Fire Read online

  “I could use a break, but I’d hate being a fifth wheel.”

  “Third wheel, technically, and tricycles work just fine. Lindsey would love to have you come, and so would I.”

  James said, “Not sure I’d be good company. Sylvia and I had a—a disagreement about it this morning. I’m still grumpy.”

  “It’s Thursday, and you’ve just fought with your partner, so you’re in a bad mood now. That’ll pass, and you’ll be fine company long before Saturday.”

  “Well, I’ll be in a better mood if I go, that much is true, and if I stay at home all weekend and watch her work ten hours both days, I won’t be.” James would force himself to be good company if he had to. But Pasquale was right: simply being in the woods, away from the beeps and flashes and demands of modern life, would do him a world of good.

  “Great. We’ll count on you.”

  Feeling cheered, or at least mollified by going ahead on his own with the plans with Pasquale, James took himself out to lunch at his favorite bistro. He sat alone and read a magazine online, High Country News, great journalism and great environmental features. He finished lunch in a much better mood.

  He had been back at work for less than ten minutes when a coworker named Arla stuck her head in his door.

  “What’s up?” he said. “Take a seat.”

  “No thanks. I have a meeting in ten that I have to get ready for. I wanted to make sure you’d heard the news?”

  “What news?” For an instant he feared this was going to be gossip about the long-dreaded downsizing.

  “My news feed said there was a little wildfire this morning, north of Nevada City, in the middle of nowhere, off Highway 49. You live up that way, don’t you?”

  James swallowed hard. Wildfire. That and the distance to the nearest hospital had made his parents urge him not to buy in Pinedrops. James and Sylvia were young and healthy, so the hospital argument held no power over him. But wildfire? That was scary, and a real threat, and they had considered it before buying the house. “Where at, exactly?”

  “They didn’t show a map. It was just a line of text on my feed. I have Grass Valley news feed, and Auburn, and it came in on that. I live in between the two.”

  “I’ll look it up,” James said. “Small, you said?”

  “Right, a small fire. They’ll probably have it contained in no time, right? Or do already.” Arla’s head left his doorway.

  James phoned his boss, who wasn’t in, and left a message apologizing for using the work computer for personal reasons. It wasn’t strictly forbidden, but usage was monitored. James wanted to get ahead of being cautioned for what he was about to do. His phone would do the searching he needed to do, but the computer would be faster and the maps easier to read.

  It took some time to find the up-to-the-minute maps and websites. At least he hoped they were current. They seemed to update every fifteen minutes, which was reassuring. He watched through two map updates, and saw a small fire burn, and over one update spread a bit to the south and east. He checked the wind conditions in a new browser tab. He went back to the wildfire map and oriented himself better, using curves in the highway on the map to try and find his home’s position. In yet another browser tab, he opened OpenStreetMaps, an open source wiki map that often had much more detail for hiking trails and dirt roads than Google Maps had. He got the maps sized about the same, and compared where the fire was to where Pinedrops was. Where his home was.

  It wasn’t too close, but it was close enough to be worrying. He measured against the legend on the map and came up with about 30 miles away. There wasn’t a town between it and Pinedrops, so he worried that there wouldn’t be heavy fire suppression efforts. He hoped they knew what they were doing, the firefighters. He hoped they were doing something.

  James checked the weather, wind and humidity in a new tab. The nearest he could get to home was Nevada City, some citizen there who’d bought a weather station and was hooked in to Weather Underground. With the mountains and valleys creating microclimates and downslope winds, it wasn’t always 100% accurate for his and Sylvia’s house, but it was as close as he could get. Temperature 93F, wind speeds 17 from the northwest gusting to 25 miles per hour, and humidity 39.8%, though that would fall steadily until sunset. It could be worse. It could be much better. No winds at all would be best.

