One Careless Moment (2 page)

I watch the smoke pump up for a minute. The occasional dart of orange appears, then drops.

“Good thinking on the dozerline, Galloway. Keep going and we'll meet you at the trail.”

Galloway copies, then Kershaw Lookout comes back on with a reply from Dispatch. The dozers and crew have been ordered, but probably won't arrive until sometime later. Resources are scarce. As for the helicopter, none are available — all machines are on higher priority fires, meaning fires where structures are threatened. I plead for a helicopter — I hate working a fire blind, without air support. The Lookout assures me my concern will be passed on to Command and signs off.

“Now what?” says Brashaw, staring at the canyon.

“Now we put your boys to work.”

As we drop off the toe of the ridge, the trail curves and we lose sight of the fire. An indistinct mass of white smoke, like an approaching storm, is our only guide. The trail snakes around boulders and clumps of large trees at the mouth of the canyon, crosses a small creek, then makes a hard right and drops sharply to some hidden destination on the far side of the northern ridge. We stop just back from the bend.

“Where does this trail go?” I ask Brashaw.

He shrugs. “Nowhere. There are some squatters about ten miles farther up, but that's it.”

“Squatters?” I can't imagine anyone making this drive frequently.

“Yeah. Old hippies and misfits. White trash.”

“Would they be in the path of the fire?”

Brashaw shakes his head. “Not with this wind.”

“Wind could change. We should think about evacuating them.”

“You can try,” he says, “but you might get shot. They're pretty anti-government.”

I'm thinking that's not a very good reason to remain in the path of a fire, and make a mental note to call Dispatch about this later. For now, given the topography, they're relatively safe. We get out of the truck and watch the crew bus lumber to a stop behind us. It's a boxy, green vehicle, higher than a normal bus. The name of the crew — Carson Lake Hotshots — is printed in black on the side. The door squeaks open and young men in green pants and yellow shirts emerge. They cluster along the side of the bus, watch the bank of white smoke hanging above the canyon, and I hear one or two muted comments about a curse. Brashaw gets them moving, opening cargo doors, pulling out chainsaws and hand tools. Hard hats are donned, equipment belts strapped on, backpacks shouldered. Handheld radios are tested, squelches adjusted. Behind the bus, the first engine pulls up, squealing to a halt, its tank rocking. Engine is a bit of a glorification — it's just a big green water truck. A chubby, stubbled face peers out a side window.

“Jesus Christ,” says the driver as I approach. “That was one mother of a hill.”

Beside him, the engine module leader watches the smoke. He slips on a hard hat and climbs out of the truck, asks what the plan is. I tell him we're going to wait until the dozer is up, cut a line from the trail straight to the tail of the fire. Once that's done, he can pull in his engines and get to work.

“All right,” he says, staring toward the canyon, looking concerned.

“Is there a problem?”

He hesitates. “No — no problem.”

Brashaw saunters over. His men are ready, Pulaskis in hand, chain-saws resting on broad shoulders. I tell Brashaw that the brush is far too dense and I don't want anyone in there, even at the tail of the fire, until the dozer has pushed in an anchor line. He tells his men, but they don't budge, preferring to wait with packs and saws ready, despite the heat and weight of the equipment. It's all part of the image — hotshots are the elite ground-pounders of the firefighting world.

As we're waiting for the semi-trailer with the lowboy and dozer, the brush rustles and the other elite warriors of the firefighting world appear. Sweaty, curly hair plastered to her forehead under an oversized hard hat, Sue Galloway extends a fire-blackened glove, and we shake hands. Introductions ensue, during which several of the hotshots give Galloway disapproving glances. Firefighting is the ultimate macho career and not all of the participants are thrilled with the female presence. Personally, I like the variety.

“We've got a line flagged right to the cliff,” says Galloway, brushing hair out of her eyes.

“Excellent. How far from the trail is the fire?”

Galloway pauses for a drink of water. “About a hundred yards.”

“Any sign of the origin?”

“Not so far,” she says. “But I haven't had time to look.”

“Let'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.”

“I'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.

“That 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.”

“How 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.

“You have foam with you?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says.

Together, we track the progress of the dozer, listen to the progression of toppling trees. My gaze wanders toward the trail, to the crew bus and lowboy with its waiting driver. Boxes of hose and spare hand tools neatly stacked out of the way. Something along the edge of the trail catches my eye — red and barely discernable at this distance. It's probably nothing, but I go for a look. I recognize it before I get there.

It's a fusee cap, its pull-strip curled back.

A fusee is a red, cylindrical flare used by firefighters to burn out fuel between a fireline and the active edge of a fire, thus robbing the fire of potential intensity so it can't jump the fireline. It's also handy to burn a safe area in case of an emergency, as Wag Dodge did on the infamous Mann Gulch fire.

