Fire

Betsy Howell

I went on my first wildfire assignment when I was 20, and the experience came as a surprise. I had graduated with a wildlife management degree in the mid-1980s and immediately went to work as a biologist for the U.S. Forest Service. My job entailed surveying the native fauna, writing plans to mitigate the effects of timber harvest on wildlife, planting trees, and building fences. Fighting fire had never figured into the equation, even in my imagination. But as soon as I learned about the possibility, I desperately wanted to go. My world then was so uncomplicated, and like many people who grew up with Bambi and Smokey, I didn’t want to see the lush, green woods turn to blackened moonscapes. The Forest Service obliged quickly, sent me to fire school, and I became a fully-qualified member of the Forest Service regular fire crews.

Clear Creek Fire, Umatilla National Forest, northeast Oregon, 1986

I sat at a rickety, fold-up table and ate my first fire camp meal. Our crew had arrived at Desolation Meadows that morning. We were in the heart of the Blue Mountains after driving all night from western Oregon. The incident commanders assigned us the night shift, and the day passed slowly.  Generators whirred, helicopter motors whined, diesel trucks idled making sleep impossible. My eagerness to get “out on the line” shriveled with the heat and my gathering exhaustion. 

“Maybe I’ll get some coffee,” I said to my crewmates that night at dinner. They were sizing up the cold roast beef and withered string beans on their plates. 

“Don’t bother,” said Tom, a fisheries technician from Indiana, “you could read a newspaper through it.”  I sat back down. 

“You guys better eat up,” said Dan, a veteran firefighter and Tom’s boss. “The shift is 12 hours. And the lunches they give out are not nice.” 

“What do you mean?” I asked. 

“Two words,” said Dan, his mouth full of potatoes. “Mystery meat.” 

“What?” 

“Mystery meat and white bread. That’s the sandwich. Throw in an apple and a candy bar and that’s what you’ll be eating for the next 12 to 15 hours.” 

That evening, we rode in an old school bus for two hours through open forests of ponderosa pine and sagebrush. Soon, the trees began to disappear in the haze as the smoke increased. When we finally stopped, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Whatever my expectations had been, the scene before me surpassed them.  The ground crawled with fire, while trees burned like Roman candles and large branches and the tops of conifers crashed to the ground. Insidious yellow-red flames lapped at wood that had been drying and piling up for decades as the Forest Service suppressed the natural forces of fire. I’m in Hell, I thought. The violence scared me, and this fear, completely unexpected, drove my fatigue away.

We began digging line—scraping a three-foot-wide path free of all vegetation and debris—designed to stop the ground fire. Hour after hour, we bent over, opening up the earth. I drank water. The water seeped from my body in great rivulets of sweat. Finally, we came to a natural fire break—a long, wide rocky slope. 

We needed to get above to continue our line. The angle of the slope forced me to crawl on all fours. I could see nothing but swirling smoke in my headlamp. It was after midnight and the people above and below me had vanished into the dark, thick haze. 

Suddenly, someone high above yelled, “Rock!”  Like an echo, each person in turn below shouted the warning. The stone thudded down the hillside. Shining my headlamp upslope, nothing except the windy movements of the smoke came into view. Not knowing what to do, I did nothing. The rock would be coming close to me because somebody directly above me had knocked it loose. When the shoebox-sized stone finally rolled past a yard away, I breathed a sigh of relief.  

“That was a close one!” I shouted to Dan after catching up with him. He nodded. We looked like two bandits with our bandanas stretched over our noses and mouths. The fire hissed and popped and falling Ponderosa pine made the ground shudder. At the top of the rocks, we continued digging. At 1 a.m., our crew boss announced lunch. 

I ate my mystery meat sandwich and drank great gulps of lemon-lime Gator-Ade. A few people talked but most were too exhausted. I smiled grimly. During the long drive to this fire from western Oregon, I had been very worried. My concern had been that I would arrive too late, and the blaze would be out—nothing more than a faint flicker in some old stump. I had wanted to see a fire. I had wanted to fight a fire. But my fears were unfounded; that summer I got just what I wanted.   