  Next he Googled how quickly a wildfire could move once it got burning. In woods, which was mostly the case where the fire was, it couldn’t get up to seven miles per hour. Over grasslands, it could move much more quickly, faster than you could drive a car on bad roads. So even if the thing didn’t get put out, and even if the wind shifted in the worst possible direction, and even if the fire moved as fast as a wildfire could, it would be over four hours before it came near his house. And probably that combination of factors would not happen. It’d burn at a more normal speed, and winds would die down at night, and it probably wouldn’t cross the highway anyway. Not before night.

  Probably.

  Still, he wanted to keep an eye on it. He was worried, but there was no reason for panic. He set a pomodoro timer in a new browser tab, twenty-five minutes, with a five-minute break, which he used for his own work sometimes. Today, it would remind him to stop working and look at the fire information again every half-hour.

  He went back to work.

  An hour later, he checked the fire for the third time and didn’t like what he saw. There were firefighters out there now, according to the CalFire website, but the map of the fire showed it growing. It was double the size it had been an hour before.

  Okay, don’t panic. Think. First, make sure Sylvia knew.

  He called her cell, and she didn’t pick up. Probably she was into working. He left a message, and then he called back to leave a text. There’s a wildfire nearby. Keep an eye on it. Next he went to hunt down his boss, which took another fifteen minutes and required him to pull his boss out of a meeting. At first, his boss was irked at that, but when James explained what was wrong, his irritation turned to concern.

  “Are you wanting to go home?”

  “Not just yet, but I might. I’ve had my browser open with news about the fire. I left you a message about doing that.”

  His boss waved that away. He wasn’t a total dick or anything, just always overworked, stressed, and sometimes short-tempered from it. “I’ll be stuck in meetings the rest of the afternoon. If you have to go, just go. You don’t need to tell me.”

  “Thanks.” James hadn’t really planned on leaving, but maybe he should. “I’ll leave you an email or voicemail if I do.”

  “I hope it’s nothing. Good luck.” His boss returned to his meeting and James to his office. His timer went off five minutes later, but he was already studying the maps and weather reports. He couldn’t find any news video. The San Francisco stations probably wouldn’t cover it. It would be the Sacramento Bee reporters getting out there first, and they’d post video as soon as they could get a connection to the internet. TV would only go out if it got bad. He decided to phone someone official and see what was going on. The online maps probably didn’t tell the whole story, and they might not be current.

  But who should he phone? Pinedrops wasn’t big enough to have a mayor or city council or police department. It was just a hundred or so houses on the loop road and three other side streets, half of the houses clustered “downtown” and the others spread out along the loop road, like his and Sylvia’s. Someone back when had gotten a “scenic drive” sign put up at the turnoff, so despite the road going nowhere but Pinedrops, they got some traffic on weekends, people out for a drive, hunting for scenic overlooks and historical markers about the Gold Rush.

  There must be a county commission or something—he probably had even voted for it—but he had no idea if they’d know about this. He Googled for a few minutes and found the governor’s website on emergency services which had county-by-county phone numbers. He found the CalFire district number, and the county sheriff, which he should have thought o
f first. Both had a Twitter and Facebook presence, and while he hated both those social media sites, he hated Twitter a little less, and it would be more usable if he were on the road with his phone. He reactivated his old account and followed both CalFire and Sheriff accounts and made sure their tweets were showing up on his phone. They mentioned the fire, but only one brief mention each, almost the same wording. There weren’t any updates after that first mention.

  He phoned CalFire and was on hold for five minutes before he got an operator who told him about the Facebook and Twitter accounts. “I know that,” he said. “I’d like to know if you’re fighting the fire or letting it burn, and if my house in Pinedrops is at any risk.”

  “Are you on the emergency alert system for the county, sir?”

  “I am,” he said.

  “Make sure your phone number is current on that.” She rattled off a number for his doing that, too quickly for him to catch, but it was also linked on the governor’s page. “But no, there are no evacuation notices at all right now.”

  “Are you fighting the fire?” he asked.

  “Sir? Can I have your name and home phone number.”

  “No landline, just my and my wife’s cellphones.” He gave her those and their address. “And we have a post office box in Nevada City.” He gave her that too.

