“He Drove Right Into the Fire”

Whenever we are confronted with an important decision, *Conventional Wisdom* dictates that we look at and weigh various options, minimize the risks, and set forth upon a course of action.  But there are certain situations when, as long time cop and risk consultant Gordon Graham describes, there’s “No time to think it through”.  

So when - on the initial attack of the Mink Creek wildland forest fire - Johnny heard Walt say, “We’ve been compromised,” over the radio, it was one of those situations.  

It was the first shift on the first fire of the 2018 season with many new hires on the hotshot crew and seasonal fire training had just wrapped up.  Shake and bake fire shelters - fitted emergency use fire blankets made of aluminum foil, woven silica, and fiberglass - had only been deployed in practice a few weeks prior to the call out for this fire. But it wasn’t the FNGs (f*ing new guys) who were in trouble - it was the superintendent and the captain..  And a well-seasoned lookout.

Bob and Walt had driven in from the north down a little two-track gravel road to scout when they saw that the fire was much closer than they expected.  The truck became stuck - “augered” was how Walt put it - and so he stepped out to lock the hubs to put the truck in four-wheel drive.  Imagine yourself bending slightly, hand on the hub of the axle, and then looking over your shoulder to see a wall of flames about to swallow you whole.  

In the 1949 Mann Gulch fire in Montana, the foreman Wag Dodge had *just enough* time to light an emergency escape fire - a “backfire” in the grass.  Once the grass was “in the black”, he was able to lie down and let the steam engine of fire roar around him and up to the ridge.  By the end, thirteen of the sixteen firefighters had been killed by the fire; the other two survivors had managed to outrun the steam train and make it through an outcropping of rock to safety.  

Looking over his shoulder, Walt most certainly did not have the time or the place to light a backfire and said, or thought he said, Oh fuck.  Bob, we have to get out of here.  And then they start running back up the road from whence they came.  Imagine - again - trail running in your nylon shorts, your expensive running shoes and in the cool and calm of your favorite mountain trail.  Bob and Walt’s run was decidedly not that.  They are in stiff, high-top leather fire boots, thick yellow Nomex (flame-resistant fabric) shirts and thick green Nomex pants.  Smoke is high, visibility low and the deafening roar of the fire is like standing next to a hot Boeing 747 on the tarmac.  It’s *only* a half-mile to safety.  

Johnny, back with the trucks, asks over the radio, Would a UTV help?  

Walt radios back, Yes.

And then there is no more dialogue and there is certainly no time to think it through.  Johnny jumps into the closest UTV (all terrain vehicle, but can carry passengers) and roars off into the fire.  He has no pack, no water, no fire shelter and wouldn’t have had a radio except for the quick thinking of another hotshot nearby who spiralled one into the vehicle from yards away.  

Johnny soon comes across Walt who could play a linebacker in a Hollywood film and is running like one now.  But Walt waves him on like a third base coach waving on base runner heading for home (his words) and is then greeted by the coolest clear air he’s ever inhaled - cool air sucked in like a vacuum to feed the terrible appetite of the fire that breathes oxygen and eats everything: grass, shrubs, pinyon pines, Colorado juniper, government issued Ford F-250 trucks, and yes, firefighters.  

Johnny sees nothing in the smoke and thinks to turn around…but sees a flash of light - Bob’s fire shelter draped over his body while still in full sprint.  They never give you math problems like this - How long until the two meet, each going like their hair’s on fire?...

Johnny swings the UTV around, the centrifugal force throws the radio out of the vehicle, which Bob picks up and says only, You dropped your radio, and then they roar through the smoke, the flames to safety.  

Johnny and Bob make it back to the trucks and the team, but elation is fleeting.  Johnny says they’ve lost communication with Helen, their lookout high on the next ridge.  What was unknown at the time was that Helen was also on the run and had lost the long antenna from her Bendix King radio.  And had had to light her own Wag Dodge backfire in a grassy meadow to escape the onslaught. What does one think of, lying down in a warm, black and burnt meadow while the fire roars around you?  One *has* time to think, and the only possible thought - after thinking of your family and friends - is, How did I get here?  But when I spoke with Helen, she described thinking of Wag Dodge and other heroes in the wildland fire (not Hollywood) movies she’d seen.  I will be like that; I will make it through.  

In the end, no one was killed or injured.  There was only a burnt truck in Cockleburr Draw in the Forgotten Peak Wilderness Study Area in southwest California.  

(Fun to note that a few years before Daniel Kahneman released his seminal book Thinking, Fast and Slow; John Candy and Sean Connery each uttered the same line in separate films, There's a time to think, and a time to act. And this, gentlemen, is no time to think.)

And so it was for Johnny, this was no time to think. In fact, when I asked him why he would drive into the flames, into the fire, he said, It wasn’t a conscious decision; I just did it.  

Many thanks to Norman Maclean’s excellent book on the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire, Young Men and Fire; USFS photos....And to all wildland fire fighters out there.