by Kyle Dickman
“We can’t really make the job safer with more policy and rules,” says Jim Cook, a former hotshot superintendent who went on to help found the Wildland Fire Leadership Development Program, an institution that strives to make firefighting safer by improving leadership skills and decision-making on the line. “There’s an expectation that we can have a fire season where no firefighters die. But there’s no evidence to suggest that we can actually pull that off. What we do after each major incident is go back and examine why we had such a bad outcome. Each time, we get incrementally better at fire-line safety.”
The tradition of institutionalized learning after mass-casualty fires dates back to 1956. After the rapid succession of three mass-casualty fires left thirty-nine young men dead, the Forest Service commissioned a task force of experts to investigate why so many firefighters were dying and “materially reduce the chances of men being killed by burning.” The task force’s findings were distilled into ten Standard Firefighting Orders:
1. Keep informed on fire weather conditions and forecasts.
2. Know what your fire is doing at all times.
3. Base all actions on current and expected behavior of the fire.
4. Identify escape routes and safety zones and make them known.
5. Post lookouts when there is possible danger.
6. Be alert. Keep calm. Think clearly. Act decisively.
7. Maintain prompt communications with your forces, your supervisor, and adjoining forces.
8. Give clear instructions and ensure they are understood.
9. Maintain control of your forces at all times.
10. Fight fire aggressively, having provided for safety first.
Shortly after the investigators issued the ten Standard Firefighting Orders, they released the “13 Situations That Shout Watchout”—specific, cautionary environmental and human factors often present in tragedy fires. By the 1980s, after ten more mass-casualty fires, the name had been shortened to just “Watchout Situations” and the list expanded to eighteen. A few examples:
Unburned fuel between you and the fire.
Cannot see main fire, not in contact with anybody who can.
Wind increases and/or changes direction.
Terrain and fuels make escape to safety zones difficult.
The ten Standard Firefighting Orders and the eighteen Watchout Situations are known by firefighters as the Ten and Eighteen, and these rules of engagement provide the basis for all fire-line decisions. Most firefighters carry a laminated list of the orders in their breast pocket. Scott did. He could also recite the directives from memory.
Superintendent Mike Schinstock was disappointed when Scott told him he was leaving the Payson Hotshots. He saw in Scott the trappings of a career fireman and had started grooming him for a leadership position shortly after Scott started with Payson. By the time Scott came to Granite Mountain, his fire-line qualifications rivaled those of the crew’s squad bosses.
Though he often said, “That’s not how we do things on Payson,” he was thrilled to get the job, and he came to greatly respect Steed in the months he worked under him. Scott didn’t talk much about his previous experience. But his quiet confidence and amiable personality made him a natural role model for Granite Mountain’s rookies. Kevin Woyjeck, like many of the younger guys on the crew, looked up to Scott. Woyjeck reminded Scott of a younger cousin—eager to the point of annoyance, a little brother he couldn’t help but like.
Woyjeck had peppered Scott with questions throughout the season, but the queries reached a dizzying barrage before Granite Mountain left for its first extended fire assignment: Seven pairs of underwear—that’s too few? What, really? Too many? Extra bootlaces, hooded sweatshirt, beanie—need those for sure…right?
—
Dusk had fallen over the Mogollon Rim when Granite Mountain pulled into a gravel cul-de-sac across from the Hart Fire. Scott, Grant, Renan, Donut, and the others on Alpha squad poured from the back of their buggy and took stock of their task: a ridge awash in orange. At that point, the Hart Fire had spread across a couple of acres of pine saplings and long-dead trees—both logs and still-standing snags. Occasionally, flames climbed into low branches and—whoosh—a shower of embers arced skyward as a single tree combusted. The little timber burn was far more impressive than the prairie fire weeks earlier, but the Hart was still just a preview of the fires to come. A few shifts and Granite Mountain would be heading home. But the best thing about the assignment was that Granite Mountain was one of only a few resources on the Hart, and working outside the purview of an incident management team brought out the hotshots’ lighter side.
While working an even more remote fire, in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters in 2011, Granite Mountain canoed into their piece of fire line and spent a week camping out alone on a beach. Scott wasn’t on Granite Mountain for the Minnesota trip, but he’d been on plenty of similarly slow assignments.
