What is it Really Like to Fight Fire in the Wilderness?

A Day Fighting Wildland Fire

Copyright 2001 RBJ

A bright artificial sun protruded into my dreams as our Crew Boss shoved his headlamp in my face and told me to get my ass out of the sack. Four-thirty hours came way too quickly. In the darkness, 20 people slithered out of two or three nested rectangular white "disposable" sleeping bags. These now contained polyester synthetic fill, which was much warmer than the old, multiple layers of butcher paper. The slightly acrid smell of dirty Nomex fire resistant clothing filled our nostrils as we pulled on shirts and pants over cotton underwear. After three weeks on fires, modesty had dissolved and been replaced by indifference. Once everyone had thrown on sweatshirts or yellow Nomex field jackets, we staggered with minimal conversation toward breakfast.

The Fire Camp was laid out in a typical fashion, designated sleeping areas conveniently adjacent to constantly droning high wattage diesel generators. Food service area crammed next to the medical unit, adjacent to the Incident Command Post (ICP) (where the Incident Commander and his minions hang out, drinking endless gallons of coffee). The Porta-Potties are usually full and placed upwind from the food service area. Other critical services include Supply unit; Ground Support unit; Security unit; Time unit (calculating all our overtime and hazardous duty pay, very important) and the Showers. All these are never situated in quite the same juxtaposition to one another, it depends on the terrain and how confused they wish to keep the firefighters.

We are half a mile from the food unit, which allowed us to trudge a while in the icy gray of pre-dawn and build up some body heat. Our canteens had frozen solid that night. Our Crew Boss traditionally drug us out of our warm beds half an hour earlier than most crews so when we reached the serving trailer, the line was only 10 minutes long. Breakfast consisted of piles of buck-sliced bacon, thick slabs of ham, sausage patties oozing grease, scrambled eggs of questionable origin, toast and bagels slathered with peanut butter and Smuckers, wrapped in a napkin and stashed in a pocket for lunch, hash browned potatoes, and maybe some thick, sticky flapjacks. This accompanied by the unending stream of coffee, milk, juice, soft drinks, and the occasional hot tea for those grunts with more refined taste. Food units are independent contractors hired at fairly extravagant rates to provide 2500 calories per meal per person. They do this with creativity, though not by following the heart-smart eating guidelines.

After breakfast, we throw together our gear for the shift. Our grungy yellow daypack with accompanying military web belt slung with 3 or 4 quarts of water contains all the essentials. Foremost, of course, our compact, aluminized fabric, heat resistant, cocoon shaped fire shelters with which you cover yourself should the inferno choose to overwhelm your position. Dig your face down into the dirt, suck for oxygen and try to control your claustrophobic fear as pinpricks of deadly orange light show you where the holes in your shelter are. We also carry our sack lunches and breakfast time food booty, extra socks, earplugs, smokes for those that do, ponchos or space blankets, map and compass, first aid kits, moleskin for blisters, extra bandanas, maybe a camera. Not too much weight though, much of the line we'll be digging might require us to keep that lump of yellow pig iron on our backs. We're still wearing the stiff, soot and sweat encrusted nomex shirts and pants that we've been wearing for three days. We now add a plastic hardhat, leather gloves (turned inside out so that the seams don't rub and cause bloody blisters to erupt on our hands), goggles, bandana around the neck and maybe one on the head (hankie head). Finally, the firefighter’s trademark, our frozen stiff fire boots. Experienced folks usually have "Whites", although those with narrow feet prefer "Buffalo" brand. Newbie’s or occasional firefighters usually have a nondescript discount store brand, which inevitably sheds one or both soles after several miles of walking or an hour of digging line. Many soles are attached by adhesives, which don't stand up well to walking through hot coals.

We secure out sleeping spot by surrounding it with pink plastic flagging tied from tree to bush to tree around our chosen spot like a pink palisade. All our other gear is stashed in our bigger Red Backpacks and piled in the center of the spot forming what must appear viewed from the air to be a big, bright red boil on the earth. Usually this is all the protection our gear requires in camp, the security unit wanders about and protects our belongings. There is actually a greater chance of it getting burned up than ripped off. Wildfires burn up fire camps on a disturbingly regular basis.

