I’ve seen a couple of examples of “firenados” posted around the web lately. That brought me back to my youthful days in the Forest Service,  when I had the opportunity to see some firenados up close and personal. I worked for the US Forest Service in the Coeur d’Alene National Forest back in the summer of 1972. I was just out of college and my pal Bill Benson and I had driven out to Wallace, Idaho to look for work. He was a writer and I was an artist and our plan was to find seasonal work that would allow us chunks of time to follow our creative dreams. Or maybe it was to play basketball all the time, which is more like what we did.

Our initial plan was to work on the only remaining incomplete section of I-90 between Boston and Seattle. The valley that Wallace was in was so steep and narrow that it made the construction of an interstate challenging. At that time if you wanted to drive coast to coast on 90, you would have to drive through downtown Wallace and negotiate the only stop light on the route. Wallace had other claims to fame, at that time the population was about 2,000 and there were 5 brothels operating quite openly, in fact they had neon signs.  Mining was the main industry and the ratio of single men to single women in the Silver Valley was way out of proportion. Let’s just say that prostitution was tolerated. The summer I spent in Wallace probably generated more stories than the rest of my life combined. Continue reading Firenado →

It was a small fire that didn’t warrant air support. A construction vehicle had backed into a brush pile along the North Fork of the Coer d Alene, where the canyon wall is steep and close to the river. His exhaust touched off a fire and it burned up the Canyon wall and started spreading out near the top where there was more vegetation. We had what looked like a big collapsable swimming pool that we put on a flat spot up near the limit of how high you can pump water. Then we dragged the pump up. It had a tube welded to it so we could run a pole throught the tube and climb the cliff with two guys supporting it on our shoulders. Then they sent me down to get the gas for the pump. It really wasn’t that dangerous. The ground was mostly rock with only little fires burning around me. As long as it didn’t leak I was perfectly safe. When I got to the top, so tired I had to be pulled the last 5 feet, my crew boss said to me, “As long as you’re resting, go get a hose pack.”
So back down the cliff, strap on 80 pounds of hose and start back up. These packs had one end of the hose hanging out of the bottom and were coiled inside so that you could just hook the hose to the pump and take off with it, stringing it out to where you needed it. Now the boss wanted someone to string it out over a little rise and out into the open area on the other side. At that point I had my 22 year old dander pretty high, and was going to show the boss what a tough guy I was, so I just kept the pack on and took off, laying hose behind me. I was about to die when I came over the top of the rise and then saw, spread out over the hill, the all woman fire crew, digging line. You should have seen me perk up. I pulled that hose across like I was the king of the woods, look out Mr. Grizzly.

I was in such good shape at the end of that summer.