Silver Fire, Siskiyou National Forest, southwest Oregon, 1987

The season following my experiences at Clear Creek I vowed to avoid fire assignments. My glamorous image of saving the forest had been usurped by discomfort and fear. A week of night shift had nearly killed me. After the rock incident, I wondered if risking my life was worth the danger. Yes, came the conclusion, the forest must be saved. 

Yet, the two-week assignment got to me. Bad food, really bad coffee, exhaustion, and the loss of independence that came with being a crew member didn’t appeal to my go-it-alone nature. My resolve became stronger over the winter:  no more fires. I soon discovered my co-workers felt differently. 

“Can’t wait to get you out on a fire, Betsy,” said Bill, the engine foreman, one morning during the 1987 spring. 

“I’m not doing fires,” I informed him cheerfully, “just wildlife.”  Bill’s face went still. He breathed in a couple times as if he’d just finished a footrace. 

“Everyone goes on fires,” he said and walked away. 

Bill was right. 

On August 31, a widespread lightning storm attacked the Pacific Northwest and left hundreds of fires burning across Oregon and Washington. Many were put out within days. Others grew to conflagrations that lasted months. One of these, the Silver Fire, started near the Kalmiopsis Wilderness in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon. I imagine the sizzle and spark of fire taking hold in a pile of crispy summer leaves; flames fanning out among the area’s diverse vegetation, including the Port Orford cedar, a conifer endemic to the Siskiyous, and the Kalmiopsis shrub, a rare, azalea-like plant. The variety of species here is partially a result of adaptation to life in extremely harsh soils that are heavily affected by disturbance. 

Three weeks after Silver started, I found myself strapped into a helicopter flying above the emerald Illinois River. Destination: the Kalmiopsis Wilderness. Assignment:  improve and widen the already existing hiking trail. The fire, still miles away, would be stopped by our swath if it made it this far. We took only our backpacks, two canteens of water, and the fire shelter, a compressed packet of material made of a fiberglass woven shell with a reflective aluminum covering. The shelter, approximately six feet long and three feet wide, is to be used only in extreme emergencies. At fire school, they told us we should never have to use it, if all the safety precautions are followed.  

Another crew member, Connie, shouted at me as we sailed over the tree tops, “Ever been in a helicopter?” 

I shook my head. Not a very good flyer, I hadn’t been thrilled when told about our transportation. Planes made me nervous. It wasn’t logical that so many tons of steel actually flew. But, surprisingly, I loved this experience. It seemed logical, swooping around the sky and along river corridors like a bird. Ten minutes later we landed on a knob, recently cleared of small fir trees. 

As the thwack-thwack of the rotor’s blades disappeared toward the main fire camp, Leonard, our crew boss, explained the plan. 

“We’ll have two people running saws and taking out the small trees along the trail. We need to clear 25 feet on either side. Two more people scatter the brush, and no hedgerows!  I want the trees and branches spread far and wide. The rest of you scrape and widen the trail, no less than a meter, and get it down to mineral soil!” 

“Where’s the camp?” someone asked. The veterans laughed. 

“Ain’t no camp,” said an old fire dog, “we’re spikin’ out. Sleep right where we finish digging.”  Food and sleeping bags would be dropped later by the helicopter. 

I grabbed my favorite tool, the pulaski (a combination axe and hoe), and began slicing into the trail. I edged back the creeping kinnickkinnick and manzanita that wished to close up this transportation corridor. Chainsaws whined. Small trees fell into the shrubs. The sky breathed a deep robin’s egg blue on us, as clear as if it had never known the opaque effects of smoke.

“It seems funny to be digging line so far from the fire,” I said to Connie, who worked beside me. She scowled. 

“What’s even funnier is working in the wilderness.” 

“Why?” 

