“Porter says not yet, but get ready,” Silas says.“A couple closer crews are working it, but it’s still up in the air.”
I look at the map of Utah on the TV.They’ve marked a bright orange splotch where the fire’s burning.I get a weird, bad feeling just looking at it.
Utah.That’s two states away, and Clementine ishere.I just found her again, and even though I understand that this is my job, it’s my duty, and it’s fuckingimportant, I don’t want to go to Utah.
I want to stay here.With her.As long as she wants me, anyway.
God, I hate uncertainty.
“Better be ready to move,” says Jeremy Dashell, Porter’s second-in-command who’s much cooler than Porter.“Looks like that thing could break bad any minute now.”
Everyone groans, but we get up.We take dishes to the kitchen, we take showers, we get dressed, and two hours later, there’s fire gear all over the living room, the kitchen, and the back yard.
I get my own kit together pretty quickly, because it’s not like I leave it unpacked.Sometimes we leave with twenty, thirty minutes of warning, so it pays to be ready.
Once that’s done, I head down to the kitchen, grab a checklist, and start going through boxes of camp stove fuel, MREs, and freeze-dried rations.In the backyard, I can see Silas and Daniel with a tent set up, examining a patch, arguing over whether it needs to be redone.
I’d re-do it, I think.You never know when your next chance to fix something is gonna be.
Something bangs through the open door, and I turn as Dashell walks into the kitchen, carrying a heavy-duty plastic box.
“Got the new fire shelters,” he says.
I look up from the checklist.
“I thought we weren’t getting those until next season,” I say.
He puts the box down on the table and cracks his knuckles, looking at it.
“After Kaibab, apparently the Department of the Interior decided better shelters were a priority,” he says.
We’re both silent for a moment, just looking at the thick plastic box on the table.I’ve been trying not to think too much about Kaibab ever since it happened a month ago.At least, I’ve been trying not to think about the details.I think about twelve dead firefighters plenty.
“These are better than the old ones?”I ask.
Dashell half nods, half shrugs.
“That’s what they say,” he tells me.“Apparently some kid at MIT invented an adhesive that can withstand up to seven-fifty degrees, and that’s what’s holding these together.”
“That’s better,” I say.
The adhesive is always the weak point on fire shelters.The combination of aluminum, silica and fiberglass can protect you up to a thousand degrees or so, but the glue only goes up to five hundred degrees.Or, seven-fifty, now.Allegedly.
“Yeah,” he says, grabbing the box by the handles, yanking it from the table with a grunt.“It’s a nice gesture.Seven-fifty wasn’t gonna save the guys at Kaibab either.”
Dashell leaves the kitchen with the box, and I go back to my checklist, even though my mind is elsewhere.
The Kaibab fire is named after Kaibab, Arizona, where it started.It’s hot and dry in the summer, and this summer, it’s been hotter and drier than normal.Wayhotter and drier, which means that fires catch faster, they heat up faster, and theymovefaster.
To make a long story short, a dozen men were on a ridge line when the wind suddenly changed direction, and they were trapped.
They deployed their shelters, but they didn’t make it.An hour later, another crew finally got there and found twelve bodies wrapped in scorched aluminum foil.
I go down the list mechanically: provisions, check; batteries, check; flashlights, check.I try to keep myself from thinking about what it must have been like in one of those shelters: your body flat on the ground, breathing in dirt, heat pressing in.How loud the fire must have been.
How it must feel to know you’re trapped.
I shake my head and look out the window.There are some nasty clouds in the distance, but Silas and Daniel are still discussing whether or not to re-patch the tent, even though they could have done it twice since they started this argument.
