Carl Bowen - Back Burn

As the climate changes and the population grows, wildland fires increase in number, size, and severity. Only an elite group of men and women are equipped to take on these immense infernos. Like the toughest military units, they have the courage, the heart, and the technology to stand on the front lines against hundred-foot walls of 2,000-degree flames. They are the FIRESTORMERS.

Established: October 2, 1968

Coordinates: 484958 N, 1212051 W

Location: Washington, USA

Size: 504,781 acres (789 square miles)

Elevation Range: 6059,206 feet above sea level

Ecology: Jagged mountain peaks tower over the landscape of North Cascades National Park, the third largest National Park in North America. Douglas fir, western hemlock, and Pacific silver fir line the foothills, along with hundreds of other plant species. Bald eagles, wolves, grizzly bears, and mountain lions call these forests home.

The air hung hot and heavy in North Cascades National Park. Just breathing in the thick air was miserable, and the early morning sun had just peeked through the trees.

Not that the sun would be a concern. A blotchy black and gray smear stained the sky for miles in every direction, leaching light and color. On a better day, that gray overcast would have indicated an oncoming storm. But today, it signaled the opposite. The gray mass wasnt a cloud, but smoke, pouring upward from the ever-growing wildfire.

The wildfire had been burning for almost a week, and it wasnt the only such fire in the state. Local fire services were overwhelmed and running themselves ragged, just as they had been since before the beginning of the official fire season. So rather than pulling resources from another fire that couldnt spare them, the locals had appealed to the federal government for help.

That help had finally come, in the form of a new, high-tech firefighting force, funded by the U.S. Forest Service.

That force was officially titled the National Elite Interagency Wildfire Rapid Response Strike Force. Its members called themselves the Firestormers.

Their job was to show up on the scene of a wildland fire incident, take over command for the local fire services, coordinate all efforts, and lead the way in the field.

The Firestormers employed the best firefighters from all over the country and equipped them with top-of-the-line gear. They attacked the front lines to contain and control fires as quickly as humanly possible. They worked long hours for days, often weeks, at a time, racing from one wildfire to the next with precious little downtime between.

Wherever, whenever the Firestormers were needed, there they would be.

Today, they were needed in Washington State. As the sun came up behind its smoke-hidden horizon, the leader of the Firestormers premier strike team gathered his team members for their first briefing.

The efforts staging area was a shopping mall parking lot that was still under construction. This section of the lot was packed with fire engines, water tenders, buggies, bulldozers, and other heavy equipment.

The strike teams leader, Lieutenant Jason Garrett, had set up a folding screen behind one of his crews buggies. He stood beside it with a tablet computer datapad. The datapad connected wirelessly to a pocket-sized projector. With a tap on his datapad, Garrett brought the projector to life, displaying an image of the green and yellow U.S. Forest Service shield logo.

Sergeant Heath Rodgers stood up in the front rank of the lieutenants audience. He was the boss of one of the four-hand hand crews that made up the strike force. Like himself, every member of Rodgerss team was ex-military. Also like himself, every member of his crew had more wildland firefighting experience than their young lieutenant.

Rodgers had been leading a crew with a local unit since before Garrett had graduated college, and that was after Rodgers had spent more than a dozen years in the Marine Corps. Because of his age and experience, Rodgers should have been chosen to lead this strike team.

Garretts father was a U.S. Senator, however, and the lieutenant had been a sort of local celebrity back home in Oregon. Apparently, those sorts of connections counted a bit more than age and experience.

Its hardly the first time Ive been passed over for a promotion, Rodgers thought. It wasnt the first time hed had that thought either.

All right, I guess lets recap, Garrett began. The locals are calling this the Thunder Creek Complex. It started a week ago. Or, rather, thats when somebody got far enough out into the wilderness to notice the smoke. Weather reporting suggests there was heavy lightning activity at that time. It was hot and dry, so thats our likely cause.

Sergeant Rodgers took a deep, patient breath and tried not to sigh. Hed sat through plenty of Garretts stumbling, plodding briefings, but they never got easier to endure.

Anyway, the lieutenant continued, his eyes glued to his tablet datapad, local fire services reported eight separate smoke sightings on that first day. The sightings spread out across the Thunder Creek region as you see here. Garrett nodded toward the folding screen.

Its a little out of focus, Lieutenant, Rodgers said.

At that, Garrett looked up to see the Forest Service logo projected on the screen. His ears turned a shade of pink. Oops. Forgot to connect the Yeah, here it is.

He tapped on his tablet and swiped what was on it toward the projector hanging above the screen. The logo disappeared, to be replaced by a satellite photo of the Thunder Creek area. Rodgers remembered it fondly. Hed grown up nearby and been out there camping, hiking, and hunting many times. This photo had obviously been taken at some time before the start of the fire.

Okay, Garrett was saying, still tapping away on his tablet, now the overlay

At his command, a contour map of the same area appeared and lined up over it, showing changes in elevation across the area. One more command caused eight labeled points to appear in the more thickly forested sections of the map.

There we go, Garrett said, checking the screen against what his tablet computer said. He looked out at his strike team and grinned sheepishly. Sheesh. Technology minus coffee equals comedy, am I right?

Most of the Firestormers chuckled.

Sergeant Rodgers didnt. This briefing would be over now if hed been running it.

So, as I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, Garrett went on, these are our ignition sources. Before local services could deploy, a high wind from the north pushed our three northernmost fires together.

Garrett advanced the projection to later in the time line. The ignition points on the map were now surrounded by larger red fields outlining the fires spread. As he said, the three highest fire areas on the map had grown together into one larger mass. The rest of the smaller fires were still separate, but even at this stage, they were in dangerously close together.