It's too early in this fire for anyone to have need of one, so I lift my radio and call around, just to make sure. “Galloway, this is Cassel. Have any of your people used a fusee on the fire?” There's a pause; the answer comes back negative. Same answer from Brashaw.

I stand on the trail a moment longer, pondering the little red cap. Most arsons are started right from the edge of a road or trail, with the arsonist nervous and wanting a quick getaway. But this fire was started deeper in the bush, which takes time, walking both ways. This probably means it wasn't a hot start but was rigged as some sort of time delay. The arsonist placed the device in the bush so no one would see it from the trail, then got careless with the cap — flung it aside or dropped it shoving it into his pocket. But why walk so far into the bush? Maybe he thought the distance from the trail would be less obvious and no one would look too hard for the cause.

He's wrong.

I call Brashaw and Galloway, tell them to be on the lookout. Then I head into the fire.

The engine crew is already at work, hoses run from where the engine sits on the dozerline, water soaking the perimeter. This is where I go in, stepping over slippery black logs, pushing aside the barbed, black swivel sticks of the burned understory fir. I go in about forty yards and look around, taking note of the charred tree trunks, the burn pattern on deadfall. A fire always points to where it's been and, if you can read the signs, you can usually get a pretty good idea of where it originated. You start with the knowledge that fire burns outward from its point of origin, its behaviour modified by fuel, weather, and topography. A fire in calm weather conditions, in continuous fuel, will burn a perfect circle. A wind-driven fire will form an ellipse, the width-to-length ratio a function of wind speed. But that's under ideal, predictable conditions. A fire in a canyon, with erratic winds, variable fuel, and unknown moisture conditions, can be a little more challenging.

I walk slowly, watching the ground, watching tree trunks, checking scorch patterns on rocks. The fire cleaned out the understory, reducing fir and brush to slender spikes. There's a certain voyeuristic aspect to walking in a freshly burned forest — a sudden, injured nakedness; trees stripped of their foliage. Solitary old growth larch, blackened but not entirely burned, stand like tall, determined, survivors. Deadfall, normally hidden and treacherous, forms a crisscross pattern like a relief map. My eyes track across smouldering devastation, thinking about the fusee. It would have been planted in duff or dry litter — fine enough fuels to easily ignite — and positioned securely so it wouldn't topple as it burned down. Either way, it wouldn't be set far from the road. A fusee burns for a maximum of thirty minutes, and the arsonist would want a quick, clear route back to his waiting vehicle. He must have made a dash for the trail then driven like mad, because we didn't meet any vehicles on our trip in.

Maybe the fire was started by one of the squatters, who then hightailed it home. Or the arsonist is farther up the trail, waiting for night to sneak out. I make a mental note to post a guard on the trail and look for tire tracks.

There's a narrow creek in the burn, a dark meandering line bordered by dense black spears of incinerated spruce and fir. The creek is pretty shallow, but perhaps we could dam it and put a pump there. It's also an obvious route back to the trail, maybe a way to hide the scent of boots, so I go for a closer look. Branch stubs tug at my clothes as I struggle through the hedge, leaving long black marks. But the creek is clogged with deadfall and I revise my theory. Backing out, a branch stub tears a strip off the sleeve of my shirt, scraping my arm hard enough to draw blood. I stand for a minute, holding the abrasion, and look around. Char patterns on tree trunks point everywhere; the fire was pushed around by the wind playing across the canyon.

Other indicators may be equally unreliable. I'll have to approach this one differently.

The tail end of a fire grows slowly, backing into the wind. I notice the perimeter at the tail of this fire is different on both sides of the creek — the far side has burned closer to the road. This could mean a difference in fuel type, but I don't think so. The fire was started on the far side and took some time to build sufficient intensity to jump the creek.

On the other side of the creek, the view is much the same but, by using the difference in distance the fire backed into the wind on either side of the narrow drainage, I can estimate how much farther into the burn I should be looking. This, coupled with a quick calculation of the current spread rate, should put me in the right neighbourhood. I pace the distance and look around.

Then I see it: a game trail, beaten into the forest floor. It's faint but unmistakable, a thread of crushed moss not as completely burned. Only a short section of trail is visible, but it wanders toward the road and I get a shiver of anticipation. I don't follow it far before I find the origin.