  “And you’re in Pinedrops right now?”

  “No, my wife is. I work in Sacramento.”

  “And when did you arrive at work?”

  “What? About eight-fifteen, I guess.” He was confused at the question.

  “Yes, sir, I see. And did you carpool?”

  “What does this have to do with if my house is at risk or not?” He was starting to get irritated. “I just want to know if I should worry, or evacuate, or if one of us should stay awake all night to listen for an evacuation order, or what.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “I have your information and if we need to, we’ll be back in touch with you.” It sounded like a closing sentence.

  “Wait, you didn’t tell me if you’re fighting it or letting it burn, or how much it’s contained, or any of that.”

  “Social media and the wildfire page will keep you informed about containment. We don’t give out operational details to citizens over the phone.”

  “Why not?” he asked. What was the point of listing a phone number to call if they wouldn’t tell you anything?

  “Sir, I’m sorry, I have other calls waiting. I have to go.” She hung up.

  He frowned at the phone. What was the point—and then the penny dropped. He got it, why she’d asked when he had arrived at work. She had thought he might be an arsonist, calling to see if…well, whatever it was that got arsonists off about their fires. That’s why the weird question about when he got to work and carpooling—were there witnesses to his movements. There was the FasTrack ping, but she’d hung up and he couldn’t tell her that now.

  No doubt the calls to CalFire were recorded. It made no sense to him at one level. Like, if there was a huge fire right outside Sacramento, and thousands of people were phoning, they’d be cross-examining them all to try and randomly find an arsonist? That seemed crazy. It seemed useless. Had he been an arsonist, he would have lied about where he’d been when the fire started.

  Of course, if you had a cellphone, they’d be able to find out later if that were true or not. The tracking he hated so much, the FasTrack and cell phone pings, would absolve him and might convict an arsonist.

  But still, he was irritated that even for an instant someone thought he might start a fire. He wasn’t some psycho kid. He was—

  He shook the thought out of his head. He didn’t care right now how the fire was set, or who set it, or if anyone actually did. He cared about his house. And more than that, he cared about Sylvia.

  He called her again. No answer. The message he left was not so casual now. He wanted to talk with her before they had to think about evacuating. “There’s a fire headed toward the house, still a ways off, but definitely aimed toward home. I want to talk with you. Call back immediately.”

  The weather hadn’t changed a lot since he’d last looked. Three percent less on the humidity, one mile per hour more on the wind, another degree hotter on the temp. Normal for this time of year.

  On the computer screen, the fifteen minutes for the fire map had run out, and in a split second, the fire boundaries expanded again, significantly expanded in a single leap. He did some more measuring. At this rate, it would make it to the road in another two hours.

  It struck him that if he were to go home and get Sylvia, who might be so focused on work she wouldn’t know a thing was happening, to pack their cars, and get out of there, they needed the road open. Okay, so the fire would hit the state road north of their loop road. But if the wind shifted around just a little bit, it might block both exits. The instant the exits from the loop road were blocked, that was the last instant they could flee.

  Understanding that fact changed everything.

  Chapter 5

  Sylvia was on a roll. She was pounding out the words, and she felt good about them. No time to stop for lunch; a banana gulped down at the computer was good enough. She went to the bathroom only once, but her mind was still at the computer even then, thinking about how to make the instructions she was writing clearer to a new user. She returned to her desk, not realizing the phone was still in the bathroom, on vibrate, where she’d set it down when she washed her hands. She didn’t hear it vibrate as messages and calls came in. She simply wrote.

  * * *

  When the Fire Incident Commander got to within sight of the fire, he turned his crew right around.

  “Why?” asked a rookie.

  “Too few of us, and the terrain is all wrong. Look, it’s going to jump that ditch and run up here in no time. We need to cut a line back—never mind. You’ll see.” The kid needed to think it through on his own. Hadn’t he had classroom training? They needed to test them better than this.

