Forest Fire: Report from the Field, with pics

I went to the barricade at 7:00 this morning and the sign was clear:  ROAD CLOSED.  Like a good girl I went home, for a while.  By 8:30 I checked with postmaster Dean about the road conditions.  He knows everything.  He suggested that I try again, indicating that Scott, the Deputy Sheriff, was escorting people through the maze of fire response vehicles and equipment.  I badly needed to get to town. 

I arrived at the barricade finding it manned.  One of the two firefighters had partially opened the barricade and motioned me to stop.  The only reason he had opened the barricade was to let a large 18-wheeler fire vehicle through.  He did not open the barricade for me, but I pled my case anyway.  “The Sheriff, I understand, is escorting people through.”  He responded with a wonderful smile, white teeth glistening from his cinder-covered face.  “Scott passed this way two minutes ago.  Hurry on through and catch up to him.” 

Wow!  That was easy!  Blessed relief!

I caught Scott in about a quarter of a mile.  He was parked in the road, exchanging contact information with a firefighting friend.  I pulled in behind him, hopped from my car, and realized that I was surrounded by fire response vehicles and firefighters who had been on the line for at least 15 hours.  Some were sleeping on the asphalt road in the shade of their trucks.  No one seemed to mind my presence.  They were too tired to be disturbed.

Scott asked if I had run his barricade.  By his tone I was really glad I hadn’t.  He assured me that he would get me through in a few minutes.  We now had the 18-wheeler and a smaller truck behind us.  I had assumed that Scott would lead us all through the fire maze.  We traveled 100 feet when he pulled off to the left and motioned me to follow him.  The two trucks passed, obviously needing no escort.  My escort got out of his truck and called to me “grab your camera.”  I grabbed my camera and joined him, standing on the edge of a deep canyon overlooking the fire.  Scott pointed and yelled “look!”  Within a second, a helicopter rose up the canyon wall to within 30 feet of us.  I snapped madly at a moving target with my camera.  It’s hard to know now what excited me more:  getting such close-up pictures of this event or standing in the middle of the Herculean effort that goes into stopping a fire.

New teams of firefighters were being shuttled in.  I watched one heavily-worked crew magically appear from the depths of the canyon.  I know the terrain and realized that they may have just climbed 1,000 feet to the road.  They were silent and moving slowly, heavy with exhaustion.  I was moved by the human price that is paid to save life as we know it.  I felt a lump form in my throat, realizing that in my haste to get to town, I had the privilege to spend a few moments with enumerable, nameless heros. 

 

Scott escorted me to the end of the maze where I blew him a kiss and then put in an hour of driving time trying to absorb the power and impact of what I had just observed.