Tabby Lane Fire

Tabby Lane Fire

Location: Tabiona, UT

Duration: 5/30/12 - 6/1/2

Tactics: Suppression

Size: Small (somewhere around 15 acres)

Fuels: Grass, brush, pinyon pine, juniper

High: Watching Jack during mop up as he crushed hot embers with his combi and chanted “die, die, die!” with increasing vehemence.

Low: Jack asking if my hardhat was comfortable. Me saying “yes, it feels much better than before.” Jack subsequently telling me that I was wearing it sideways.

…

I.

It was my fourth day. I still couldn’t quite remember everyone’s name. We got the call driving back to Duchesne from our ATV certification class outside of Vernal, where I had spent the majority of three hours in fervent prayer for both myself as I clung to the howling machine and for the instructor who—in a rather foolish overestimation of my skills—kept moving in closer and closer to our practice track. Dillon, Denny, Mason and I were getting trained in government-okay’d ATV operations in the event that we would need to go somewhere on a fire not traversable by truck. Caught between an early ingrained fear of small recreational vehicles—my dad never missed the opportunity to point out the injured-by-ATVs among us, mom never failed to show me news clippings of accidents, and then there were my cousins, both miraculously still alive despite their best efforts—and my flame of a desire to not be outpaced by my fellows, I foolhardily gunned over embankments that threatened to separate me from my seat. I’d given myself a headache by the end—too much teeth clenching—and a strange hollow feeling somewhere in my lower intestines. And then came the call telling us to hurry it up, we’d got a fire to get to.

Panic set in fairly immediately. Like PPE, line gear was required of every firefighter on the line; mine lay, slumped and half-alive, on the floor of my room in Stockmore, fusees, water bottles and First-Aid kit spread out like excavated guts on my mattress. I mumbled something to the effect of “Oops guys, I think I may have a problem.” Not to fear! We had extras, a partially assembled dummy pack in the back of Fatty. Splendid.

We turned right on Tabby Lane. Hanna was just a few miles off; we were practically knocking on Stockmore’s back door. Tabiona was a hamlet of a town—a sprawl of ranchers tending to fields of alfalfa—and pick-ups and beat down vans lined Tabby Lane, spilled out cowboy-hatted rubberneckers. Fatty rumbled to a halt on the side of the dirt road.

I don’t think I even looked for the fire, too busy fidgeting with the dummy pack, ferreting around in Fatty’s supply compartment for glow sticks and helicopter flagging and everything else I wouldn’t need but was somehow still line-gear-required. Our permanents, Jack, Lynn and Lee, were already on the fire. Over the Bendix King Radio, Jack, our module leader, called us out on Tac 7: “Alright, just saw Fatty. Come on in.”

Dillon and Denny took off at a leggy clip, brushing past the eager citizens of Tabiona. I took two steps, dropped my Pulaski as I fumbled with my gloves, and lost my helmet in the graceful act of bending over. Muffled chuckles from two spectators, a pudgy middle-aged woman and her sweaty husband. 

And so it began.

II.

I’d missed the “fun” bits according to Lynn: billowing smoke (lovely in the lungs) and ground so lively that hot boot was epidemic. By the time the three of us arrived—now retrospectively a very, very short walk—there was little more excitement than some slightly puffing trees and ash. It was a human start, some poor guy lighting up his house by accident, and despite its coverage on the evening news, not too wild a thing. That first night I was saddled with a pencil hose (undoubtedly my blank-in-the-face look inspired pity), and I spent the evening spraying ash, the occasional on-fire tree and whomever happened to be near me.

The rest of our days on the Tabby Lane Fire were spent in mop up mode, which caused me to severely question my sudden move out West. I had once thought—blissfully—that “rub some dirt on it” was no more than a macho phrase which my dad has always rejected in favor of “suck it up.” But no, when Lynn told me to “rub some dirt on it,” she meant just exactly that. Welcome to dry mopping. Sure, the spectacular flamethrower of a fire was out, but hot spots—buried but still burning leaf litter, roots, debris, duff—abounded, threatening to creep and creep and creep until one spark hit one dry spot and puff-puff-puff: fire.

We employed a search-and-destroy stratagem. Wisps of smoke beckoned. I stirred hot dirt. I dug out burning root systems. I wacked on stumps with my Pulaski until they were pulpy bits of scattered wood scrap. And yes, when all else had failed me, I dutifully rubbed some dirt on it.

The Tabby Lane Fire wasn’t a heart-rending, mind-blowing, earth-shattering event, which was really rather good because had it been, I wouldn’t have lasted more than a week into my first fire season. I had absolutely positively zero idea as to what I was doing. My back and shoulders, softy putty muscles, forced me to mop up from my knees, my line gear balanced on the backs of legs or my heels, and after a few embers burnt through the fire resistance of my green nomex pants, I learned to sweep my palm over the ground, checking for heat. One night, I fell into step with Lynn to chat as we hiked off the fire, which prompted her to tell me in her disarmingly blunt way, that firefighters walked one behind the other, boots falling into old boot steps, at whatever pace the head of the line had determined to set. I scurried forward.

Tabby Lane was a gentle, timid thing, though I didn’t appreciate it then. We slept at Stockmore every night, ate our own food, worked less than the typical fourteen to sixteen-hour fire day. It was my first, and a darling of a fire at that.

Lingo

Combi: A combination tool with a shovel head and pick, both of which could be adjusted into several different positions; a typical scrapping tool.

PPE: Personal Protective Equipment, including green nomex pants, yellow nomex shirt, earplugs, eye protection, hard hat, fire approved boots, line gear and gloves.

Line gear: Pack with attached fire shelter containing fire fighting essentials such as water, compass, p-cord, spare MRE, signal mirror, etc. Depending on the amount of personal gear stored (in addition to mandatory items), line gear can weigh from 30 - 50lbs.

Fusees: Long red colored rods that when lit, give off a bright flame (you’re discouraged from looking directly at it); they can be used to put fire on the ground during a fuels reduction burn out.

Bendix King Radio: Big, black block of a radio with a 10-battery clam shell (if used with frequency, battery life is one or two days—radio with dead batts will continue to receive but will not transmit); can be programmed for new frequencies by hand or by being cloned from another radio; can have a range of antennae sizes and lengths (ribbed, short and stumpy, leg length). All agencies operate with different frequencies and each fire uses different tactical channels; as communication is essential, having a correctly programmed radio is to. Up to fifteen different channels can be received by a radio; everything from Command (overhead chattering) to Air-to-Ground (pilots talking to firefighters) to Squirrel Channels (crews talking privately amongst themselves) can be programmed in. Forest repeaters, a series of fixed, high-powered channels used to communicate over long distances, will carry traffic from everything in the area: Law Enforcement Officers calling in license plates, lookouts checking in with dispatch, dispatch contacting various fires about supply needs. It’s not hard to understand why some people are bashful about talking on the radio. Someone is always, always listening.

Hot boot: The uncomfortable and lasting sensation, occurring after standing in hot ash for a while, that the soles of one’s feet are on fire.

Pencil hose: ¾ ’’ hose, also called garden hose, which is the smallest of the three most frequently used hose sizes: ¾’’, 1’’, 1½’’.

Photos 1. & 2. Stockmore - Hanna - Tabiona area 3. Thistle and combi on the Ridge Top Fire 3. All decked out in line gear plus some extras on a fire-to-come, the Pinyon Fire