  He had the oldest and most experienced man on his crew lead the rest of them back the way they’d come while he himself stood and stared at the fire for a few minutes more, analyzing it, trying to get a grip on its nature. He’d seen the satellite maps when they left the truck. This was all rough country through here. Every effort at fighting the fire would be on foot, at least until it reached the highway.

  And it would reach the highway. Of that, he had no doubt. He could feel the warm breeze on his face, driving the fire.

  He watched the leading edge of the fire for five more minutes, throwing sparks, crawling along the ground toward him, and muttered, “Four miles per hour.” He thought it was advancing about that quickly. Not the fastest fire he’d ever seen, but anything that moved faster than a firefighter, after dropping all his equipment, could hike uphill was too fast to mess with.

  It wasn’t a crown fire, so at least he had that going for him. The flames had been moving fast through the understory, though, burning small trees like manzanita, berry bushes, and dead grass. It might not ever crown. Or it might, in the wee hours, when the wind died down. The accumulation of pine needles on the forest floor might nurture a spark for days. No rain was forecast, and the wind wouldn’t shift in any helpful way, so it was up to them to stop it before it hit any residences. It wasn’t going to be a simple one to contain, and it might last for weeks.

  There were only isolated homes up here, and the tiny town of Pinedrops lay farther to the southeast. But if they let it take all that area, and winds increased, it could easily sweep down into Nevada City. Every fire season in California taught lessons, but they taught conflicting ones. Let it burn, don’t let it burn? Sacrifice five houses to save a hundred? Sacrifice a hundred to save a thousand? No choice was perfect and every choice would be second-guessed later on.

  He’d have the men dig a firebreak with Pulaskis, but not where he first had considered doing so, before he’d taken these moments to watch the fire. No, he’d back them up, almost to the road, to a spot he’
d mentally marked on their way in, where a fire road came close to the highway. He’d call in bulldozers to mow down a patch of dry grass along the road as well. Two more units to dig firebreak. Probably too windy for a helicopter, but he’d request water drops from a plane. Put the hotshots on official alert, though he wouldn’t request them this moment. His crew, two others, and a couple of bulldozers would cut a firebreak as a first step and he’d get air reconnaissance from the pilot of the plane to add to the satellite images and weather data to help him decide on the second step.

  Had they gotten to it an hour after it started, they could have put it out. But they hadn’t. No one had reported the smoke. People driving up the state road had surely seen it, but they might have thought it was a campfire or a controlled burn. Or they were tourists or new residents from the east who didn’t understand the threat of wildfire that everyone west of the Rockies knew too well. Some were so busy with a cellphone or radio that they never looked up and out of their car beyond the front bumper. A few didn’t call because they were criminals or illegals and avoided any contact with the government that wasn’t forced on them. Some simply believed that it wasn’t their business to call in a report of a suspected wildfire, that someone else took care of that, and it wasn’t their responsibility.

  And so here they were, too late to stop it in a single day, and facing a fire that would soon burn harder than a team or two of firefighters could manage.

  He’d seen the video of the coastal fires, pushed by hard Santa Ana winds, jump easily across eight-lane highways, and he knew even a hard effort along the road in the next hours might not be enough to halt this one. But it was the best decision for now. Later on, if the fire jumped the line and moved toward the small town, they’d do what they could to protect the people there.

  His number one priority was to not let his men die or any civilians die. Protecting property was, for him, a very distant second. And he would never admit it aloud to anyone, but covering his own ass was third. Incident Commanders were sued, sometimes even were arrested for murder, for making the decisions they made during a fire, or they were fired for headquarters not recording everything they said and failing to order the backup the IC requested. He recorded his own radio conversations with his phone, and he hated having to do it, having to split his attention from the fire in even that small way. He knew that he couldn’t stop people who knew nothing about fighting wildfires from Monday-morning-quarterbacking his decisions. He took his experience and training and what all western firefighters had learned about this new breed of wildfire, and he did his best. Most people expected more than his best. They expected him to magically have the foresight of a god, but he wasn’t a god. Just a worried middle-aged man, doing his damnedest to keep everyone alive.