The fire was defeating every effort to contain it. Supervisors wanted the second DC-10 assigned to Yarnell (it took off at 1:04 p.m. and headed toward the fire). They got on the phone and requested two more heavy tankers to drop water. The NICC in Boise, which was moving its planes and hotshot teams from fire to fire, gave them only one. It was the same story with helitankers: The call went out for two. Yarnell got half that.
The Blue Ridge guys and I made our way down the mountain. I was heading toward the rock outcropping I’d spotted from the staging area where Granite Mountain was now working. Once the road ran out, I got off.
“Call us on the radio if you need a lift out,” Brian said as I headed in. I waved to him and began walking along a thin trail until I came to an old dozer that had apparently conked out. Another dozer had cleared a wide area around it, hoping to preserve it if the fire came this way. I was heading toward the fire. Nothing too worrying. The blaze was continuing its steady north-northeast push.
I passed a large wash—a space where water has cleared out some of the vegetation—on my right. It was free of oak brush. I don’t think I’m going to have to deploy, but if I did, this would be the spot, I said to myself. I was alone now; I had to make my own contingency plans. Deploying my fire shelter was the last resort, but it was good to find someplace to do it.
I walked a few chains past the dozer until I found the flat rock I’d spotted earlier, which was about 120 yards north of the clearing behind me. I looked at the fire, then got out my radio and my weather kit. This would be my headquarters until further notice.
The sun was really cooking now. I could feel the heat rising off the rock I was standing on. I did the weather and sure enough, the PIG—probability of ignition, which measures temperature, relative humidity, and elevation—was up. The air was getting drier and hotter. That meant conditions were more conducive to the spread of the fire, but this was to be expected on a hot afternoon. I gave my weather report on the radio and Eric and a bunch of other guys on the crew copied it.
I scanned the horizon. Most of the action was on the other side of the ridge. I let the boys know where they were. I looked down onto the terrain and found a spot that would be my trigger point, a drainage ditch about 300 yards from where I stood. If the fire backed its way to my trigger point, I would move out immediately and make my way back toward the cleared ground around the old dozer.
Lunchtime. I pulled an MRE out of my pack, ripped open the lid, dosed it with my bottle of Tabasco, and ate. I’ve always believed that Tabasco could make Kevlar edible, and the hiking had left me hungry. I wolfed down the meal as I listened to Jesse’s voice come over the radio. Granite Mountain was stopping for lunch, too. Once they’d finished, they’d stay where they were. They weren’t planning on going direct to the fire any farther unless they got more support.
By 1:00 p.m., officials closed Route 89 heading south to Yarnell. It was now too dangerous for vehicles. A Forestry official worked up a complexity analysis on the fire and recommended that the response be upgraded to a Type 2 Incident Management Team, or IMT, meaning that specially trained and experienced firefighters be called in to fight it. The recommendation went up the chain of command, but the district forester on the fire and the fire marshal agreed that the blaze was even more serious. They wanted a Type 1 IMT, the highest designation. The request was relayed to Boise.
At 2:02 p.m., the Flagstaff office of the National Weather Service updated the weather picture. A thunderstorm on the fire’s east side was predicted to produce outflow winds of thirty-five to forty-five miles per hour. The winds were going to change and reverse direction. Bad news for Granite Mountain. A forty-five-mile-per-hour wind can alter a fire completely. The danger goes up by an order of magnitude.
I could see the storm approaching with magnificent clouds stacked one on top of another, white and billowing, riding high against the azure sky. I couldn’t see the terrain beneath the storm clouds from where I stood, but the air was now so hot that most of the rain the storm was dropping was evaporating before it hit the ground.
When a thunderstorm has spent its energy and any rain it carries, cool air drops vertically from the storm clouds toward the earth. When that air hits the earth, it begins to move horizontally, powering outflow winds that can exceed fifty miles per hour. These are the intense gusts you feel before a thunderstorm actually arrives. They’re wild and they’re unpredictable. When they hit an American suburb, say, in the Midwest, they blow leaves around, straighten flags on flagpoles, and topple a sign or two as they send people scurrying into their homes.
Hotshots dread outflows. They’re the exact same kind of wind that spurred on the South Canyon Fire and killed fourteen firefighters.
We were all scanning the horizon, looking for any change of direction in the blaze and for flare-ups. When we spotted one, it was a race to see who could get on the radio first and report it. A little game of “beat the lookout at his own game.” Jesse and I would call in and laugh if he pressed the button before I did.
It was almost a contest. It felt good to know that I was responding just as Jesse and Eric were. I felt I was seeing the fire as clear as day.
Maybe I am a good hotshot, I said to myself. Maybe I’ll be in Eric’s league someday.