The story behind the photo: A near miss; slurry

 

My first fire season—my second fire. After a near-disaster on the Kent Fire, where our gear burned up, leaving my crewmate Joe and I without drinking water for hours, my confidence got a boost because now I knew what to expect-lots of hard, hard work, which I discovered I could handle-and that you can never carry too much water. 

We’d been clearing helispots that week. My first experience flying in helicopters, while scary at first, quickly turned into the ultimate thrill. Tom and Eric and I had station duty while the rest of our crew finished up the helispot work when a fire call came in. Because the dispatcher reported the fire along a remote dirt road we often used to access the east side of the Santa Rita Mountains, we hopped into our Model 20 Tanker with the assumption the water truck would come in handy. As we approached the fire, however, we knew we’d be hiking in.

I strapped on my 6 quarts of water and grabbed a Pulaski out of the side tool box. Eric and Tom slung over their shoulders a one-gallon canteen, and grasped a shovel and Pulaski, respectively. We started the challenging hike through the steep, rocky, grass-covered slope, which also hid the pain-inducing shindagger agaves, aptly named for their propensity to stab you where it really hurts.

Finally at the fire’s edge, we began building line. Hard to do in rocky soil, if not almost impossible. After an hour or so, we were excited to have help arrive in the form of slurry, also known as fire retardant.

We watched the first drop, grateful for its support in our fire suppression efforts. A short time later, another plane approached…but unlike the first time, this drop headed straight for us.

Eric ordered us to hit the dirt, and we did, anticipating a life-threatening hit of slurry, if not worse. Fortunately, the main drop missed us, but not by much.

It wasn’t until weeks later I got around to developing the film in my camera, the one I’d brought with me, but left in the tanker. Flipping through the photos, I was puzzled to see images of that fire, that I couldn’t possibly have taken. A few days later, I found a note from a Sierra Vista, AZ firefighter tucked into my camera case.

“Hope you don’t mind, but when our crew arrived, I found your camera, and hope you don’t mind that I took some photos for you.”