“Using chainsaws, scarring this trail, trampling the vegetation. The Forest Service is supposed to let fires burn in the wilderness, but they don’t.” 

That evening we returned to the helipad where the supplies had been left. Four five-gallon tins of meat, mashed potatoes, gravy, and some limp salad fed us that evening. Ravenous, I wolfed down two helpings, then exhausted, found a bag, and made a bed over the ground cover. A waxing moon illuminated the land. Given our high position and the removal of trees for the helicopter, we could not escape the glow. I tossed and turned, trying to shut out the lunar flashlight against my head. 

But it wasn’t just moonlight keeping me awake. Connie’s observations reinforced a growing concern that we were doing more to damage the forest than save it. I had come to enjoy the physically demanding work—sweat sliding down my face, the camaraderie of working hard with a team. I now felt more comfortable watching the woods on fire, but I still didn’t like some of the results. The hiking trail looked open and raw to me, not like an “improvement.” Young Douglas-fir and hemlock lay slain around a path that had grown more than a meter wide as the fever of industry consumed us. Sparrows and towhees hurried away from the destruction. And where was that fire anyway? 

In truth, fire management objectives in wilderness areas permit two very different responses to lightning strikes. The naturally occurring fire can be allowed to burn, or the risks of a wildfire can be reduced “to an acceptable level.” This policy, though subjective to some degree, recognizes both fire’s importance and its danger. Fire management activities should, however, cause minimal alteration of the wilderness landscape and disturbance to the land surface. Unfortunately, I thought that night, it’s hard to have your cake and eat it, too. 

The next morning we awoke to ridges and valleys cloaked in haze. The main fire was moving south toward us. Helicopters arrived with breakfast—scrambled eggs, cold bacon and sausage, and tepid coffee; it all tasted good. They also brought bundles of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). 

“Get some MREs!” shouted Leonard, as we filled canteens and stocked up on headlamp batteries. “The pilot says they might not be able to fly again today due to the smoke. This may be your last good meal for awhile.” 

I grabbed a package of heavy, brown plastic. Big, black letters on the outside read, “MEAL, Ready to Eat, Individual.”  Beneath, in smaller script, it said, “Bean Compote.” 

“Huh,” I muttered. “Sounds like something you put on your garden,” but I took it, as well as some others, grabbed my pulaski, and headed for the trail. 

All day we improved the line. Across the valley, trees crowned with flame and the north wind blew against us, pushing the fire ever closer. What had been blue sky the day before turned dark and grizzled. Breathing was more difficult. My lower back ached from swinging the pulaski.  

That night, we gathered at the helipad.  Lunch had been minimal and now the bean compote seemed to sit glumly. It looked like—well, I had better not describe it here. The beef stew wasn’t much better. I ate the cracker pack and jelly spread and chewed the single stick of gum for dessert. 

Another poor night’s sleep made morning’s approach dismal. The smoke, now obscuring everything, had shut down air traffic. No breakfast. No lunch. A batch of sodas from the day before sat in a canvas container. I grabbed a Pepsi and drank it. By the time I finished a “toaster pastry” from the MRE, the sugar had energized me. I stuffed a second soda in my pack. 

The day’s work began like the others. The whine of chainsaws muffled the clink of shovels and pulaskis. Toward mid-morning, I felt thirsty and tired. Leonard called a break and I drank my second Pepsi, having run out of water long before. We began digging up a steep slope.  

Suddenly, my knees started shaking. The pulaski slipped in my hand. I sat down, while  everything around me seemed to slow. I had a terrible feeling I was going to faint. About that time, Leonard walked by. From his radio mike, anxious voices discussed the fire blowing up. 

“Everyone listen up!” he shouted. “We need to be ready to get out of here fast. The fire is moving quickly and this line may not stop it. Understand?  We might have to drop everything and run. You’ll only need your fire shelter.”  Then Leonard saw me. “What’s wrong with you?” 

“I . . . I don’t know.”  My voice sounded like it came from a tunnel; my head felt the size of a basketball. I looked up at Leonard. “I feel weird—shaky.” He grabbed me by the shoulders. 

