Fire Read Free Page B

acres, a million dollars to put out.
    â€œI suspect the government will try to collect too,” he said. “Try the dispatch office; they’ll know what’s going on.”
    The dispatch office for the Boise National Forest was a trailer east of the airfield. “I just came from BIFC,” I told the young woman behind the desk. “I’m a reporter. Are there any fires?”
    I felt a little bad asking the question. She didn’t blink. “Seven hundred acres as of midnight last night,” she said, spreading a map of Idaho out on the table. “Lightning-started, wind-driven, with three helicopters and twenty-two crews. It’s called the Flicker Creek fire. They’ve called in a type one overhead team.”
    A type one overhead team is called in only when a fire is really bad or is expected to get really bad. The Flicker Creek fire was in steep terrain with extremely dry fuels and strong winds. Steep slopes help a fire because uphill fuels get preheated; winds help a fire because they make it burn hotter and push it across the land. A seven-hundred-acre fire could jump to seven thousand or even seventy thousand in no time at all.
    An hour later I was driving north on Highway 21 in my green fire-retardant Nomex pants and yellow fire shirt. In the back seat were a yellow plastic hard hat and a fiberglass and aluminum fire shelter. The shelter is a pup tent that comes in a small pouch with belt loops. It reflects radiant heat, reducing what would be a 1,000-degree fire to 120 degrees or so. I would be assigned a public relations person when I got to the fire camp, the ranger told me. I would be fed and I would be lodged in a tent if I didn’t have one. Tomorrow morning a helicopter would take me into the fire line.
    I breezed past some bored Forest Service guards and turned off Highway 21, into the hills.
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    F licker Creek is one of hundreds of small creeks that cut through the steep, dry hills of the Boise National Forest. Most of the land is grass and rocks and sagebrush, with heavy stands of ponderosa on the north slopes and in the drainages. Flicker Creek empties into the North Fork of the Boise River, which quickly joins the Middle Fork and continues on to fill the Arrowrock and Lucky Peak reservoirs. The entire West was seven years into one of the worst droughts since the 1870s, so both reservoirs were severely depleted. Arrowrock had been reduced to a muddy brook that you could practically jump across.
    After twenty miles of rough driving, the road leveled off along the North Fork of the Boise. There was plenty of water up here—or so it looked—and the river was fast and lined with big, open stands of ponderosa. The fire camp was in a huge meadow called Barber Flats that ran alongside the North Fork of the Boise. Hundreds of bright nylon tents were pitched in the yellowed grass. A helicopter thumped over a ridgeline, trailing a retardant bucket. Water trucks rumbled back and forth, spraying the dust down. Hotshot crews came and went, Indian file, or slept in the shade, or sharpened their tools. Some were black with dirt; others looked as if they’d just arrived. They all had on the same green and yellow Nomex that I wore and big lug-soled boots.
    I parked my car between the trucks and water tankers and searched out the information desk. The public affairs people knew I was coming, and I was pointed toward a large, deep-voiced man named Frank Carroll. “You’ll need boots if you want to go out on the line,” he told me. “You’ll need water bottles; you’ll need food; you’ll need gloves. I’ll set you up after dinner. You can pitch your tent anywhere you like. People get going around five in the morning; make sure you’re at breakfast and ready to go by then.”
    I thanked him and went off to get my gear set up. All around me, big, lean men and a few women went about their duties. I pitched my tent in tall grass behind a