Fire on the Rim. Stephen J. Pyne
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fires scarce. The mud recedes into a few stubborn holes. Snow vanishes from all but the darkest forest. The cache is fully operational; the fireroads are passable; the crews, the new and the old, are on board. For the veterans there is much to do, and for rookies, much to learn. Steadily we move out of the Area and even beyond the dendritic grid of fireroads. Through trails and helispots, through projects like the Fence, and through fires, we explore the boundaries of the North Rim.
The Rim—the Park—forms a ragged triangle shaped equally by geography and bureaucracy. The Colorado River makes a colossal, puzzling bend around and through the Kaibab. The River first proceeds southward along the east flank of the Kaibab Plateau; then it breaches the Plateau—the Grand Canyon proper—before returning northward along an old fault line that defines the western flank of the Kaibab. As the Canyon matured and expanded outward, the great bulge of Plateau caught in the looping triangle broke up into long peninsulas. On the South Rim it was reasonable to confine the Park proper to a roadway—a string of overlooks—along the Rim itself. But this was not possible on the North Rim, and a nearly straight boundary line was drawn across the Plateau with the result that large chunks of the interior were incorporated into the Park and an interagency DMZ was established between the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service. The larger result is that three points roughly demarcate the North Rim—Saddle Mountain, Powell Plateau, and The Dragon. Together they define the metageography of Rim and fire. Call them our fire triangle.
A Grand Tour of the Rim becomes a great vortex of places and experiences that all converge on fire. Not everyone makes the circuit in a season, and some could never make it regardless of time invested. Our life on the Rim is brief, usually ninety to one hundred days. We are annuals, not perennials. We are like an odd species of social insect that must hurriedly emerge from chrysalis to functioning adult before the season passes away. Fire is the catalyst, but in June fires can be scarce, and as surrogates we rely on an evening campfire program and on fire school. No event is more eagerly anticipated or more joyously concluded, because we don’t need fire school, we need fires.
FIRE SCHOOL: BREAKING INTO THE FIRE TRIANGLE
Lenny is holding forth about the nuances of fireline location and construction. The room is gloomy; sleeping bag liners block off the windows, and light enters indirectly through the great double doors. No matter—after the written exercise there will be another short film. The ambulance has been pulled out, and its stall converted into a makeshift classroom. The setting is appropriate in a way, for S-190 is conceived as a first-aid course in fire and firefighter behavior. The students—fire crew rookies and reserves—read along in their workbooks, equally enlightened and confused.
The course is designed to teach very elementary fire behavior to firefighters in the Northern Rockies, the Pacific Northwest, Southern California—places that have large fires and a history of fatalities, places far removed from the daily routines of the North Rim. It will be a long, concentrated day. White-collar stuff—programmed fires; clean, well-set objectives; national standards; certificates of attendance. The Park Service loves it, and no one can be issued a red card without taking the course.
Rich hovers outside, trooping busily among the fire cache, the Fire Pit, and the old cache. Thumper and Jimbo rifle through the project fire stall. Sleeping bags, ration cases, camp stoves, lanterns, fedcos, canteens, cubitainers, project fire kits pile into a great mound. Tomorrow we will issue protective gear and small firepacks just as we would for a call-up. We will take everyone into the field, organize them into squads and crews; make them dig line with every handtool; start a practice fire; crank up the slip-ons; lay out pumps, hoses, portable tanks; demonstrate protective clothing; set up a small fire camp; spend the night. The prescribed fire site on Walhalla is a good locale. The scenic drive, blockaded by snowbanks on shaded road cuts, is not yet open, but we will issue shovels and tell the trainees to dig a route for the trucks. We call it S-130, Basic Firefighter—a national course whose contents can be established by local norms. Jimbo and Thump recheck their list. After the session Lenny will line up all the trainees and run them to the garage and back, a distance of a mile and a half, scorning the submaximal alternative, the ballyhooed step test, another white-collar surrogate for grime. In fewer than fifteen minutes he will know who passes and who does not. After the mock call-up and the real mop-up on a practice fire, the Longshots will know who likes to fight fire and who does not. All in all, basic training takes about three days.
For fire crew regulars there will be more. We offer special sessions on map reading, compassing, portable pumps and hydraulics, firing equipment, timekeeping, helicopter management, advanced fire behavior, the use of the Affirms terminal. Some years—years with good crews and few fires—there may be advanced national courses for crew boss (S230), fire business management (S230), air operations (S270), sector boss (S330), fire behavior (S390). Rainy-day stuff. The important things, like smokechasing, can’t be taught in a classroom. There is no place to put those experiences on a red card—the official record of fire experience and qualifications.
Park officials hand out red cards like candy. The requirement that actual fire experience be kept current for each position is widely ignored. Park officials who have not seen a fire in a decade are allowed to keep ratings as fire bosses and sector bosses. A computer calculation based on national standards shows that when the Park’s chief ranger assumed control over the Pistol fire, he rated no higher than tool manager. We certify the fire crew in everything we can, but the rate of inflation accelerates; rangers add shamelessly to bogus records; the Park administrative hierarchy cannot be violated, even during a fire. No one will deny his or her employees access to fire overtime. And a high rating looks good on a ranger résumé.
Some years fire school for the regular fire crew ends with a Fire Olympiad. A fusee is ignited at the fire cache and carried solemnly to the fire totem. There are a few team events—like a relay race with firepacks and shovels and a race to open ration cans with a P-38; but mostly there are individual contests, and each team contributes one person per event. There are contests of skill that test the ability to throw dirt with a shovel, to assemble a chain saw, to negotiate a pumper through a tortuous pattern of orange pylons, to cut logs with a pulaski, to put up flagging tape while burdened with firepack and handtools. There is an obstacle race through an opaque section of mixed conifer; there is a footrace to Harvey Meadow and back. The winning team takes home an ancient fire nozzle, recovered from the depths of the structural fire cache, known as the John Smokechaser Memorial Trophy. The whole affair absorbs an afternoon until Captain Zero declares the olympiad “an unsuitable use of government time.” Dave suggests that fire school ought to be declared an unsuitable use of government time. Later a song, “The Twelve Days of Fire School,” is composed, in which each day the foreman gives a new, worthless item of fire equipment to a rookie.
Lenny has concluded his session: the lecture; the film; the workbook exercises; the inane exam. To the standard crash course, however, he adds a slide-text presentation that illustrates the Ten Standard Firefighting Orders with historical examples of fires that have resulted in multiple fatalities. The narration thunders away; the disasters mount, as crew after crew is overrun; the eyes of the novices grow as big as shovels. They ask numerous questions—all obliquely stated—that want to know how dangerous the job really is. Lenny patiently explains that most fires are small, that the greatest hazards are associated with smokechasing, tree felling, helicopters, and vehicles. “Your biggest problem,” Lenny suggests gently, “will be finding the fire.” “You mean,” says a fern feeler, hopeful for OT (overtime) and flushed with new insight, “that the trick is to find the fire before it gets big.”
“He means,” mutters Joe as he and Ralph slip out the partially closed double doors of the cache, “that the trick is to find the fire before it goes out.”
I drive like a madman to Swamp Point. It is possible—just possible—that we will reach the Point before sunset. We do not. When we arrive the darkness is growing rapidly. Powell is rimmed with crimson, the final coals of sunset. The fire, we were told, is on the north side of Swamp Ridge, in Castle Canyon. I had hoped to reach Swamp Point and sight back on the fire and walk in with at least some daylight. It is not to be.
I climb the water tank, then scale the tree to which it is attached. Darkness envelops us like quiet smoke. Kent rummages through the pumper for some rations.