“When did you last drink water?” 

“I’m not sure . . .” He put his hand on my forehead. “Oh, no, Betsy, you’ve probably got heat exhaustion.” 

By now a small crowd had gathered. Connie gave me some of her water, but Leonard was worried. He stood off to one side and talked on the radio. After a few minutes, he returned. 

“Betsy, you’re getting out of here.”  Leonard, ever abrupt with little bedside manner, didn’t mince words. 

“What?” 

“It’s pretty smoky but they’re gonna send a chopper in for you. Take you back to Agness.”  Agness, a small community at the confluence of the Illinois and Rogue Rivers, housed the main fire camp.  

“What?” I couldn’t believe this. “No, it’s not that bad. Really, I’m fine.”  I stood up but didn’t feel fine.  

“Get ready—you’re going.”  Leonard told Connie and another woman to help me to the helipad. 

As I left my crew, John, a veteran firefighter, looked at me sympathetically. 

“It’s for your own good, Betsy, as well as the crew’s,” he said. “It would be bad for everyone if you couldn’t make it out of here.”  I nodded, but wanted to cry. 

At the helipad, I climbed into a two-seat chopper beside the pilot. Clear plexiglass separated me on all sides from thin air. We lifted off and Connie waved good-bye. I felt like a deserter.    

It would be three days before I would see the crew again. Dehydration, exhaustion, and low blood sugar had contributed to my malady, but it was nothing serious. In mid-October, we came home from the Silver fire. The fight pitching man against nature continued in the Siskiyous until the end of November when the autumn rains finally put the blaze out.

Clover Mist Fire, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 1988

One hundred firefighters, dressed in yellow and green Nomex fire clothing, stood around Old Faithful. A female park guide with dark hair and skin the color of almonds told us its history. Her ranger’s hat, with the stiff, flat brim, and dented top, sat just above her eyebrows. 

“Contrary to popular belief,” she said, “Old Faithful does not erupt at the same time every day. Geysers are always changing, in response to water temperature, mineral content, and even earthquakes, of which there are many in the park.”  She looked at her watch, and then at the unimpressed group around her. “Another eruption is due shortly.” 

The previous month, a small fire had started when lightning hit a group of pine trees in Yellowstone. The fire was allowed to burn under the Park Service’s “natural burn” policy. This strategy, similar to that implemented in wilderness areas, recognized fire as integral to functioning ecosystems. As long as a fire wasn’t started by humans and didn’t threaten human life, property, or endangered species, it would be allowed to burn. After 50,000 acres were charred in the Yellowstone pines, however, some people got nervous. Managers expected blackened forest and smoke, but they hadn’t counted on the 1988 summer being the driest and windiest in recorded history. One month after the lightning hit, crews were deployed to fight the fire.     

The Park Service seemed overwhelmed with the sudden appearance of dozens of firefighters. We gathered at Old Faithful Inn. Some crews were assigned to protect the buildings, but they had no plans for the rest of us. That first afternoon, my crew picked up garbage. The next day we received a tour. On the third we took some much needed R and R. Finally, an assignment blossomed. 

A few hours later a helicopter carried us east into the park’s back country. Forests of lodgepole pine, including many acres of bleached trees, dead from bug-kill, stretched as far as I could see. Smoke spiraled in funnels, but nearby herds of elk ate meadow grasses. They seemed unconcerned with the fire.  

Before taking off, our crew boss, a burly man named Jeff, had told us we would be digging line to confine the fire to the more inaccessible regions of the park. The smoke, it seemed, was affecting tourism. Charred trees upset the public, and they weren’t too thrilled about seeing scruffy firefighters everywhere, either. Removing us to the wilderness seemed like  a good idea.  

“One last thing,” he said, clearing his throat, “I gotta ask you women if any of you have your, uh, your period. We’re headed into grizzly country and it’s too dangerous for everyone if you, you know, have it.”  Two of our crew stayed behind then, as the rest of us flew east toward the edge of the Clover Mist Fire. 

