Another, in southern California, crisped 1.3 million Joshua trees. One fire in northern California ripped through old-growth redwoods across the entirety of Big Basin Redwoods State Park. It included four of the five largest fires in state history. Last year's wildfire season was the most devastating on record in California. For all, including myself, it arises as an adventure, a challenge, a social responsibility, a paycheck. No one on my crew who I talked to dreamed of becoming a firefighter when they were a kid. I came from the Ozarks I had no particular expertise or talents, little history with wildfire, and a 145-pound body. ![]() Most of us had joined as seasonal workers, primarily as a way to test our mettle, with a handful ascending to the highly qualified permanent jobs that made hotshot crews elite. The paradox of hotshots is that, while they're elite firefighters, anyone with a high level of physical fitness can technically do it. Kevin Emm, Derek Kramer, Ben Boehmig, and Mike Lowden await instructions on the Big Summit fire in southeast Nevada. Specialists in steep, remote settings, they are deployed all over the country-to Alaska, to California, to Florida, to New Mexico, wherever is burning-to combat the most intense, hardest-to-reach parts of fires. Forest Service, the main employer of wildland firefighters, has about two thousand hotshots in its ranks, who work ten- to forty-hour shifts, depending on a fire's need, for fourteen consecutive days take two days off and repeat for as long as our lengthening fire seasons last. Hotshots, along with smoke jumpers, who parachute from aircraft, are the toughest and most celebrated firefighters in the wildland. Conlon, whose arm was cramping around his saw, nursed his forearm on the ground, while our captain treated Hill on the side. Like the end of a bad movie, we were able to put out the spot fire in minutes. Suddenly, when I felt I couldn't breathe or work a minute longer, I heard someone yell, "Water's here!" From uphill a neighboring hotshot crew brought hoses, as if from heaven, from an off-road fire engine that had just arrived. Now there were more of us other sawyers and swampers had appeared out of the smoke and worked in a desperate rhythm. We worked in a near-constant retreat, the acridity filling our lungs, our muscles breaking down. For the rest of the season, I would be Conlon's swamper. His deep, reddened eyes looked haunted as he handed me his gloves. Suddenly Hill fell out, having nearly passed out from the heat and smoke. He wanted me to dig a line in the dirt that would halt the charging fire, a task that usually requires about four more people and a lot more time. As a rookie, I hefted a tool known as a Pulaski, basically an axe attached to an adze. He was furiously hacking down trees and shrubs, while another crew member, Trevor Hill, hucked the fallen branches out of the way of the fire-a job known as swamping. "Bob, we need scrape!" Kameron Conlon yelled to me over the scream of his chain saw. Although there were twenty of us, I looked around in the grip of thick smoke, at the flaming head of the fire, and saw only two others, one with a chain saw and the other with just a pair of hands. In the chaos of wildland firefighting, crewmates often drift apart. ![]() When we arrived, we found a ballooning spot fire-an ember thrown from the main fire had ignited a new one, which was now tearing uphill. But at the moment, we still believed we could get ahead of it. A week later, the fire would kill sixteen people as it ripped through the Plumas National Forest. It was early September 2020, just over halfway through fire season. The smoke was part of a pair of wildfires known as the North Complex, in California's northern Sierra Nevada mountains. My wildland firefighting crew, the Truckee Hotshots, dropped the hoses we were holding, grabbed our chain saws and hand tools, and raced over on foot. It was a slow day until apprentice Ian Fox spotted a smoke a quarter mile away. The Truckee Hotshots wait for 2020’s Poeville fire to reach their fire line.
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