The Million Year Romance

Dragon in the Land:

People and Mega-fire in California

• Episode One:
  Lightning and Smoke
• Episode Two:
  Remembrance of Fires Past
• Episode Three:
  Red Ball Sun
• Episode Four:
  The Running Battle
• Episode Five:
  Evacuations and Destinations
• Episode Six:
  Maze of Chaos
• Episode Seven:
  The Dragon in the West Village
• Episode Eight:
  Fire Camp
• Episode Nine:
  Man-dragon
• Episode Ten:
  Percent Contained
• Episode Eleven:
  Smart Work, Dumb Luck
• Episode Twelve:
  What To Do Before The Nightmare Comes True — Again

What's New

Writing

Dragon in the Land:
People and Mega-fire in California

by Howard V. Hendrix

Episode Ten:
Percent Contained

Joe Shaw’s nightmare doesn’t end until he falls asleep. He and the rest of the firefighters in the Shaver Lake Volunteer Fire Department have seen nearly twenty-three straight hours on the fire line by the time they are at last relieved by fire crews from Big Creek and Huntington – firefighters who have themselves already put out smaller fires in their own districts.

He hopes he has seen the worst this burn can throw at them. The dragon of wildfire that ravaged West Village went on to break through to Highway 168 in the area north of Toyon Road, near Linnet and Foxtail. Holding the line at 168, through the back end of the night and into the early morning, he and his fellow firefighters have learned what it is to stare the dragon in the eye, to feel its furnace breath in their faces.

Despite all the water and foam the firefighters have thrown against the blazes, they have seen houses and businesses stain the sky with the glare of their unstoppable immolation. Beneath stars failing with morning, they have stood witness to the horrific beauty and terrible roar of eighty-foot tall Ponderosa pines going up like Roman candles, shedding firebrands onto and across the asphalt of 168. In dawn light they have seen and heard those seeds of fire crackling and snapping and tinkling in the eerie emptiness of a major state road sealed off to all non-emergency traffic.

Some of those burning seeds make it across the highway to fall in duff and brush, igniting spot fires that must be put out lest the dragon leap the road and burn the East Village as well. They are luckier in the East than in the West Village. The roads in and out of East Village are wider, the homes and neighborhoods are more cleared of brush and fuels and prove to be significantly more defensible than those in the West Village were.

The greatest luck of all, though, has been the stillness of the air. The burning brands have not scattered nearly as far as they might have, and the firefront here has remained small enough that the blaze has not generated significant winds of its own. Still, attacking the spotfires on the ground and in tree branches, hitting them with streams of water, Pulaski fire-axes, McLeod duff-hoes – all of that has kept the exhausted firefighters more than a little busy throughout the morning and into the afternoon.

The day grows overcast, not just from palls of smoke but from extensive cloud cover building above the Sierra. To him and all the other sleep-deprived men and women caught in the hot work of putting out spotfires east of 168, those clouds are a high shade of relief.

By the time Joe is allowed to come off the line and get some shuteye, he seems to have been living on coffee, Gatorade, and bottled water for days. He is almost too tired to see straight.

From the Incident Commander he learns that he will have four hours for sleep before he’ll be required to return to the fire line. Cots have been set up in a temporary fire camp at the Cal Fire station on Dinkey Creek Road, to which he will now report. From the IC he also learns that, fortunately, there have been no fatalities in their area so far. Everyone has been successfully relocated from both West Village and East Village, under a mandatory evacuation order.

Most of the people voluntarily evacuated from north of the Villages have gone on up Highway 168 to the Sierra Summit ski area -- the same area to which people from Big Creek have also been voluntarily evacuated. Everyone south of the Villages and north of Pine Ridge is also under a voluntary evacuation guideline. The many who have chosen to follow that guidance have evacuated east along Dinkey Creek Road, out to Pacific Gas and Electric’s Helms Project properties near Wishon and Courtright Reservoirs.

Joe presumes that his wife Yolanda has evacuated out toward the Helms area, but when he tries to contact her via cell phone, he finds that both her cell phone number and their home phone number are unreachable. All local phonelines are busy.

He calls Yolanda’s sister Maria in Colorado – the person they agreed on as their point of contact in just such a local-overload emergency as this one. He is relieved to learn from Maria that Yolanda is safe and is indeed staying at the Red Cross Evacuation Shelter at the Helms site.

“Yolanda will be so thankful that you called,” says Maria. “She’s been worried sick about you.”

“I’m fine – just bone-tired. Any word on whether our house is still standing?”

“It was when she left, but I gather she’s counting on you for an update.”

“I’ll see what I can find out. I’ve got orders to get some rest now, and then be back on duty in a little less than four hours. Tell her it looks like things have started to turn a corner, at least in my little part of the big picture.”

Maria wishes Joe luck and agrees to keep passing on their messages. Waiting with his crew for a ride to the Cal Fire station, he talks to one of the firefighters from Big Creek. Although the fire crews have been successful in stopping the fire’s advance along Highway 168, they’re not through yet. A major blaze is still stomping around in the country behind Stevenson Mountain. Air attack, bulldozers, and backfire lines are all being used against it.

Eventually the Forest Service patrol pickup drops him and his fellow firefighters off at the impromptu Cal Fire station fire camp. By then it’s almost more than Joe can do to stagger across the parking area and plop down on a cot. No sooner does his head hit the pillow than he’s sound asleep.

And, it seems to him, almost as quickly three and a half hours have passed. One of his crewmates is shaking him awake for the return trip to the fire line. Under a heavily overcast evening sky through which thunder rumbles in the distance, he grabs coffee and a sandwich, to suck down on the drive back to the line.

This time, he and his crew will be cutting firelines around the base of Stevenson Mountain. They can see fire at the top of that mountain as they pull off Highway 168. As they pull to a stop, get out, and grab their Pulaskis, fire shovels, and McLeods, he feels a cool breeze blowing. It’s out of the northeast – and against the direction of the fire.

Trekking up the mountainside, he realizes that the forest here is more parklike than he expected. Whoever owns this land has thinned and control-burned it within the last few years. Even the canopy is broken enough that, when the first drizzle begins to fall, he feels a single drop, then several as the drizzle becomes a light but steady evening rain.

Cutting and grubbing through resinous low-growing mountain misery, and dirt, and dust, in a rainstorm, might seem like a nightmare to most people, but for Joe it’s a dream come true. The rain, the thinned forest, the shifted wind, the fact that the fire will have to climb down Stevenson Mountain to make any headway – all of these add up to the happy likelihood that the fire along this particular front will be mostly contained before morning.

And along with that comes the hope that, at last, Joe might just be seeing his wife again – and maybe even his home – before too very much longer.

All episodes were originally published in 2007 as a fire education series in the Mountain Press, the Sanger Herald, the Snowline Tiimes, and their sister publications covering the central California portion of the foothills and Sierra Nevada Mountains.

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