Our objectives entailed connecting sections of constructed fireline with dry riverbeds—natural firebreaks. After two days, we had helped build five miles of trail. I was impressed with our work. The fire was not. In one hour during the third afternoon, it jumped the line. Flames suddenly surrounded us. We pulled back to the riverbed, our safety zone, and watched the smoke thicken. Visibility dropped to a hundred feet.  

“Hunker down everyone!” Jeff told us. “We’re not going anywhere for awhile.” 

I sat and drank water and rummaged in my pack for my last piece of fruit. Worry assailed me. I seemed to be reliving the Silver Fire. There’d been no helicopter drops since the previous morning. Last night’s dinner had been a spaghetti MRE and this morning’s breakfast a Snickers bar and an orange.  

Chris, one of the crew, had laughed earlier, “I’ve gotta make a new hole on my belt—losing weight!”   

“Hey!  What’s that?” Lottie, another crew member, asked, pulling me back from my worry. I looked where she pointed and barely saw a deer through the haze. It stumbled in circles, fell, got up, teetered again. We watched, amazed. 

“I guess it’s overcome by smoke,” I said, feeling nauseated and dizzy myself. “This is not good, not good at all . . .” Lottie looked at me, unconcerned. 

“We’re fine here,” she said. “The fire can’t get us in this rocky riverbed.”  This was Lottie’s first assignment and she seemed very innocent compared to me, a veteran of two seasons. 

“It’s not fire that kills you,” I said. “It’s smoke.” 

We spent most of that day holed up in the wash. The deer disappeared and I felt miserable. Somebody later said it had been found dead. All our work seemed a waste of time. Protecting life and property was one thing, but these bug-killed lodgepole needed a fire to run through them. Why were we stopping the blaze? 

That night, someone spotted a grizzly around the spike camp. I didn’t know why the bear bothered since we hadn’t had any food delivered for two days. Even so, there was still garbage and that was the likely attractant. The next morning, the bear had no chance against dozens of firefighters scavenging the few food boxes left in camp. I found a small can of juice and one Milky Way. Chris tightened his belt another notch. 

The smoke eventually cleared for a food drop. We continued digging line, but my heart had gone out of the work. After a week they flew us back to the main camp, and the next day we drove home. It was early August and the worst was yet to come for the Yellowstone Fires. A month later, the fire consumed several cabins around Old Faithful, though not the Inn itself. In mid-September, the rains began. Once again, Mother Nature would be the one to finish what she had begun.

Spring Fire, Umpqua National Forest, southern Oregon, 1996

Five years had passed since my last wildfire. A tour in the Peace Corps and commitments as a district biologist had kept me away. Every season, however, it seemed more of the west burned. More crews dug line: more helicopters transported crews, and more fires consumed forest that had gone without fire for too long.  

Even though I wasn’t fighting wildfires, I still worked on fire. During my absence from suppression work, I planned and organized controlled burns to enhance wildlife habitat. We lit meadows to keep them from becoming young forests. We burned clearcuts to prepare them for seeding. Scientifically, most everyone agreed the landscape needed fire, but socially and politically, the situation was more complicated.  

In August 1996, fire began burning in the Boulder Creek Wilderness, a 19,000-acre landscape of old growth forests and steep terrain along the Umpqua River in western Oregon. Air tankers dropping retardent and helicopters releasing giant buckets of water made the local news. The presence of homes west of the wilderness had been a big reason for a huge outpouring of money and effort to contain the blaze. The Spring fire had been burning for a month when I got called. 

“You wanna be a squad boss this time?” Steve, our district fire management officer, asked me the morning we left. 

