Savage Creek
Incendiary Imbeciles #8
Global warming came for us at Savage Creek in 1984.
When we arrived early in the morning, the wildfire wasn’t yet a big problem. But it had settled strange. And maybe a bit ominous. During the night, it scattershot embers, spawning minefields of little smoking spot fires.
The Fuel Management Officer (FMO) met us and explained how he wanted to contain all the little spots with continuous direct line as quickly as possible. We split up our crew. The Other Jay took most of the crew and commenced digging direct line from an anchor point hoping to corral the spot fires. Big Jay, his chainsaw, and I went to survey the rest of the fire, flag a possible fire line, and swiftly clear some brush and small trees to quicken the pace of fire line construction.
We descended downhill into the mixed conifer forest with tall Ponderosa pine and a lot of smaller fir, now punctuated with small sleepy little spot fires snoring out puffy, wispy yawns of smoke. We descended the hilly terrain for a long time, trying to scout out the most direct way for an effective fire line. We tried to keep the smoky little spot fires to our right. But we couldn’t be sure that there weren’t any spot fires to our left, which meant that we would be violating one of the cardinal rules of wildland firefighting: Do not dig line in the middle of the fire!
When the terrain finally flattened out, a slight breeze nudged the little spot fires awake. “This goes on forever,” Big Jay said referring to the endless little spot fires now growing more prominent. “Let’s head back to the rest of the crew.” So we turned around and warily climbed uphill. We soon heard a chugging sound as if a steam engine struggled to start. Maybe more like a dragon rousting. Next, an angry cracking, breaking, cranking out a great roar. This dragon leapt now wide awake.
We commenced running uphill, thinking, “legs don’t fail me now!” A full blown ground fire nipped at our heels as a cascading canopy fire seared our backs. I could feel violent heat penetrating my Nomex pants and scalding my calves. My backpack protected my back, but parts of it melted from the radiant heat. Our fire-projected shadows seemed to be running faster than we were. “Drop the saw! Drop the saw, Big Jay!” I shouted as I followed him 20 yards behind. Fire embers constantly pelted us. Great fire brands, as thick as my wrist, rained down. “Zigzag!” commanded Big Jay. Was this fire aiming at us? I wondered as we darted in desperate diagonals. “Drop the saw, Big Jay, it will slow you down!” I repeatedly pleaded as I now ran 30 yards behind.
We finally scampered up a sandy hill crest and arrived at a pretty good safety zone. Only sparse vegetation peeked out for 60 yards around. From this vantage point, we observed across the ravine the massive conflagration devouring hundreds of acres of timber. The fire evaporated and ignited the forest fuel in a massive atomic bomb-like hellish vortex.
Flame lengths, five times the span of the tall Ponderosas it vaporized, ripped the sky. This ten thousand degree Charybdis obliterated every molecule of carbon into plasma gas and cast them into the firmament. The strengthening gyre seemed to rip up trees, sweeping them off the ground then annihilating branches and foliage into rocketing, exploding fusillades. Wind driven giant fire demons whirled and roared in tortured howls while smaller demons below cracked and cackled in arpeggios of lust. We saw fire tornadoes form, sometimes five at once, spinning out then merging together in a gigantic yellow, red, white-hot maelstrom.
We couldn’t help but be tourists. I plucked out my camera from my melted pack and took pictures of this awesome phenomenon. I pointed out my finger so Big Jay could snap a photo to make it look like the fire tornadoes were coming out of my finger. Unfortunately. The film in the camera was overexposed and never turned out. Likely from the radiant heat during our jarring run.
After an hour or so of watching this incredible display, the fire began to subside and wither back into smoking wrecks of cindered carbon. Big Jay and I walked through the smoldering ash to meet up with the rest of our crew. The Other Jay described their encounter. As the fire blew up the crew ran beneath a small tunnel-like outcropping and waited out the fiery rampage. Flaming trees and logs cascaded over them. The Other Jay claimed that the experience replicated Ed Polanski’s famous encounter in the 1910 “Big Blow Up.” He also claimed that, like Polanski, he even had to pull out his pistol and threaten demented members of his fear-crazed crew and prevent them from running out of their tunnel shelter to their deaths. Some say he pistol-whipped a couple.
Slowly but seeming abruptly, the pulsing atomic-bomb quantum of violent energy subsided, leaving a smoking husk of a forest. Trunks of trees without foliage, puffs of smoke reeking out of prostate logs. A six inch bed of dark gray ash lay where a verdant under growth had been. This was now a project wildfire.
Soon vans arrived to shuttle us to our next failed initial attack. Looking out of the window, I recall seeing the shell-shocked FMO staggering in disbelief across the smoking ruin of his once beautiful forest.
Global Warming signaled the dawn of a new era for a world propelled toward peril. And I rode in a van surrounded by brave heroes and new morons. O Brave New World that has such people in it!