On Payson, he’d seen guys jump fully clothed into Pumpkins, the inflatable orange five-hundred-gallon water tanks that are staged along fire lines. He’d taken part in the impromptu competitions that develop between crews working the same isolated piece of line. On one fire, an elected representative from each crew packed an entire can of Copenhagen into his lower lip, sprinted around a predetermined course, and did as many push-ups as possible. The first to vomit lost. Scott himself had tried and lost the 4:4:40, a challenge to drink four quarts of water in four minutes and hold it down for forty seconds. He loved the antics on slow fires. The playfulness was a perk, but Scott also enjoyed the work.
That night, the hotshots constructed line steadily but without any great urgency. Between the reservoir and the creek, water surrounded the Hart on three sides. To complete the box around the fire, all Granite Mountain needed to do was punch in a quarter-mile piece of line from the lake, up and over the ridge, and back down to the creek.
It was the type of quiet and cool evening that kept hotshots returning to the job for decades. As darkness came to the Mogollon Rim, the humidity climbed and the fire pulled back into the heaviest logs scattered about the forest floor. Some of the men turned off their headlamps and swung their tools by the fire’s warm glow. Bats strafed the lake, and the muffled thud of the hotshots’ tools striking dirt could be heard from the campsites across the water. Granite Mountain finished lining the fire that night, and at around 2 A.M. the men spread out their sleeping bags and fell asleep under the blue light of a half-moon.
—
The next morning, Steed and Clayton tapped Renan to join them on a burnout operation. Renan’s heart jumped. “To be a rookie with Steed and Clay? I was like, Oh shit, this is awesome!” he’d tell Grant later.
The three hotshots hiked along a cobbled beach beside the reservoir. At that point, the Hart Fire smoldered in the cliff bands above them, even less of a threat than it had been the night before. Still, spot fires always remained a concern. To widen the fire’s black edge and ensure the blaze was controlled, Steed wanted Renan to burn off a corner of willows and grass between the completed line and the lake.
Usually stoic, Renan could barely contain his enthusiasm. Burning out with Steed and Clay was surely a sign that they were considering him for Rookie of the Year. The rest of the crew faced the drudgery of mop-up, and Renan had drawn the most fun job on the line—legitimized arson.
“All right, dude,” Steed said to Renan. They were ready to burn out the Hart Fire. “You’re up. Don’t breathe the smoke in. It’ll stay with you all day.”
From his pack, Renan grabbed a fusee, one of the dynamite-like sticks used as road flares. He twisted the top, breaking the paper between the chemical fuel in the tube and the igniter, and uncertainly flicked the two slate ends together. The stick hissed, and a foot-long orange flame and a cloud of sulfur erupted straight into Renan’s face. He coughed and gagged. Steed boomed with laughter and showed him how to use the fusee to start burns in the undersides of bushes, where, sheltered from the rain, the pine needles and leaf li
tter were driest. By day’s end, the low-intensity fire inside the box was nearly forty acres—twenty times larger than when the crew had first arrived the night before. That knowledge gave Renan no small amount of pride.
—
While Renan was clearly enjoying himself, the fire was testing Grant. Up on the ridgeline between the creek and the lake, he and the rest of Alpha squad stacked smoldering logs into piles to concentrate and burn down the heat. The bone piles, as the hotshots called them, were scattered around the forest. For Grant, the work amounted to a game of pick-up sticks. He paced the area closest to the line, seeking out burning logs that were small enough to move and, with his tool and gloved hands, dragging them into various burning piles.
Ash and soot smudged Grant’s face, and streaks of black colored his yellow shirt. Renan hiked up from the lake, his burnout now complete.
“Best day of my life,” Renan said, beaming. “Seriously, dude. That was fucking awesome. I just got paid to light the side of a mountain on fire.”
“That’s awesome, man. That’s so cool,” Grant said. But it was clear he was bored.