We head toward our mobilization point, wondering whether we will be hiking or driving or flying today. The residents of the Command Post; Operations Section folks, and Plans Section staff determine crew assignments. They hold a briefing held just prior to the shift which is attended by various supervisors from the field, in our case our Strike Team Leader, Crew Boss and their Squad Bosses. Of course these instructions usually don't correlate with what will actually happen to us that day. Wildfire managers try to make sense of sometimes indiscernible relationships between the multitudinous components of a fire ecosystem. A high art, whose masters earn their knowledge with toil on the fireline. But, then you throw in the political ramifications of a burn-out that escapes or an increase in air pollution levels due to a prescribed burn and decisions based on experience and analytical analysis are sometimes supplanted by politics and uninformed paranoia. Fire ecosystem management by political proxy is like having a PPO lawyer decide what medication your child should take for an illness.

We are lucky on this day and will be transported by massive National Guard "Deuce and a Half" trucks to our drop off point, (DP#4) in this case. Riding in the back of these troop carriers, with no top, on an early Oregon morning, is a whole new adventure in wind chill. We are now wishing we had all those extra clothes we left in our red packs, so that we wouldn't have to carry them. We huddle together, attempting to remain warm-blooded. The young pimply-faced kid / National Guardsman driving our conveyance thinks it's a Ferrari. We slide around corners, digging dirt furloughs and throwing up curtains of dust for the crew behind us to inhale, getting a start on lung congestion for today. The roads are twelve feet wide, newly created that morning by a Cat D-9. Most of us ignore the jolts and enjoy the scenery. Firefighting is a great way to travel on the taxpayer's nickel and see our Nation's wildlands. Detracting from this, the fact that much of what we get to see is recently incinerated and the grand vistas are generally covered with smoke for most of our stay.

Luckily, this bothers us not, as we arrive at our drop point. Our simple, but demanding day is about to start. We jump off the truck, mount up our forty pounds of gear, and move up the trail at a mile eating pace. The inexperienced (usually youngsters) always take the lead and blaze upward at a fever pitch, using up their adrenaline all at once. Young heroes on a quest for the dragon. Those with a bit more savvy, place one foot in front of the other, at a pace that lets you talk, watching for deadly falling snags as we ascend. Twelve hours hence, when the newbie’s are dragging butt, the slow paced walkers, usually with a bit of grey in their hair, still continue.

After chewing up five miles of old catline we reach our assigned spot. The beginning of a new catline running upward diagonally left across the 35-degree slope. We're to "make it pretty", i.e. drag all the burnable debris out of the line, so that mineral earth presents a non-burnable area to stop the fire's spread. We must also trim overhanging branches, removing the possibility of fire spread through areas where the tree crowns touching each other. Frankly, in these stands of mature Lodgepole Pine, the fire is not spreading by ground fire, but by embers from the fire front being propelled up into the sky, caught in the massive convection currents produced at the fire's head. These embers will travel through the air up to a quarter of a mile, and some will land in the tinder dry underbrush of the unburned forest beyond our puny line and start the fire's march all over again. To avert this, after clearing the cat line we deploy our crew back into the woods on the side away from the fire to look for those embers and the spot fire they cause. Being surrounded by tons of unburned fuel on a steep slope makes us extremely nervous and we recommend to the Division Superintendent that he consider moving us to a safer area. He needs this area covered and refuses. Can't look bad for the upper echelon and the press hovering on the fringes, trying to catch a taste of the real danger

The fire approaches, spewing a column of writhing black and gray smoke, as we look nervously to our designated safety zone, a small rock outcrop big enough to safely accommodate one third of the people here. In addition, the zone is surrounded by 120-foot tall lodgepole pine trees desiccated and ready to burn and then fall upon anyone stupid enough to ensconce themselves in the safety zone. We again indicate our displeasure and the Division Sup ignores us. At this point the fire has hooked around below us and is burning uphill, accelerating, putting us in a very tenuous position. All but three of our crew moves to the safety zone and most of us are fondling our fire shelters and rehearsing in our minds the procedure for shelter deployment (shake it open; step inside; kneel down; don’t let the violent winds produced by the head of the fire blow it away from you or you die). The three absent have been scouting up above us and are picked off the top of the ridge by helicopter about ten minutes later, just before the fire shoots up a small drainage and emolates that spot on the ridge. Out Crew Boss utters a "screw this", and leads us down into an adjacent meadow, complete with no trees to fall on us and a stream running through the bottom. The Division boss is screaming when we leave, as his misguided authority over us evaporates. Our Crew Boss turns away and says, "let’s go."

