One Careless Moment Read Free Page A

haven’t had time to look.”
    â€œLet’s go for a walk.”
    I motion Brashaw over and the three of us head into the dense green. Shrub and understory fir crowd beneath older larch, three feet in diameter. Mossy black beards hang like rags. Galloway takes the lead, following her line of fluorescent orange flags hung on branches. It’s cooler and dimmer in here, shade maintaining the humidity — a stroke in our favour. The advantage won’t last much beyond noon, just giving us a lag period for line construction. We don’t go far before we see the first flickers of orange, getting as close as we can until the heat from the flames becomes uncomfortable.
    The perimeter of the fire is a sharp line on the ground, hissing and crackling, crawling relentlessly outward, sending up tendrils of fragrant smoke. Tongues of orange dance on twigs and dry moss, lick along deadfall. In places, where the branches of understory fir touch the ground, fire races upward in a wild, ecstatic gush. We need to get that dozer
    rolling, cutting the monster from its fuel supply, and we need water.
    I look at Brashaw. “We should check out that creek right away.”
    â€œI’ll get someone on it,” he says, reaching for his radio. As he makes the call, I gaze into the blackened, smoking heart of the beast, where a forest lies half-digested, trees stripped of their needles, trunks oozing smoke. I need a good look at this thing from above so I can judge its mood, see where it intends to go, and how we can stop it. I’m not sending men anywhere near the head until I’ve got a good understanding of the terrain, fuels, and fire behaviour. Doing that strictly from the ground is like a blind man trying to describe an elephant by touch.
    â€œThat ridge where you jumped in,” I ask Galloway. “Is there a good view of the fire?”
    She nods emphatically, her hard hat wobbling. “Oh yeah, you can see the whole thing.”
    â€œHow difficult would it be to get up there?”
    She frowns. “Tough. It was a bitch bushwhacking down to the shoulder of the cliff. Nasty understory. Gives me the creeps, jumping in above a fire like that, especially when it turns out there’s ground access. I saw another trail farther back though, below the ridge when we were coming down. An old road or something. You might be able to 4x4 up there and walk in the rest of the way.”
    I nod, filing the information away for later, and we walk back to the trail. The smokejumpers are resting in the shade. The hotshots stand in the sun, still carrying their hand tools and chainsaws, trying to look tougher than the jumpers. They stiffen when we emerge from the foliage. The lowboy and dozer have finally arrived. The skinner is on the dozer, firing her up. He backs the dozer down onto the trail, treads clanking, pivots the big machine toward the bush, then shuts it down so I can climb up.
    Standing on the tread, I tell the skinner — an old guy with dense, woolly grey hair and bright blue eyes — that I want him to start cutting along the flag line. I point out the start ribbon at the edge of the road, remind him to cut straight down to mineral soil, windrow everything on the side away from the fire. Don’t get too close to the flames so nothing burning is pushed across. He assures me in a calm, gravelly voice that he’s done this before.
    The dozer roars and trees start to topple. Forest floor is peeled back like an old rug and everyone watches, in mutual appreciation, the massive amount of work being quickly completed. The smell of conifer sap and freshly torn earth mixes pleasantly with woodsmoke — the fragrance of the fireline. When the dozer is a tree length into the bush, the firefighters begin to follow. The drivers of the engines fire up their rigs, ready for action. I step onto a running board, have a few words with the module leader.
    â€œYou have foam with you?” I