Williams - Chasing smoke: a wildfire memoir

Chasing Smoke

Chasing Smoke

A Wildfire Memoir

Aaron Williams

Copyright 2017 Aaron Williams

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, .

Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.

P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0

www.harbourpublishing.com

Edited by Brianna Cerkiewicz

Text design by Mary White

All photos by Aaron Williams unless otherwise credited

Printed and bound in Canada

Harbour Publishing acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Government of Canada and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Williams, Aaron (Aaron Lloyd), author

Chasing smoke : a wildfire memoir / Aaron Williams.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-55017-805-0 (softcover).ISBN 978-1-55017-806-7 (HTML)

1. Williams, Aaron (Aaron Lloyd). 2. Wildfire fightersBritish ColumbiaBiography. I. Title.

SD421.25.W54A3 2017363.379092C2017-905182-2

C2017-905183-0

For Sue,
and for the Telkwa Rangers

Rangers 2014 Fire Season

Prologue

The edge of this fire is supposed to be somewhere around here, but a fire this big doesnt have edges, at least not from the perspective of two guys walking down a dirt road in the dead heat of the afternoon.

Balsam and spruce trees candle on the hills around us. Its hard to distinguish the sound of distant burning from the gusts of wind shooting across this barren logging block. Brad and I continue along the logging road. Were looking for a small escape fire that has popped up on the north side of the road, the wrong side. This breach is one of many in the tenuous containment of the Chelaslie River fire, a massive blaze in north central British Columbia monitored by a few dozen firefighters and a few helicopters.

We see another road running parallel to ours higher on the hill. Above that, trees burn. They flare up in groups of two or three, the taller balsams being the most impressive to watch. Sheets of flame unfurl from their branches, sending black smoke into the sky to join the mothership cloud of grey smoke hanging permanently in the air above us.

We stare at the plumes of smoke and continue walking, frequently changing direction so it becomes more like pacing. Its impossible to tell what counts as contained here, and if some bit of fire isnt where it should be, itll take more than two of us to put it out. With this in mind, as well as other factors including time of day (late), day of deployment (last) and general morale (low), we decide to walk back to our truck.

But as were walking, a helicopter comes out of the haze, breaking the silence. Its Dan. He radioes us from the air, saying he sees a road for us to use. But weve already checked it and know its a dead end. He says to wait there.

Ten minutes later, Dan arrives in the truck with two other crew members, Lauren and Kelly. He blows past the junction where Brad and I sit waiting. Seeing us as he drives by, Dan locks up the brakes, skids on the loose gravel and puts the truck in reverse. I can see from the slope of his shoulders, the jut of his neck, that hes enjoying the drama of his entrance. The chase is back on.

We find our escape fire on the next road up from where Brad and I had been walking. The spot is in open slash and its active, churning through whatever litters the forest floor. The fire anchors itself to decaying stumps and root systems or flares up in the richer deposits of brush left behind by logging. The flames are over head height but there are places where theyre less active, and from those areas we dig away at the edge of the fire, pulling it in on itself as if dabbing the edge of a wound.

A helicopter buckets another spot nearby, coming in and out of focus and earshot, disappearing into the smoke to refill with water at a nearby lake. The group of us, five in total, works in silence on different sections of the escape. Theres laboured breathing and the clink of tools hitting rock.

Our bodies and clothes are filthy, our hands blackened and callused. The smoke cloud is starting to descend toward the ground. Its September 16, six days before official fall, way past its actual start in northern BC. Our season should be over.

Still, here we are, trying to contain the biggest fire the province has seen in thirty years.

Training

May 2014

Outside in the spring sunshine, everything perches on the edge of blooming. Im heading to the Telkwa Fire Attack Basethe baseearly to do some prep for our first week. I pull into a mostly empty parking lot. Around it is a flat forest of pine trees, beyond are the peaks of the Telkwa Range, a subsidiary of the Coast Mountains. Low on the hills are old clear-cuts, now covered with new trees. Higher up the mountains, fresh scrapes from recent logging hang above the original clear-cuts. The land is still brown and it looks like humanity changing its mind.

The first sign of life I find is inside the warehouse. I open the metal door and smell dirty clothes and gasoline. Rob and Warren are poking around in their lockers, getting ready for the day. The three of us are squad bosses on the Telkwa Rangers. Rob and Warren have the calm demeanour of tall guys with nothing to prove. Theyre veterans of the fire crew. I give each of them a hug, feeling the scruff of their faces close to mine. The three of us head across the yard to the unit crew trailer to plan out the day.

From inside, we hear the rest of the crew arrive. The river rock of the parking lot spits into the underside of their vehicles, cracking and popping. Cars skid into parking spots, doors slam and shouted greetings cut through the surrounding pine trees.

We get our first look at the crew as they charge into the unit crew trailer. This trailer is the true home of the crew, made so partly by the people who breathe life into it, but also by memorabilia of years past. Its mostly old crew photos, but there are other odd heirloomsa CD of the soundtrack to Top Gun, a stick from a deployment to Quebec. The first few to enter are quiet but as the group gathers at the two long tables in the middle of the room, each new arrival is met with more fanfareapplause, shouting, booing, anything.

A wiry guy with short blond hair comes in.

Willy, he says, drawing out my nickname, short for Williams, as if scolding me. This is how Brad, a third-year, has always greeted me.

There are only fourteen of us here right now, eleven guys and three girls. The youngest is twenty, the oldest thirty-two. Some are here for their second season; one, Warren, is here for his tenth. Missing today are five yet-to-be-hired rookies as well as our crew supervisor, Dan, who is at a training course this week.