Arsonists love fusees — they burn hot, they're easy to use, and they're common — but they leave plenty of evidence in the form of a white, ceramic residue. From the shape of the residue here, it's apparent this fusee was propped at a near-vertical angle. As it burned down into itself, the molten residue built a tube around the jet of flame, falling off at regular intervals. I pick up one of the pieces, white and hard like bone, and sniff it; the usual sulfur smell. Crystals tinted green and orange have formed inside the tube like miniature heads of cauliflower. I set the piece back where I found it and examine the blackened ground. Small splatters of white slag are scattered close by, castoffs from jetting through the casing of the fusee when the slag cap sealed off the top. These jets, which can eject hot slag several feet, are usually what starts the fire, which then burns both outward and back to the fusee. Even so, arsonists always pile fuel at the base, and this example is no different. There are delicate black threads of carbon: dried grass and moss. It's a simple setup, not very inspired, but dependable. I pull a roll of fluorescent pink ribbon from my pocket — a colour I use specifically for such occasions — and tie a generous portion to a nearby tree.

I unholster my radio. “Brashaw and Galloway, this is Cassel. I found something at the origin and marked it with pink ribbon. It's on the north side of the creek, maybe a hundred yards into the fire, but you should be able to see it from quite a distance. Make sure no one works the area or goes in for a look. Let's keep the scene clean.”

“No problem,” says Brashaw. Galloway gives me a double-click, the salutation of busy firefighters everywhere. While I've got the radio in hand, I call Kershaw Lookout, pass on that I have a confirmed arson and need a fire investigator. After a lengthy pause, the tower informs me that an investigator from the district will arrive in about two hours, and tells me to ensure I mark and protect the origin. And don't pass any sensitive information over the radio. The voice is filled with excitement, being part of the intrigue. Smiling, I assure her that I'll follow orders.

I'm part way down the trail, pausing for a look back to confirm the visibility of the pink ribbon, when the wind picks up suddenly, blowing ash. Flames along the perimeter quadruple in height. There's a merry campfire sound, but I'm not impressed — wind is what makes the difference between a small fire and a big one. Wind is what kills people. A cluster of trees go up together, flames licking wildly forty feet into the air. When their needles are gone, the trees flame out, trailing smoke like spent birthday candles. I call Brashaw on the radio.

“You catch that wind, BB?”

“Yeah.” He sounds as concerned as me.

“All your men square if it starts to get squirrelly?”

“They're good. They'll stay at the tail, close to the road.”

I check with Galloway. Her men are farther up, ahead of the dozer. They'll fall back.

For a few minutes, I stand and watch flames on the perimeter, gauging the wind, waiting to see what else it might do. The wind gusts a few more times, then settles down again, stronger than it was before. The tone of the fire has changed. Smoke, drifting like a fog bank above the canyon, has doubled in height. I need to see what the fire is doing.

“Brashaw, this is Cassel. Meet me at the road.”

“Sure, what's up?”

“We're going up that ridge for a look.”

Brashaw copies and I head out of the fire, following the narrow path of the game trail. Sometimes, as an arsonist exits the scene of a crime, they leave behind clues — called transfer evidence — such as footprints, scraps of clothing, or hair caught on branches. But there's nothing. Fire is a marvellous cleanser.

I arrive at the road to find two new water trucks with Carson Lake Fire Department printed on the side. Three firefighters stand behind one of the engines, talking and pointing toward the fire. They see me, and one ambles over.

“Looks like you got a bit of excitement here,” he says.

I nod, offer a handshake, introduce myself as the incident commander.

“Name's Hutton,” he says. “I didn't know you guys were already on this one.” Hutton is tall and lanky, tanned, early forties. He's wearing black wraparound shades and no hard hat; his receding hair blows lightly in the breeze. “We could stick around for a while, if you'd like.”

“Great.” I'm not about to turn down help.

“At least until we dump these loads.” He glances back at his engines. They're not big trucks, but every gallon counts. “If we get a call in town though, we'll have to leave.”

“Understood.”

“Where do you want us?”

I point toward the fresh scar of the dozerline. “We're cutting a line to the south. When the dozer has tied into that cliff on the south flank, he'll come back and start cutting on the north side. We've got two trucks on the south line already, so you may as well wait until the dozer gets back and starts going north.”

Hutton nods, scuffing the hard surface of the rutted trail with the toe of his work boot. He's got a calm self-assurance about him. He doesn't have to be here — the local fire department is almost certainly volunteer — and although I don't doubt his dedication, there are certain aspects of a fire this big that his crew simply isn't trained to handle.

“I'll have you work with our smokejumpers.”

Hutton nods again, but he's scowling a little. “Okay.”

Brashaw trudges into sight along the dozerline, puffing, his folds jiggling. He looks over to where Hutton and his men are strapping on gear and they nod in mutual recognition. Brashaw mops his forehead with a kerchief that hangs around his neck bandito-style, watching the smoke rise into the sky. Big beads of sweat cling to his cheeks.

“Goddamn,” he says. “That wind sure picked things up.”