched the fire approach. In very long and slow words, I said "Hollllllllly Shit, Bob, this is innnnntense. But I'm not going to panic until you do."
We stood up and watched the fire approach. It makes a roaring noise, and you can see smoke rising through the trees. Beneath the fire, burning branches fall to the ground. And the canopy above burns. Everything above you is fire. It’s hot enough to singe the hair off your arms. It’s loud enough that you can’t hear a person yelling from ten feet away. It’s exhilarating.
Before it got too loud for us to hear one another, Bob looked at me and said “I’m not one to panic, Cameron. But this might be our day.”
Words to live by.
The fire did as we knew it would; it burned directly over our heads; roaring loudly down at the helpless fools we were, and drawing oxygen so quickly that when we inhaled, we filled our lungs with whatever air contains that isn’t oxygen. Not useful.
So we scratched a hole into the ground, stuffing our faces down and pulled oxygen from the dirt (this actually works pretty well and the air is nice and cool). Bob and I took turns. One would bend over and stick his face in the dirt, sucking in some of that sweet sweet oxygen, while the other would brush burning twigs off his shirt. Others did the same.
In only a few moments, the fire was gone again. It would sound really dramatic for me to tell you that we were trapped there for hours, but it wasn’t even minutes. We were stuck on the hill overnight, but really only trapped under the fire for as much time as it took for each of us to get about three turns of breathing in the dirt. Maybe ninety seconds.
Ninety seconds.
Exhilarating.
Cheers –
Cameron
