I drove down to Prescott this winter and while I was there thought to visit Yarnell and the Granite Mountain IHC memorial down the road.
The hike from the road is 2.5 miles. Along the way are plaques with the biographies of each member of the crew. Although not a difficult hike, it is fitting that the visitor is tasked with having to hike up hill to visit as hiking up hills is integral to wildlands fire suppression in the West.
This is the hill you walk up from the road. The trail takes you up over a saddle to the fatality site.
You then have the option to descend from the ridge to the fatality site.
When you are on the ridge, the ranch looks very close. But when I hiked down I realized that it was taking me about 3 times as long to get down as I would have guessed. Once you get going it is insanely steep with boulders and at one point very tall brush. Now the brush is about knee height, and there is a trail blazed straight down. But I don't think the ease of my descent was representative of the circumstances they were in.
Here you can see just how close the ranch looks from the fatality site.
Visiting this fatality site made me reflect on the close calls I have had at my job. 95% of the days are routine, but occasionally a curve ball is thrown that has caught me off guard.
In my limited time working as a forestry technician doing fire suppression, there have been two times that I was made aware of how unpredictable and dangerous wildfires can be. My first year on Idaho City Hotshots while on assignment in Western Montana a fire blew up the hillside I was on top of. I only had seconds to ponder whether the black smoking popping up was normal before I heard the sound of a freight train and everything around me turned a reddish hue. Then boom the flames ripped over top of us. Only 3 of us were on top and we had a spot the size of an acre or two. With the help of a couple helicopters and some adjoining resources we contained the slop over.
My second year on Idaho City we were going direct on a piece of line in Central Nevada. 50 mph winds were favorable over the ridge we were cold trailing up. As we made our way about half way of the ridge the fire would manage to spot below us and then we would have to reengage below to get around the new fire edge. Well after a couple rounds of coming back down below spots I found myself a few yards up the hill from my saw partner. I was improving our line when all of a sudden I heard the sound of a freight train and everything around me had a reddish hue. I instinctively glanced over my shoulder to double check that I had good black within reach. But the noise died down so I went back to work, but still trying to figure out what it was causing everything to have a red hue. Then all of a sudden I look down the hill and everything is torching out below me. It must have spotted below me again and is making a run. I take my escape route over my shoulder and walk into cold black. But even as I am reaching 30 feet off the line into the cold black the radiant heat is uncomfortable.
I can't imagine a more horrible way to die than being burned to death.
The job is inherently dangerous, but the lessons learned from past tragedies are a reminder of what things we need to be looking out for while at work. One of the plaques at the memorial site said that 95% of wildfires are suppressed without notoriety. It is a matter of eliminating the causal elements that lead to the other 5% wildfires that lead to loss of human life.
I hope to honor these men by learning about and remembering these tragedies. My hope is that by doing so we prevent them from occurring again.
Comments
Post a Comment