Story 1: The Fire Was Really Picking Up

The one that I'm going to talk about is the Hayman Fire that was down in Denver, outside of Denver, here, I think in 2001. I guess, we'd be on far southeast flank of the fire. We were just working one flank with two hotshot crews. We were just leapfrogging digging line. One time I guess it was probably 13 or 1400 and the fire was really picking up. And we were both heading down a long ridge and so at that point, people were tired, the hottest part of the day, and we're going downhill so we just took a minute. And it wasn't a dangerous situation, so to speak, but we just took a minute to sit back and gather the group up and let everybody know why we were stopped and that we wanted to talk about safety hazards, see if anybody had seen anything and just go around to each member of the crew and get their feeling on what was going on, just kind of involve everybody, to let them know that this is what we're going to do but you're going to be part of the decision. The downhill line construction, which we wanted to see if anybody would bring that up, they did. So that was a big one we talked about. And then we got into for the sake of the younger people in the crew, we got into the trigger points and somebody took weather and we discussed a little bit of that.

I think in their mind when they're talking about this throughout the day, they're envisioning that worst-case scenario, at least that's what we're trying to put in their mind is, you know, all these conditions that we have are bad and they could be leading to something bad. So let's just keep an eye on them and keep talking about them. So that's already in their mind. And then when it happens, it's like, oh, okay, here's what we've been talking about all day, let's do what we need to do to get out of it or to mitigate.

The best thing it's given me is some trust factor. As long as that person feels some involvement, then I'm getting a little bit of their trust because they know that somebody's going to listen to what I have to say and even if it doesn't happen the way they're going to say it, that seems to be a big thing. You know, just the fact of knowing that everybody's on the same page, gave everybody that mentality where we're all thinking sort of alike. So my buddy's looking out for me and I'm looking out for her. I know I've been on crews where there wasn't trust and when you get in bad situations, you don't have that trust. Everything goes out the window.

Story 2: We Had People in a Panic

It was on the Jasper Fire in 2000. And we'd spent some time scouting in the air looking for an adequate helibase for the pieces that we knew we had coming. We'd found what we thought was going to be a good helibase. It had some limitations with regard to wires and a little bit of squeeze in there with regard to what we knew we had coming as far as aviation assets. But the thing that we felt fairly comfortable about was that the fire was going to continue to move away from us. And was going to leave us in a high and dry good situation, we weren't going to need to look over our shoulder and worry about the monster wherever it was at. Boy, we couldn't have been more wrong.

We all missed it. We got a wind switch from a southwest to a southeast and that was—and we had an open flank that we were watchful of, but we continued to feel that it was going to continue to move away from us and we weren't going to need to be concerned with that. You can get pretty wrapped up when you're building a helibase from scratch. There's a lot of things that need to be in place and working very very proficiently and smoothly. The wind switch came, and it was immediate. It was immediate recognition by several people there. It was even way before the smoke got to us. It was way before the fire brands started landing on the helibase and burning stuff up. And it was like, "Oh God. This is not good." We've got a lot of people, a lot of apparatus, a tremendous amount of moving parts here, and we're going to sit here now and focus on what it is we're feeling or sensing more than really observing at that point in time. And Chris and I got together and we kind of hunkered down and talked about it, and he said if we need to move, we've got to do it now. I said, "I agree. I don't even want to wait to see what develops." Before we actually got everything moved out of there, we had the smoke column bent over coming right across us. We had fire brands landing in the meadow that we had chosen for the helibase. We had people in a panic.

We got the pilots together and we said, "Guys, this is not a good deal. We need to get this whole ball of wax out of here and we need to do it pretty darn quick," and they're like, ‘Yep, you betcha.'" So they grabbed their contract folks, they grabbed their managers, everything seemed to calm down a little bit. We went to the people that I felt were the most experienced with the situation that we had to deal with. I just felt that if the direction was going to come from anybody and be acted upon rationally, the pilots were going to be the ones that were going to better be able to get this thing moving so that we could just shuffle on out of there. You can't have any urgency in your voice. You can't move quickly. So it's like you've got smoking brakes going as you're working through this process because you're standing on them, going, Jeez, I need to walk calmly, I need to talk calmly. I need to walk up to an individual, get them close, there's wind, there's generators, there's pumps, there's noise, get them up close, talk to them as calmly as I can, and say, "You know, this is our situation here. We need to get this, this, and this done." Those guys did such a wonderful job, not only with their own contract crews, the mechanics, the fuel tenders, the whatever they had with them, but they did a really good job in calming down the managers, discussing with the managers, and their crews, and we were able to pick up all of the stuff that it took us at least a half a day to get set up, we were out of there in an hour.

Story 3: We Have Spots All Over the Place

It was a type 2 crew I was working with, I was one of the squad bosses on it. We all came together from the Santa Fe National Forest and it was just people from all different districts on the forest. Where everything happened, we were in Yellowstone, working on the East Fire at the time. And it was 10 o'clock in the morning and our mission of the day was to look for spot fires and we were having fairly good winds. I could just sense that something was going wrong. I'd fought fire in Montana before and I knew the trigger points in the situation. We were just catching a lot of spots that early in the morning. It was heavily timbered area and there was just spots all over the place. Everywhere you were looking, you were finding spots. And that was, you know, a watch out to me, that we got spots all over the place, we got people that aren't familiar with this country much at all, we got people that aren't familiar with the trigger points. And I felt that this was something that needed to be keyed in to all these people. We all had to be on the same page so if a situation does arise, we're all together and we can get out of this area together. I alerted my crew boss, and from what I can remember he had not fought fire in Montana and so I let him know, you know, this is something we gotta start watching out for.

I'd say about a half hour later, you know, we were catching more and more spots, the RH was starting to dip lower, I said, "This is time that we regroup, let's get together. You know, if we're going to be working these spots, let's get together in this situation and let's stay together." As far as regrouping, I feel when the situation arises, you have to have a face-to-face. A face-to-face you see the emotions, you're getting everybody together, you're getting everybody informed, you're getting everybody on the same page. You need to have everybody on the same page, especially when things are going chaotic.

I conferred with the crew boss, and I was like, "It's time we get out of this area." It was blowing up and we found a beautiful meadow that offered a great protection. So we all got up into the safety zone, and I could watch everybody's expressions and how everybody was dealing with the situation. And some of these people—but not all of them— hadn't had a lot of fire experience so they'd never dealt with big fire, they'd mostly dealt with small initial attack and they hadn't seen a lot of intense fire activity. I was with the whole crew. I just kept on briefing with them. I don't know if it was a comforting thing, but I was with them the whole time. And I was working with them the whole time. I think one of the best things to do in those situations is keep people informed. And just watching how they're reacting to the situation. You know, if you have to, you know, take that person to the side. If you're seeing that they are getting really scared, let them know that you're there and that everything's going to be all right because you want to make it out of this too, you want to get home at the end of the night. You gotta keep everybody together and you gotta watch their emotions, watch how they're dealing with the situation, and be there for them. If you don't have that cohesion, then it's going to be hard when something really does happen. Everybody would have been scattered all over the place and, you know, it could have potentially been fatalities out there.