Tahoe Blowup

by Todd Borg

  Linda Saronna rolled her head around while she massaged her neck with both hands. Her red hair swung back and forth. “I don’t think it’s been this hectic since the Freel Peak Fire.”

  “When was that?”

  “You must not have been living here or you’d remember. Let’s see. I moved here a year after the fire and I heard all about it. So that would make it fifteen years ago.”

  “I was a cop in San Francisco.”

  “Oh?” She paused, re-appraising me.

  I was used to it. People always rethink what they’ve said when they find out you’re an ex-cop. You go from being a regular guy, even if you’re a private detective, to someone they can’t understand. “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “What? Oh, the Freel Peak Fire. From what I learned, it was a crown fire that started below High Meadows. Burned past the tree line all the way up through the brush at the saddle between Job’s Sister and Freel. Every Fire Department from the Tahoe Basin was involved. And the California Department of Forestry pretty much demonstrated their claim that they have the largest fire-fighting air force in the world.”

  “The Freel Peak Fire was obviously very large.”

  “Right.” Linda Saronna nodded in the nonchalant way of someone who regularly dealt with situations that the rest of us would find extreme. “In addition to the Carson Valley and Sacramento teams, they also had crews come in from Boise, Idaho and Flagstaff, Arizona. From what I understand, the main concern was that they could lose much of the South Shore.”

  “You mean the town of South Lake Tahoe.”

  “Right,” she said. “Except for the hotels, the entire town is made of wood. Houses, shops and a million dry trees.” The phone on her desk rang and she picked it up fast. “Linda Saronna. What? No. I’m in conference. I’ll call you back.” She hung up and looked at me. “Where was I?”

  A vague memory of the Freel Peak Fire story was coming back to me. “Didn’t someone die in the Freel Peak Fire?”

  “Yes. They lost a woman who was in a cabin in the fire path. The woman soaked herself down with water and breathed through wet clothes.” Linda Saronna went silent, her mind no doubt replaying images from what she’d learned of the fire. “She may have known the Hotshots were coming, could have heard the airplane. But they got there too late.”

  “The Smoke Jumpers?”

  “Right. They came up from one of the Gold Country units. Hotshots are to firefighting what Top Gun is to Air Force pilots. They parachuted down to the cabin, but the woman was already gone.” Linda turned and looked out her window toward the pines. She didn’t seem pensive so much as it seemed she was trying to keep me from seeing her face.

  FIVE

  Linda Saronna glanced at her watch, rubbed her eyes and turned back to face me. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve got an eleven o’clock readiness meeting with four fire departments.” She pushed a button on her phone.

  “Frederick?” she said. “Could you come in here please? Thanks.”

  “May I call you back when I have more questions?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “When is a good time?”

  Linda Saronna puffed out her cheeks like Dizzy Gillespie and then let the air out in a rush. Her breath smelled like coffee mocha. “I don’t...” She paged through her calendar. “Okay, tomorrow morning I’m out, but the rest of the week I’ll be in if you call before seven-thirty in the morning or after six at night.”

  “Your energy is impressive.”

  “When Tahoe’s on fire, I’m focused. I’ll take some time off when we have six feet of snow on the ground.”

  The door opened and a clean-cut young man came in. He was of indeterminate age, a youthful 35 or a mature 25. “Yes, Linda?” he said, glancing at me. He wore a green short-sleeved golf shirt that was snug enough to show off hard biceps and triceps and abdominals like cobblestones. His hair was short and combed into a schoolboy flip above his forehead. He smiled when he spoke Linda’s name, revealing teeth bright enough for toothpaste commercials.

  “Owen McKenna meet Frederick Mallicoff. We hired Frederick because he is an expert in fire science. Frederick, Tahoe Douglas F.P.D. has Mr. McKenna looking for the East Shore firestarter. Can you be his liaison? I’m slammed for the next few days.”

  I was about to thank Linda Saronna for her time when her phone rang. She picked it up and started talking nonstop as Frederick ushered me out of her office.

