In Fire's Way: A Practical Guide to Life in the Wildfire Danger Zone

1: Born to Burn?

 What firefighter could resist this magnificent machine (figs. a–b)? This -footlong helicopter is  feet tall with -foot rotor blades. It is especially effective in areas with steep ridges and narrow canyons. A front-mounted, -gallon-perminute foam cannon launches water or foam  feet through the air. The AirCrane ’s fast-fill snorkel ( feet long and  inches in diameter) sucks , gallons in forty seconds into a high-capacity tank, which attaches to the belly of the craft. A metered flow system allows multiple drops:  percent,  percent,  percent; or all , gallons in less than two seconds. The detachable tank is replaceable in an hour with a ,-gallon bucket. The Air-Crane flies  miles per hour (mph) loadedormphempty.Fewfirefightingorganizationscouldaffordtobuythemselves an Air-Crane. But leasing is an option. Costs: $, per day for exclusive daily availability during lease, plus $, for each flight hour, plus fuel costs. Such costs are daunting, aren’t they? What is the right way for us to approach wildfire? In the Wildfire Danger Zone, comparing firefighting to war-making may have a certain appeal. After all, history shows an interesting co-evolution between Forest Service firefighting methods and the use of aircraft. The world wars stimulated interest and technical innovations. By , the Forest Service and the Army Air Corps were exploring the possibility of using army planes to fly patrol missions over forests. By , the Forest Service was using its own spotter planes. By , planes were dropping supplies to firefighters. (Parachute technology was not yet fully developed, and smoke jumpers did not appear until the middle to late s.) The romance of the comparison between firefighting and war-making might ONE Born to Burn? BORN TO BURN?  be appropriate to conflagrations on federal lands, but it seems misplaced when we examine the history of our living peacefully with fire rather than the history of our warring against fire. Even when he is writing about war at its hottest, Homer, the greatest of poets, will often pause, much like a movie maker freezing a frame, and refer back to home, back to the peaceful countryside. So we Zoners might want to consider a different kind of history—not the insistent drumbeat of the history of men and women at war, but the more subdued, quieter history of men and women at peace—and at home. A hearth makes a home. The ancient Greeks revered Hestia, the goddess of thehearth,forsheinventedtheartof buildinghouses.Atitsbest,GreekandRoman family life centered about the domestic hearth, where people cultivated personal security, happiness, the duty of hospitality, and the art of storytelling. In due time, Hestia became the Roman household goddess Vesta, chief among the storied ancestors and domestic deities (the penates) who watched over the house. In our Fig. (a–b). Erickson Air-Crane (photo courtesy of Erickson Air-Crane Company) time, Hestia burns on in the votive candles, the kiva fireplaces, and the woodstoves that illuminate and warm many a home in the Wildfire Danger Zone. In such a light, the contemporary practice of banning home fireplaces and woodstoves (in the name of air quality concerns) may be one of our silliest, saddest , and most cynical examples of misguided, quality-of-life regulation. How many people under twenty-five today remember, if they ever knew, what a wellstacked cord of good wood really means to a home? If we cannot keep the home fires burning, we will soon fall afoul of fire in serious, life-threatening ways. This is especially true if we try to suppress fire in the Wildfire Danger Zone setting, where fire itself is at home—and where, increasingly, we too wish to be at home. There is an ardent Prometheus (the Greek name means “forethought”) smoldering in every one of us: a fire deity who will not be denied. Again, the Greeks and Romans had it about right. For it was Prometheus, in their telling, who created humans. And it was Prometheus who gave us the fire that we used to develop a culture that values democracy, family, and personal liberty. Take away fire, and you take away freedom. Take away fire, and you take away the best of what it is to be human. History Matters The lesson might seem remote. But translate it into contemporary terms. Today, people are migrating to the Wildfire Danger Zone, partly to escape the centralized , draconian “quality-of-life” bureaucracies that too often characterize life in the cities and their suburbs. My...