The dry forest below the small helicopter began smoking heavily and burst into flame. Then a small helicopter carrying a Ping-Pong machine began weaving a pattern in the air between the man-made fire and the wild fire. Soon a 2 mile stretch of logging road was bordered by flame. We would drop water on any spot fires that jumped over the road to the McCall side. This fire would burn toward the wild fire. He called us over to a dirt logging road and had us fly back and forth above the road while ground crews lit a new fire at the road’s edge. Kind of like enemy soldiers trying to surround your position. Meanwhile, the fire boss geared up for a direct attack on the dangerous western flank of the fire, which was trying to jump the highway and hook around McCall. The eastern flank of the fire turned away from McCall, crossed over a ridge, and burned off into the wild forest. The fire wasn’t doing nasty things so after a few days we were able to stop the fire’s advance about half way down the last mountain slope before town. Breathe smoky air and fly a hundred water bucket loads up the mountain, dig a mile of hand line. Lots of the time fire fighting is just that. The ground crews dug a half mile of hand line. The bombers dropped that quantity in retardant. We did this for the rest of the day, dropping maybe 70,000 gallons of water on the fire. At the 5500 foot altitude of the lake we could lift around 6000 pounds of water, about 700 gallons. With nature’s cooperation all this would stop or redirect the fire. Meanwhile, big bomber airplanes would drop liquid red fire retardant in 200 yard long swaths ahead of the helicopter, using ridge tops and rock slides as fence posts for their retardant line. The hand line, which is a foot path an arm span wide dug through vegetation down to mineral soil, will starve the advancing flame of fuel and stop the fire’s progress. We in the helicopter were to slow the fire’s advance and buy time for ground crews to dig a hand line from the nearest road to this spot. The fire boss called us over to fight the face of the fire closest to McCall. Fortunately, a few logging roads lay between the fire and McCall and these were what the firefighters would use to turn the fire away from McCall. The Forest Service was under heavy pressure from these two groups to stop the fire. At night the trophy home residents looked out their view windows and watched the forest torch off a few miles away. It was several thousand acres in size and burning toward the last mountain slope before McCall. They called for our helicopter a couple of days later. Probably before the storms had passed the Forest Service was gearing up to battle the fires the lightening would surely start. They say the night sky flickered as if the sun had a short in it. A mass of thunderstorms passed over the mountains north of McCall and blasted the forest with lightening. A summer evening a few years back some naughty kids snuck into the yard and played with matches. Think of it as Boise’s backyard sandbox and swing set. McCall has its share of lake shore trophy summer homes, lots of golf courses and a really nice winter ski resort. McCall is an easy 2 1/2 hour drive from Boise, which is Idaho’s biggest city and its state capital. McCall, Idaho, is a beautiful mountain lake resort town of about 2500 year around residents with another 5000 part timers. Sometimes the heat is from flames, sometimes it ms from politics. There are several fires around but none are hot enough yet to need a big helicopter like ours. I’m sitting here waiting for our helicopter to be sent out on a forest fire.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |