Fire on the Mountain
Briefly, my mind played through a scenario of my home, in flames, surrounded by fire trucks and firefighters - the ultimate homeowner's nightmare. But the smoke was not the black smoke of asphalt roof shingles and paint and plastics burning - it was a billowy white and gray. And as I got closer, the smell of wood burning permeated the air. Brush fire, I surmised. It is May in Maine, and that means people everywhere burn their fields and brush. It has been an uncharacteristically dry spring, so it would be easy for a fire to get out of hand. Apparently, something was out of hand. Well out of hand, by the looks of it - helicopters where constantly hovering overhead, depositing their loads of water.
Turning into my driveway, the site of my house, intact and flameless, brought a smile to my face. I couldn't see the smoke from the house, but I sure could smell it. By the time I got back from walking the dog, we both wreaked of the fine aroma of burning wood.
This night, there was little time to worry about not-too-distant fires. It was the night of the annual town meeting, and we had to eat dinner and get down to the Blue Goose hall in less than half an hour. It had been years since I had been to a town meeting, and since we just moved to Northport, we thought we'd check out grassroots democracy in action.
We made it to the Blue Goose with a good five minutes to spare. It was soon, apparent, however, that either things weren't too well organized, or something strange was going on. There were plenty of people that had shown up for the meeting, but they were all milling about outside the hall. We spotted our neighbors and proceeded to catch up on the events in each other's lives over the past couple of months. Even though they live only about a quarter mile away, we hadn't run into each other much during the winter. In fact, the last time I talked with Pete was when he was trudging through 2 1/2 feet of snow in his snowshoes, walking their two puppies.
And, like everyone else, we milled about and talked about the fire and tried to get current on all the rumors circulating about it. Then they told us to file into the Blue Goose - the town meeting was about to commence.
Well, sort of. There were no seats set up, so we all stood around the podium at the front of the hall. Someone nominated a moderator for the meeting, someone else seconded the nomination, and the moderator took over. After some official sounding mumbo jumbo welcoming all of us to the meeting and making it official, the moderator moved that, due to the fire, the town meeting be postponed until the following Monday. The motion was quickly seconded, and thus ended this exercise in grassroots democracy. Surely the shortest town meeting I had ever attended.
But, before we had a chance to disassemble, one of the attendees added made an announcement that sent bolts of testosterone shooting through the veins of all of the red-blooded males in the crowd. "And they need all the help they can get fighting the fire, if any of you are interested."
Suddenly, I was transfixed. I could envision the walls of flames shooting up through the trees as our small army of soot-faced, sweating men and women bravely blazed a fire line through the woods, dangerously close to the curtain of scorching heat. "Cool. I'm going to help out," I told Denise. It was clear she didn't see the overwhelming attraction of such a venture, but my neighbor, Pete, quickly chimed in, "I'll go with you." A new generation of forest fighting heroes was born.
The first course of action was to head home and change into more reasonable forest-fire-fighting cloths. This was particularly important for Pete, who had temporarily skipped out of work to attend the town meeting and thus was dressed in a tie and dress pants. After changing, we loaded up my vehicle with shovels and extra sweatshirts and jackets (it was getting dark and there was no telling how long we'd be out there) and headed for the smoke.
There had been cars and trucks stopping and gawking near the source of the fire all evening, so we headed for where we thought might be the dropping off point for all us fearless fire foes. All we found, however, were people sitting in their cars, talking to one another through their windows. So we asked if anyone know where volunteers might be needed. "Head up the next road until you get to the pumper trucks," someone told us, "they'll tell you where to go from there."
And so we did. About a half mile down the road, the pumper trucks came into view, as did a long line of vehicles on the side of the road. I found an empty spot on the side of the road, parked the truck, and then Pete and I followed a group of three firefighters down a nearby dirt road. These guys were dressed in their yellow firefighter raincoats and were wearing firefighter's hats, so we figured they know where they were going and what they were doing.
And we walked. And we walked. And we walked, passing yet more lines of cars and trucks parked on the side of the road. Every so often we would have to move over to let a pickup truck or ATV or firetruck make it's way down the road. We had no real idea of where we were going or what to expect when we got there, but with each step the excitement and anticipation grew. We were ready for that fire!
And we walked some more. By this time it was clear that we could have parked a lot closer than where we did, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Then, a Sheriff's car came down the road toward us and the deputy stopped next to us.
"Do you live down this road?" he inquired.
"No," we replied.
"Are you with any of the volunteer fire departments?"
"No."
"Then turn around. We've got too many people and vehicles around to allow sightseers up here."
My heart sank. My vision of soot-faced heroics evaporated.
"But, we were at the town meeting and they told us they were looking for people to help fight the fire," I muttered, fully expecting him to give me a "nice try" look and escort us back from where we came.
"Oh, okay. If you're helping out, then go on ahead," he answered. Our mission would continue!
A little further down the dirt road, we came to yet another dirt road on the left. The firefighters we had been following took the left, so we did too. Unlike the last dirt road we were on, this dirt road was more of a woods road made by skidders for the purpose of hauling out logs. The only vehicles that could make it down here were four-wheel-drives with a high clearance. It was just such a vehicle that stopped beside us and the driver told us to jump in the pickup bed and he would drive us as far in as he could get. We gladly accepted the ride, along with one of the firefighters who was lagging behind his buddies and who, panting loudly, was quick to offer "I've got to cut down on the beers."
The pickup took us about a half mile down the road and could then travel no further because of the ruts. So we once again set out on foot. By this time, there was all kinds of traffic - people on foot, people on ATVs, and people on construction equipment, moving in all directions. Dusk was fast approaching and it didn't look like too many people were carrying flashlights. I was starting to regret that I hadn't thought of bringing my headlamp.
We passed bulldozers and front-end loaders and dump trucks filled with gravel. Just about every excavation business that I had come into contact with in the course of building my house was there. Their mission was straight-forward, but far from simple - they were building a road where only a path existed. A real, genuine road that would support emergency vehicles. It all seemed a bit extreme to me, but seeing as this was my first forest fire, I will defer to the wisdom of those for whom this was routine.
And we continued walking. Up the "new" road, higher and higher up a hill. Then, at last, we came to what appeared to be the "nerve center" of the whole operation. There were forest service people with walkie talkies. There were soot-faced people with water tanks strapped on their backs. There were picnic tables covered with bottles of soda, and sandwiches, and drinking water.
And, amidst all of this, it wasn't really clear who, if anybody, was in charge. More importantly, there was no wall of flames shooting through the trees. The helicopters were gone. And people were walking out of the charred landscape rather than into it. We were, it became readily apparent, too late.
And so, disappointed, we walked around the charred countryside, inspecting the devastation that was left behind. Timbers smoldered. The occasional flame flickered from the top of burned out tree trunks. A few small fires still lingered in the brush. The burning seemed a bit random and scattered - one area would be totally burned out, and right next to it, another area looked to be untouched. The view, being at the top of a hill, was rather spectacular. The burned-out trees opened up a rather impressive vista of the ocean in the distance and the sunset had turned the horizon various shades of orange and red.
As darkness settled over the hillside, we retraced our steps back out to my truck. They were still busy building the road, but they surely didn't need our help doing that. Our glorious firefighting days behind us, we plopped our smoky bodies in the truck and headed home.
We would later come to find out that the fire reignited at about 10 p.m. that night, and volunteers spent all night and most of the next day putting it out. In all, nearly 100 acres burned. They have yet to determine the cause.
Copyright © 2001 by Greg Closter (closter@acadia.net)