In fire-prone areas, prescribed fires and backfires are used to clear out brush and fuel loads. Photo courtesy Bureau of Land Management
“Light ’em up,” Todd White, a supervisor of the Tahoe Hotshots, said to the two of us holding drip torches. White had just finished leading my firefighting cohort and me on a hike up a long, steep slope that left my pants and shirt saturated with sweat, and my lungs feeling like I was huffing smoke three inches from the flames that were backing slowly down the ridge we stood on. This was the sixth consecutive week our hotshot crew, a twenty–person team of elite firefighters, had been battling blazes in northern California, and our second trip to the Bar Complex in the Shasta–Trinity National Forest. The fire had grown. I dipped the diesel– soaked wick into the fire and waited until my torch burst into flame, then followed White up the ridgeline.
For twelve of the seventeen seasons that he’s worked on a firefighting crew, White has fought fire with the Tahoe Hotshots. During that time, his job has changed in accordance with changes in the U.S. Forest Service’s fire policy. In response to the increasing costs of fire suppression, the Forest Service in 2000 made a place for fire in the landscape by implementing the National Fire Plan. The policy placed greater emphasis on prescribed burning—human–lit fires intended to replicate natural, low–intensity fires—and wildfire use, or allowing natural fires to burn unchecked.
“It used to be that nobody would do this type of burning,“ White said, referring to the practice of lighting low–intensity backfires. As I walked, I dragged a strip of flame with me. Our job was to terrace these strips twenty feet apart in mile–long swaths down to Hobo Gulch Road, flanking the ridge 1,500 feet below us. The remainder of our crew was spread out along that road to make sure the fire stayed above them. I lifted my torch and turned to watch the fire boil and roll in a pocket of dead, jackstrawed limbs. It cast thick, milky smoke up toward the ridge and sent a swarm of embers into the limbs of a young fir. The tree began to burn. Few things in this job come as close to replicating a natural process as setting a prescribed fire.
Lighting backfires is a slow, labor–intensive process that can be dangerous for the people wielding the drip torches. But White and others also say it’s a healthy way to reintroduce fire into fire–adapted environments. A century ago, when natural fire was an integral part of many western ecosystems, frequent low–intensity fires kept high concentrations of fuels in check. Restoring such fire–adapted landscapes is a large part of what the Fire Management Plan is intended to accomplish.
When White started as a hotshot crewmember in 1990, he learned about fire through a brief series of classes combined with tips shared by veteran firefighters, a trickle–down process of information–sharing in a work culture notorious for its tight lips. Today’s firefighters spend a minimum of thirty–two hours in class—the total is generally closer to eighty—before they hit the line.
“The increased knowledge of our new firefighters is one of the best changes I’ve seen,” White says.
For firefighters rising in the ranks, mandatory classes include the logistics and benefits of prescribed burns and the intricacies of fire effects. This year, the Forest Service requires hotshot crews to have at least one crewmember trained on wildfire use.
“There’s a lot of ethics that go into the decisions we make. We’re stewards of the land, the latest Gifford Pinchots,” White said, standing on a knoll of a ridge overlooking the North Fork of the Trinity River. In the wilderness across the drainage, a column of black smoke billowed into the sky. I imagined the sweat I would shed building line around that blaze, then smiled. That one would be left to burn in the shade of a mature forest.