We manage to skirt the still burning ridge, get back to our Drop Point and move down the road prior to the fire's run up the ridge. Three Cat D-9 Dozers burned up. This keeps that Division Sup so occupied, that we never hear word one about our abandoning the Safe Zone. Cheated death again.

Lunch break! We find shade and soft places to recline. Standard lunches are opened. They include small fruit juice, really green small apples or oranges, two sandwiches made with bread the consistency of reclaimed Kleenex fibers; cheese of indeterminate origin; and meat, usually ham or compressed loaf slices with iridescent sheen that we refer to as mystery meat; and the hallowed candy bar. Previously they would put mayonnaise on the sandwiches back at camp at the beginning of shift, but by lunch the sandwiches were crawling away on their own. Most of us eat the peanut butter and jelly bagels from breakfast and pick among the brown bag offerings. Mystery meat is especially good for the "stick to someone else's pack" game. After eating, we try to catch some shut-eye. Half a shift awaits.

After lunch and snooze our Crew Boss checks in with our Strike Team Leader, who immediately finds another assignment for us clear on the other side of the Division. No transport available, so we have to hoof it six or so miles. Its steep terrain and many of us are used to lower altitude, so even with steady paced walking, it's still drudgery. We continue up the hill, one foot in front of the other, thinking, I'm here again, why do I do this to myself? Maybe for the ability to traverse wildlands where few have trod. To live life at its elemental level, no worries hard physical labor, eating, crapping, showers, sleeping, and the stories of other fires and other firefighters which we pass along to the next generation. With that small, perpetually denied possibility of horrible red glowing death always wedged in the tiny corner of our minds. Quick (relatively), heroic, and fulfilling. No waste as our basic components are separated out and distributed back into our world's forever regenerating circle of life.

We reach the division's other side and begin a holding operation on a line some other crew had created. We patrol the fireline as another crew ignites the vegetation on the fire’s side of the line. This “burning out” will remove fuel from the path of the fire and hopefully bring this incident to a close. We stand on the line and face into the twilight, away from the glow of the approaching fire, as the sun’s red iridescence descends below the valley rim. Looking for spot fires caused by embers from the burnout shooting over our heads. No additional fires erupt and the burnout crew moves on, extending the blackened area. Twilight fades to night and the cold night air descends. Slowly, all the fuel at our backs is consumed and the fires die. Needles of cold penetrate our sweat soaked clothing and we wish for the shift to end. The adrenaline that has sustained us fades in our bloodstream and the innate boredom of much of firefighting slowly pervades our thoughts. Word comes down that we are to work a night shift, continuing to hold this area of the line for another 12 hours or so. The expectation of more money doesn't offset the prospect of a shivering night, once the possibility and danger of being overrun is diminished. One of the cardinal rules of fire is to never sleep on the line; too many things can flare up. Reality can be much different. We space out along the line, alone with our thoughts and the crystal sky. Shimmering waves of light cast from the stars illuminate our little corridor of mineral earth surrounded on one side by a macrocosm of life and on the other by it’s blackened, incinerated components. But, shortly after each conflagration, scorched earth comes alive with plants and animals again. Every time.

For now it is enough to be concerned about right here, right now. The Tao of firefighting. We line out a few hundred yards apart up and down the fireline. We can see two people in either direction and thus can allow every other person to catch some shuteye with relative safety. We settle in, anticipating the delivery of some previously warm food and drinks, which eventually come. The evening stretches on, we have survived the day’s “burning period”, a time of low humidity and high temperatures. Nothing to do but persevere until morning. Time for introspection, communing with that stark individual simplicity and lack of clutter that the wild and firefighting affords. We scoop out small holes for our butts and put on any other clothing we have, to resist the night's chill. Never are the stars so clear and immediate. My turn to sleep, I pull a smoldering log close to my belly for warmth and curl into a fetal position on my pack, for insulation. I drift in and out of the cycle of intermittent sleep and standing watch, until the stars begin to fade and the rosy signature exploding across the east draws us into the morning and a chance to do it all again.