“Sure!” Despite my love-hate relationship with fire, I never turned down assignments.  Even though I thought we suppressed too many fires, for too long, and for the wrong reasons, I appeased my uneasy conscience by hoping for work on the fireline that focused on protecting structures and property. And, after so many years, I felt ready for more responsibility. I imagined towering flames above me as I directed my crew capably along a well-constructed, well-placed fireline. The radio would buzz while I synthesized information and dashed out precise instructions. The fire would have little chance. 

“Good,” said Steve. “This will be an easy assignment for your first time. I think you’ll be doing rehab.” 

My excitement plummeted. “Rehab,” short for rehabilitation, involved stabilizing the exposed ground after it had burned. Without erosion control, much of the soft soil might slide into creeks or roads with the first rains. Rehab could mean seeding, digging waterbars for runoff, or planting trees. We would be nowhere near the fire. 

Before our first shift, I read the information board at the Spring Fire’s main camp. A map showed the wilderness surrounding Boulder Creek and several tributaries—Spring, Onion, and Rattlesnake. The region’s volcanic spires that had always impressed me from the main highway had names such as Old Man Rock and Harding Butte. Paths made of little “X’s” indicated fireline. Shaded areas of burn showed the fire had repeatedly jumped the X’s. The fire’s outer edges corresponded almost exactly with the wilderness boundary.  

Then I saw something I had never seen at a fire camp: a list of suppression costs. My mouth dropped. The total bill for the last two weeks of August had come to 6 ½ million dollars!  And now it was mid-September. Thirteen million dollars, and counting, for this one fire!   

That morning we hiked two miles from the end of a logging road to our worksite. As squad boss, I was in charge of four members of our 20-person crew. Mike, the crew boss, gathered his generals together. 

“We’re on rehab,” he said, trying not to sound glum. I looked around at the incinerated forest. Crews had constructed line down a ridge, in between Douglas-fir and western hemlock that towered 200 feet above the forest floor. Why anyone thought a three-foot path would stop a fire ripping up a slope of contiguous fuel was a mystery. Small trees had also been felled along the line. Their white stumps glistened like sun-lit coins against the charcoal earth.  

“This line obviously failed,” said Mike, “but it still looks like a line. Our job is to make the area look as natural as possible. Cover up the stumps, smooth out the path, put in waterbars to control the erosion.” Everyone sighed. This would even be more boring than usual; no trees to plant, no seed to spread. Mike continued apologetically. “I’m sorry, but that’s the assignment. Be alert for trees burned at the base that may fall.” 

My squad worked down the slope, piling rocks around stumps and using pieces of charred wood to blacken the raw inside where the trees had been cut. This effort may have removed the glare, but the land still looked affected. 

For three days, we bandaged the land. My squad kept up their spirits by making the work as fun as possible. One enormous tree, cut across the fireline, provided some diversion. Instead of simply coloring it, Lydia, a woman from England on a forestry exchange program, suggested  drawing a face. 

“Yeah!” I agreed, “how about a cat?” We placed two rocks on the cut’s edge for ears, gathered moss for fur, using a thick clump for a nose. David, a middle-aged forester who seemed to enjoy being a part of the nearly all-woman squad, drew the eyes and mouth. Mike, amused by our creativity, nevertheless insisted we make our pet an all-black feline. 

The Spring Fire was on its last legs, but not because of human efforts. The cool September nights dampened its energy. Morning mists discouraged flare-ups. And during our last night, a thunderous deluge, on par with the tropics, flooded the landscape.

******

During a decade working with fire, my opinion of the labor changed dramatically. I went from hating the physical challenge but loving the idea, to loving the hard work and hating the idea. For me, fighting fire encapsulated the complicated task facing resource managers: how can we allow natural forces to unfold in an increasingly unnatural landscape? But the lessons went beyond the land. Fires probably prepared me more for my subsequent life experiences than anything else I’ve ever done. They showed me how one could love and hate something at the same time. How a person’s effort can be both right and wrong. And how the world and human behavior is rarely black and white, but rather made in shades of gray—like a forest landscape after a fire.

Betsy Howell is a Wildlife Biologist on the Olympic National Forest in Washington.