Notes from the fire line
There’s an eerie silence made by hundreds of firefighters coming off the front lines. There are a few handshakes exchanged, glances and smiles, head nods from seeing each other earlier in the day maybe, but very little small talk.
This is what exhaustion sounds like.
It’s the calm after the fire storm, the 1,000 yard stare someone gets from being in battle. And fighting that storm day after day, all summer long and its only August of the driest year in California’s history.
Some of these firefighters literally drove off a fire scene somewhere in the state Saturday to show up at the Walker Fire Sunday.
Men and women dismount from a convoy of trucks at 9 p.m. Monday in Lee Vining, back from a 16-hour shift battling the Walker Fire on the steep, lower flanks of the Sierra range. Single file, covered in soot the fighters wash their faces and hands and then line up for chow at the small city erected at the Lee Vining Community Center.
The city spills over onto the high school’s grassy fields. The make-shift city has dozens and dozens of tents, porta-potties, and dining tables with a view of Mono Lake and a massive, empty grass field marked “Sleeping Area.”
I watched firefighters eat three of four plates full of steak and salad and potatoes, toss the plate and move on. It’s fairly obvious no one wants to talk to a reporter; no one gives off the look that they want to talk.
From my end, while it’s instinctual not to poke a sleeping dog, it’s also part of my DNA to want to interview these people who wrestle fire for a living.
Walking down the dark corridor of fire trucks that line the street, I spotted a small crew huddled next to their truck laughing, brushing their teeth, checking their phones.
I asked them what they did to unwind.
“Have you talked to the public information officer?” answers one guy. That response is the exact same one given to nearly every question by anyone on the scene, except the PIOs.
A crew leader comes over and politely says, “Lets talk over here,” and points across the street, “Have you talked to the public information …?”
“I’ve talked to them, I want to talk to the crew. I won’t use any names, I just want to talk to the people on the front lines,” I say.
The leader strokes his dusty beard, “You’ve caught these guys at a bad time. They need rest. That’s what’s most important right now, for these guys to rest. To find the darkest, quietest place they can and get some sleep, get up and do it all over again tomorrow.”
No beer or dancing, just food and rest and then restart the clock.
Firefighters work a maximum 16-hour shift, giving them at least one hour rest for every two hours worked, said Inyo National Forest Public Information officer Deb Schweitzer. But when the blaze broke off running on Sunday, local crews worked a 36-hour shift before reinforcements arrived.
“If you see a firefighter in town, be nice to them,” she said.
Inside the community center are the event organizers and land managers, the Forest Service, CalFire, Mono County Sheriffs and the Sierra Front Type III Incident Management Team. There are three types of wildfire classifications, Type III is the smallest. The center handles the logistics of putting the town together and keeping it together along with monitoring and preparing battle plans.
Finances are a big part of it. Schweitzer said there is not an unlimited amount of money to spend, but money will not run out in fighting a fire. Every penny must be accounted for, though. Jennifer Hansen, PIO for the Mono County Sheriff’s Department said aside from the initial evacuation orders and other chaos of the first day, deputies have not accrued any overtime, yet. An emergency declaration can be made with the state to assist with paying for local resources, and the paperwork is in process but not yet sent. Hansen said declarations are usually based on the number of structures destroyed, but there are many factors that go into the decision-making.
One crew member was giving a commander an evening update. “Well you must be doing something right,” the commander said, “the fire isn’t growing much.”
The fire season in California is off to a devastating start. Sierra Front had literally driven off the Dodge Fire Saturday and onto the Walker Fire, said Tia Rancourt Sierra Front PIO from the PIO table in the commander center.
There is a great deal of cooperation in the Eastern Sierra, between agencies and communities and a good working relationship, Schweizer said. Cooperation and collaboration is key to these operations, Rancourt said.
Crews from all over the West are fighting the Walker fire, including Nevada, Arizona and California. One fighter from San Diego was about to go out for the night shift cutting dozer lines and back firing. Back firing is staring a fire maybe down slope as the big fire burns toward it. The back fire burns up all the available fuel in the path of the fire, stopping the big fire because there’s nothing left for it to burn.
“Phew! The fire’s hot!” he said, adding the whole state is full of brittle, oily brush that burns hot and holds a lot of heat. He said he expects a quiet night, but winds are much less predictable at night and early morning. He explained the fire is wind driven and large walls of fire would come rushing up or down canyon. Other guys were busy grabbing water bottles, cases of chainsaw bar oil or cleaning out the cabs of their trucks.
There are hundreds of these pop-up communities throughout the state. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, there were approximately 3,000 firefighters battling and managing 13 major fires in the Golden State that had charred more than 231,117 acres as of Wednesday.
Nationally, more than 7 million acres have burned so far this year, more than a million acres more than in any year in the past decade.
The Walker Fire started Aug. 14 near the shores of Walker Lake near the Walker Fishing Camp. The fire has been determined to be human caused and is under investigation.