  “I should apologize for Linda,” Frederick said when we were in the hallway. “She thinks the world is on her shoulders right now and, to be fair, it kind of is.”

  “Your job here,” I said. “What do you do?”

  “I’m a fire risk analyst. I study fuel levels in the forest, monitor moisture levels, wind patterns and topography as it relates to fire danger. Superimposing these factors over population density allows us to rate any area of the Tahoe Basin in terms of fire danger to the residents.” We turned from the hallway into a lunch room.

  “There are a host of other components we look at as well,” Frederick continued. “Insect damage to the trees, its direction and rate of spread, snowpack, runoff, long term meteorological forecasts – you get the idea. Fire science is an emerging field. We know dramatically more now than we did thirty or forty years ago. And this knowledge should increase exponentially in the future.”

  His speech, which sounded like something he prepared for his job interview, was interrupted when a small young man walked into the lunchroom. Frederick reached out and slapped him on the shoulder. “Francisco, here, is the number one grunt. He refers to me as Mallicoff the Magnificent when I’m not around. Right, buddy?”

  “More like Mallicoff the Malevolent,” Francisco said, grinning.

  “Insubordination!” Frederick said with a chuckle. He and Francisco locked hands for a moment.

  “Anyway,” Frederick said, “I work with whatever Linda gives me. Some of my overload paperwork goes to Francisco. Francisco, meet Owen McKenna.” We shook. Francisco got a Coke out of the machine and left.

  “Your job sounds fascinating,” I said.

  “I love this job. It was my dream, growing up in Bakersfield, to get in with the Forest Service and be assigned to a place like Tahoe. I’m learning all the ropes. Linda’s a good teacher. I’m actually putting to use most of the forest management I learned at Sac State. On top of that there’s about a million pages of Forest Service protocol to memorize. If I do a good job, who knows? Someday maybe I’ll have Linda’s job. Of course, it’s more likely I’ll get transferred. I’d love to stay in Tahoe, though.”

  “Tell me,” I said. “Does the Forest Service have a position on why an arsonist would want to light forest fires?”

  “You mean an official position? Not that I know of. Some crazies like to light fires, I guess. I don’t imagine there is any doctrine specifically about forest arson as opposed to burning down buildings. The main focus of the Forest Service as regards arson fires is that they try to prevent them at all costs, and if - I suppose I should say when - an arson fire occurs they try to put them out at all costs. Some would say at too much cost.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that same old environmentalist crap about too much fire suppression leads to too much fuel stock in the forest. The liberals think that we should let the forests burn the way they did thousands of years ago. They ignore the tiny little differences between then and now, like the existence of people, for instance. We put out fires because we’re trying very hard to keep people from burning up. And we are constantly doing controlled burns to eliminate fuel buildup.”

  “When a fire starts, what decides who fights it?”

  “Depends,” Frederick said. “If it’s small, then the local fire department will usually be first on the scene and sometimes they get it put out before the Forest Service can get their rigs and men in there to help. In a big fire, we throw everything the Forest Service has at it. The neighboring fire departments also join in along with the
California Department of Forestry and the Nevada Division of Forestry. There is a group called the Sierra Front that oversees the coordination. They’re comprised of eight local F.D.s and F.P.D.s in the basin plus all the other groups.”

  “F.D.s are Fire Departments. F.P.D.s are...”

  “Fire Protection Districts,” Frederick said. “The nomenclature is confusing, but they are all agencies that fight fires.”

  “It sounds complicated.”

  “I suppose it is. But the bottom line is this: We have a Mutual Aid Plan that basically says everybody agrees to help wherever and whenever they’re needed.”

  “What about the East Shore fire? Are there lots of these groups fighting it?”

  Frederick nodded as he sipped his coffee. “This has been a medium response. Not so much because of houses being threatened because there aren’t that many. But this fire is big enough that by the middle of the night we had the Forest Service and several local F.D.s on the scene.” Frederick drank the last of his coffee. “If we get an even bigger fire, or if many structures are threatened like the Autumn Hills fire on Kingsbury Grade a few years ago, then everything comes out. Every man and rig in the Tahoe Basin as well as Hotshot teams from around the Western States. And many distant fire departments send a truck if they can spare one. Plus, if need be, the search and rescue groups bring in dog teams to find any missing persons.”