Once the bone piling was finished, Grant started mopping up. He dug a quick pit in the ash near the fire line they’d built the night before. With his rhino, he scooped up a smoldering twig, dropped it into the hole, and, to ensure a gust of wind couldn’t rekindle the embers, ground the wood into the cooler dirt until no remnant heat remained.
“I’ve been standing here in the sun and mopping up this fucking hillside all day,” Grant said. He hadn’t slept well the night before. At home, he always put a funny movie on the TV—Tommy Boy was his favorite—and fell asleep to the noise. Last night, when Granite Mountain finally did go to bed, all he heard was snoring so loud it sounded painful and millions of chirping crickets or frogs or whatever they were.
Another smoke tendril twisted up from the ash at Grant’s feet. He covered the smoldering twig with more cold dirt and stirred again. Down below, four or five of the other hotshots whooped as they dove into the creek. The line was in, and the work that was left wasn’t pressing. In small groups, Steed gave the men a few minutes to relax and enjoy the place. The veterans had been whispering among themselves about how cool it was that Steed was letting them swim—it wasn’t something Marsh had ever allowed. Donut took the time to tie a rock to a length of parachute cord and toss the makeshift lure toward the crawdads teeming in the shallows. When one crawdad latched a claw onto the stone, its natural defensive mechanism, Donut lifted the crustacean from the water, grabbed its body behind its flailing pincers, and pushed the animal into his breast pocket. It stayed there until he released it later that afternoon.
“Dude, you gotta relax,” Renan told him. “You’ve gotta find something to look forward to. What do you like? Not movies, but something you can do out here. Something to take your mind off of this shit.”
“Hand-rolled cigarettes. I like those,” Grant said. He placed the back of his hand just above the ash to feel for heat—nothing—then buried his bare fingers into the pit he’d been working. Only the remnant warmth of the coals remained.
“Get some, then. At the next gas station stop, buy a pouch and smoke ’em down. In the meantime”—Renan tossed him a can of Copenhagen. “But don’t get addicted. Leah wouldn’t like that.”
—
In the evenings after their shifts, the crew went for dinner to the nearby station of the Blue Ridge Hotshots, a Forest Service crew based in the Coconino National Forest. Blue Ridge normally would have dealt with the Hart Fire, given how close it was to their station, but they weren’t even in Arizona. The SWCC had sent Blue Ridge to New Mexico after the Thompson Ridge Fire began. Since it started, the blaze had moved progressively closer to the eighteen-thousand-person town of Los Alamos. Blue Ridge’s empty station had cell-phone coverage, running water, and a cache of Gatorade, which, as was common among hotshot crews, Granite Mountain helped themselves to.
One night while relaxing at the station, Chris MacKenzie, Alpha’s lead firefighter, received a nightmarish voice mail. His mom had a brain tumor. She was going to the hospital for surgery.
“She said she was going to be fine,” Chris told Donut, his roommate, and Clayton Whitted, Alpha’s squad boss. “It’s a routine procedure. I should just stay here. I need the money.” In some ways, staying with the crew was easier than seeing his mom incapacitated in a hospital bed.
But Clayton insisted Chris leave to see his mom. “You’re going, Chris,” Clayton said. “You’re leaving tomorrow and you’re going to be there for your mom.”
Chris left the crew that next morning and, down another key crew member, Donut stepped into his lead firefighter position. Granite Mountain stayed to work the Hart Fire for another couple of shifts. By most of the hotshots’ standards, the fire had been an easy one. But a few days later, after another long and slow shift on the Hart, Grant cracked.
Outside of Blue Ridge’s station, Alpha squad sat in the back of the buggy, eating the steaks the Coconino National Forest had provided for dinner. Moths bounced off the cab lights, and in the chill of the spring night, some of the men wore beanies and hooded sweatshirts. Steed expected they’d be heading home to Prescott in the morning. The Hart Fire was lined, mopped up, and now mostly cold.
Grant sat quietly in the back of the buggy while the other men chattered around him. Hotshotting is at once intensely social and oddly isolating. The men get no time alone. Anthony Rose, apparently bored, started calling to Grant from his seat up front. Whatever it was—a reference to Leah, a lighthearted insult about Grant looking every bit as tired as he felt—Grant didn’t like it. He stared at the back of Tony’s head. Grant agreed to play by the hotshots’ rules, but he wouldn’t do it at the cost of his dignity.