  “It sounds like a high level of co-operation between the different groups,” I said.

  “A miracle woman with the title of Mutual Aid Coordinator does the legwork.” Frederick smiled. “That’s what I love about this business. Everyone chips in. Of course, the payback is that if a department, say, in the Sacramento Valley sends up a truck and crew to help us, then they’ll expect us to do the same for them if they ever get a big fire.”

  “It sounds like coordinating every resource would be like fighting a war.”

  “It is,” Frederick said, nodding. “The Mutual Aid Coordinator works with every fire-fighting organization. At each fire an Incident Command Post is set up near the fire. The Command staff is often comprised of a fireman, a cop and a Forest Service official.”

  “It sounds like there is a lot of opportunity for confusion. Do people ever pull rank or fight for jurisdiction?”

  “Yeah, it can get ugly.” Frederick actually looked a bit embarrassed. “Sometimes one of the local departments and the Forest Service will both be trying to set up Incident Commands. We’ve even had it where the Forest Service and a local department are both fighting a fire without even talking to each other about it.”

  “Boys and their fire trucks.”

  “Yeah. But really, when you look at it, it is no different than the different factions on the school board or city council fighting over procedures or plans.” Frederick looked at his watch. “I better get back to work. If you need anything, call me at this number. It’s my cell phone, so you won’t have to deal with the switchboard and the secretary.” He handed me his card.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  We stood, shook hands again and I left. I drove back across town and headed up the mountain to my cabin.

  Spot showed his excitement at seeing me by bringing me his big metal food bowl and holding it in his teeth. He stood there thumping his tail against the dishwasher. The bass drum in the high school marching band wasn’t as loud. I told him to wait while I dialed Diamond Martinez on his pager and punched in my number.

  My phone rang in a minute and Diamond said he was in the area and would stop by. His new white Explorer with the Douglas County Sheriff’s emblem on the door pulled up to my cabin fifteen minutes later. He got out with a serious frown on his dark brown face. Diamond scanned the devastated landscape and scowled. Spot ran up to him and stuck his nose in Diamond’s hand.

  “Congratulations on being appointed Fire Investigator,” I said.

  “Just in time to help you gringos with a bad-ass firestarter.” Diamond grabbed Spot’s ears and rubbed them like he was kneading tortilla dough. “We don’t have these situations back home.”

  “What, no forest fires in Mexico?”

  “Not like this one. Smoky Bear doesn’t go south of the border. Up here old Smoky’s been suppressing fires for so many years, fuel builds up to dangerous levels. When a fire finally does happen, it is difficult to control. In Mexico, regular fires clear out the back country. More natural. The people come out and watch them burn. It’s just as well because we couldn’t afford the fire fighting equipment anyway.” Diamond walked to the edge of my deck and looked down at the ash-covered landscape. “This fire that went through your back yard, Owen, it’s probably the first fire here in a hundred years or more. Whereas, before white man’s glorious arrival, lightning-caused fires swept Tahoe every five to seven years on average.”

  “How do they know that?”

  “Tree cross-sections. And species distribution. Regular fires used to keep the forest open, and the ratio of pines to firs was much higher.”

  “Pines being more fire-resistant,” I said.

  Diamond nodded. “In fact, one of the early white guys wrote that Tahoe’s forests were so open you could ride through them on a horse at full gallop. Now the forest is so dense, it’s hard to walk through in places, especially on the West Shore where they get more precipitation.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this stuff.”

  “Been studying,” Diamond said. “The darker your skin, the more you gotta know.”

  “You’re not including me in with the pale faces, I hope.”

  Diamond looked at me. “You are pretty pale. But no, I’ll be magnanimous. Don’t want to automatically assume guilt by association.”