“You’re picking on me because I’m the only person you can pick on,” Grant said. “You’re nothing but a bully.”
A hush fell over the buggy. Rookies didn’t usually talk back, let alone with vehemence, and Grant’s tone of voice brought to mind that he’d been a varsity wrestler in high school. Tony turned around, surprised. Rookies got picked on; that was hotshotting’s social contract. On Granite Mountain, it took a year for the men to claim ownership of the title of hotshot. To build pride in the crew and give men a reason to return after their first season, Marsh had instituted a policy that rookies had to wear different T-shirts than the veterans. Until they finished their first year, new guys were treated as second-class. Grant found it frustrating. He’d willed himself through most of his life’s challenges—prescription drugs, wrestling, Steed’s workouts. But his willfulness couldn’t force obstinate hotshots to treat him with the respect he felt he deserved.
“We’ve all passed our critical training,” Grant continued, his voice rising. “Right now, I don’t need your shit.” Tony, who had recently found out his girlfriend was pregnant, ratcheted up the tension. He smirked dismissively at Grant, until Renan set his plate down, stepped across the aisle in the buggy, and gently pulled his friend outside.
CHAPTER 10
IN COUNTRY NOT SEEN IN DAYLIGHT
It’s a six-hour drive from the Coconino National Forest to Jemez Springs, New Mexico, where the Thompson Ridge Fire was burning. That morning, just before the hotshots left the Hart Fire for home, the SWCC dispatched Granite Mountain to the rapidly expanding blaze. The distance provided the hotshots with one of the job’s great pleasures: the road trip. With no work to do and many miles of wild landscapes to pass through, the men could spend the day lounging and napping until their next shift. On fire assignments, the buggies became home.
Alpha’s was tricked out. Last year’s squad had all chipped in to buy a flat-screen TV that still hung above the half wall that separated the eight hotshots from the squad boss and the lead firefighter in the cab. All the way from the Hart Fire to the Jemez, Alpha squad played movies. Grant loved it. He called Leah and left a quiet voice mail.
“Just calling to let you know we got reassigned to a place called
Thompson Ridge, New Mexico, outside of Albuquerque. Hoping that we’ll be able to stay in contact with you. Anyways, that’s where I’ll be. If not, love you and miss you.”
Then he promptly kicked back in the air-conditioning and let Chris Farley’s Black Sheep soothe his frayed nerves.
Bravo cultivated a more rustic vibe in their buggy. The squad, led by Bob Caldwell and the enormous Afghan War veteran Travis Turbyfill, included Bunch, Zup, and Woyjeck. Not yet a week into the first fire assignment, the back of the Bravo rig had the sweet but mostly sickly smell of body odor, woodsmoke, and rot. Empty Gatorade and water bottles rolled around the floor. Somebody had mounted an elk’s antlers—flecked with drops of red retardant—above the half wall. Surrounding this proud centerpiece were postcards collected from every state where Granite Mountain had fought fires: Minnesota, Alabama, Washington, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, California, New Mexico, Nevada. Copenhagen chewing tobacco lids were taped to the walls. So were knives and forks lifted from restaurants, a horseshoe hung with the points up so the luck didn’t run out, and a picture of a frowning cat that read, THIS IS MY HAPPY FACE.
What both buggies shared were the small cardboard boxes that sat on the windowsill beside each hotshot’s seat. In them, the men stowed their personal items: books, decks of cards, magazines, sunflower seeds, instant coffee. For hotshots on assignment, gas station convenience stores were the source of all good things.
Granite Mountain stopped at one in the Navajo country of northeast Arizona. Dust and tumbleweeds drifted across dirt roads so rough they saw traffic only from locals in rusting American-made pickups. It was a hundred degrees, and hotter by the pumps. For many convenience store owners in the West, seasonal firefighters mark the change of seasons as much as warming days do. Firefighters are good for business. Cold drinks, hot coffee, sunflower seeds, ice cream, chocolate, and logs of chewing tobacco, each one holding five cans, flew off the shelves by the armful.