  “Magnanimous,” I said. “You got some big words for your second language.”

  “I’m learning,” Diamond said. He sat down on one of my deck chairs. Spot sat next to him and lowered his head onto Diamond’s lap, hoping for more pets. “Is he going to drool on me?” Diamond asked.

  “Probably. He hasn’t eaten lunch yet.”

  Diamond looked disgusted, but didn’t move his hand, which was rubbing Spot’s ears. “You should be glad you’re on the Nevada side of the lake where it’s drier. Less growth. Less fuel. Probably why your chateau didn’t burn.”

  I looked at my little cabin. “Chateau?”

  “Palatial estate where I come from.”

  I nodded. “About this perp,” I said. “I thought a dog search might turn up something.”

  “Can’t hurt,” Diamond said. “I thought about it myself now that I’ve been appointed Fire Investigator. But we’ve got one deputy out on disability because of his back, another on vacation, and a third sick with the flu, or so he says. Anyway, for the near future I’m Fire Investigator in name only.” Diamond looked at Spot. “Tell me. If you were to find a person poking around the crime scene, is there some way a dog can tell if it’s the firestarter or not?”

  “If we can find an article specific to the firestarter, then we could have the dog scent it. If the dog then alerts to a person, that could be the perp. But you and Terry Drier’s guys found no articles, so it is unlikely. Besides, what arsonist is going to hang around to be sniffed by a dog? I didn’t have a specific idea of what a dog would find, just that it might be worth the trouble.”

  “Sure. Bring Spot out there and let him run.”

  “Actually, Spot is only trained for finding live humans and he isn’t that great at it anyway. But I thought I’d bring in a dog that is trained on fires. Accelerants specifically.”

  “We don’t have a dog in our department,” Diamond said. “But the South Lake Tahoe P.D. has one.”

  “Right, but I don’t know if it is accelerant trained. I thought I’d call Ellie Ibsen, the woman who trains them. I met her last spring.”

  Diamond gave a slow nod as the memory came back. “It was her dog found the body of Jennifer Salazar’s sister.”

  “Right.”

  “Let me know if you find anything,” Diamond
said.

  After Diamond left I looked up Ellie Ibsen in my little book and dialed her number.

  “Hi, Ellie, Owen McKenna calling,” I said when she answered.

  It took her a moment. “Owen! How are you and how is that wonderful animal of yours?”

  “I think he misses you. Misses Natasha, too. Ellie, I’m wondering if you have a dog that is trained on accelerants.”

  “Both Natasha and Annie are. Although Natasha’s better. Besides, Annie’s laid up with a torn toe ligament. What have you got?”

  “The arson fire on the East Shore. I’m wondering if any accelerants were involved.”

  “Natasha’s your dog,” Ellie said. She paused. “I told my assistant she could have the afternoon off. And you know I’m getting a little old to drive these mountain roads. But if you want to come and get us we’ve got nothing on our schedule.”

  “Ellie, remind me to give you a kiss when I get down there.”

  After I hung up, Spot saw me look at him. He picked up his bowl again, teeth grating on the metal, and resumed thumping the dishwasher with his tail.

  “You can drop the bowl now.”

  It clattered to the floor and rolled like a lost hubcap until it hit the closet where I keep his Science Diet.

  “How did you do that?” I said.

  Spot wagged some more.

  I gave him a small serving what with the car ride in front of us. He waited, two strings of Pavlovian saliva quivering from his jowls, until I gave the okay. Then he inhaled his food faster than I could have with a shop-vac. No manners.

  Spot napped in back as I drove up the Sierra crest, out of the Tahoe Basin and down into gold country. For most of an hour I followed the American River canyon as it cut deeper into the mountains.

  I turned off in Placerville, drove past where they discovered gold in 1849, and found the turnoff to Ellie’s Three Bar Ranch. Spot was awake and excited as I came to a stop. I reached over the seat and opened his door.

  Ellie came out of her house and waved. Natasha, her black German Shepherd, appeared beside her and raced into the huge yard.