Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The other crews have all left by the time we assemble. Most are headed north towards the Juno fire, reports of its jumping containment came in around midnight. A couple of the crews will be rotating out with us at the end of the week, not because the fire bosses want them to, but science has shown 4 week rotations with one week breaks is the most effective use of a human over a twenty year period. Any more and the rate of “loss” is economically unacceptable. Your last week on tour is always the roughest. The Fire Bosses might have to follow the four week rule but that doesn’t stop them from getting every last ounce out of you before you rotate. Most fatalities occur in the fourth week. The Second was used to being put into the shittiest jobs so it came as a surprise to get such a cush assignment. After nearly twenty years of doing this shit it all starts to blur together a bit, the tours, fires, faces. I’ve been with this crew since the beginning and so have a handful of the other eleven men. With the exception of Donny, we are all within sight of crossing the line. Five years ago, the previous Crew Boss, Daniel Temple, crossed the line and left the crew to me. There isn’t a lot of loyalty to be found out here these days but we would have followed Temple into any fire. For some fucked up reason the crew has done the same for me. We’re split, six to a rig, not counting the driver. Teddy being my anchorman will ride with five in one rig, I’ll take the rest with me. Having been together since the Second was stood up, I trust Teddy’s knowledge of fires and terrain over anyone else’s, hell Temple would have left him the crew if it wasn’t for Teddy’s behavior at camp. Working a line means Teddy and I are at the far ends, directing and pushing the crew. The job of recovery isn’t one most crews relish but at this point we have done enough of them to learn to value the extra time away from the fire lines. Shifting through the burned out wrecks is still back breaking but it beats scraping ground. In the beginning recovery was focused on bringing back the bodies but as shit kept getting worse the real racket became the vehicles and equipment. Local Fire Bosses could sell the salvaged parts back to the contractors which were so focused on the bottom line they would take any chance they could to save a few bucks. Most of the field managers for the big three received bonuses for being under budget, and if they thought they might not make it, they could still buy the salvaged parts and charge their employers full price. Everyone’s got a racket. This was one of the first ways crews made money out here, that was until the Fire Bosses figured it out. Now rigs are inspected when they return to make sure the Bosses aren’t missing out. The driver said it was only a couple of hours west of camp where the crew got caught in the slide. Nothing to do but enjoy being tossed around in the back of the rig. 

I’ve seen images of what this part of the state used to look like. Unbroke forests running right up to some invisible line on the higher mountains. Not any more. Even the rendings of what post reclamation is supposed to look like don’t match what once was here. For one thing the sky in those images lacks the omnipresent orange coloring that never really goes away as much as changes in shades. In place of what once was, is now a mosaic of old burns that have plighted the landscape of nearly all life. Here and there are small pockets of unburned areas that have somehow survived the megafires over the decades. Intermixed in all this are the areas under reclamation by ClimaX, small stands of trees struggling to grow in moonscape left by the last megafire to hit the area. The one good thing these little forests have going for them is that there just isn’t enough fuel around for a big fire to reach them. The low brush and grasses that are always the first to recolonize after a fire are dry and primed to burn but evidence of controlled burns show even they won't get far. On some of the bigger tree stands, the trees are blackened from these controlled burns. Often set in the early part of the year before all of the moisture has left the area, crews like ours are sent out to manage these burns. It beats working uncontained lines on a big fire. Most of the western United States looked much like this place. Some areas were blessed with micro climates that could still support such a quaint concept as a fire season. Looking at a map of the west these days showed small pockets of yellow shaded regions, mostly surrounding the much smaller green smudges on the map. Anything shaded in red was considered outside the ability of the fire services to actively control. Orange area’s were a toss up. This all changed of course once you hit the Missouri River. Everything east of that body of water was considered outside the firebox and falls under different rules. The only exception in the west is the state of Texas which chose to go it alone. Its just one unbroken sea of red. 

We finally arrived, having driven up a narrow canyon service road. Passing filthy ClimaX signs weathering on the side of the road. Each proudly proclaiming the company's hard work to reclaim the area, restoring the natural ecosystem to its pre industrial fire state. The last one they had passed was little more than a twisted skeleton having been burned in the last fire. At one time this area was a national forest, now all that was left was the road and burnt out slopes. With so little fuel left to burn, the road wasn’t being maintained anymore, making their journey all that much harder. Just pass a switchback, the drivers pulled the rigs over. A widened area of the road would allow them to turn around if needed. The crew had to walk the last bit to reach the wrecks. At the point where the road doubled back on itself the slope gave way to a full view of the canyon. The crew paused long enough to see the path of the last fire that had burned through the area, racing up the narrow space, probably driven by the high winds common to the summers here. Teddy and I were thinking the same thing as we looked at each other. This fire was more than two years ago, what was a crew doing out here? We should have known something was up sooner. Ash slides are common but not this late in the season.

The winters in most of California were now marred by torrential rains. Often this meant what was once an entire year worth of rain for an area like this, now fell in a matter of weeks or even days. The ash and loose debris from the fires would wash downhill with the rains, building unstable dams at choke points. This late into the fire season, it was the risk of one of these dams bursting that caused ash flows, but they were halfway up the canyon’s slope nowhere near where the impounded water and ash was. Rounding the bend in the road the crew got their first look at the wrecks. One rig was laying upside down in the dried up drain ditch, half buried in the collapsed slope above it, the six wheels of the fifteen ton MRAP vehicle pointed up to the sky like a giant dead beetle. The second rig sat forty feet behind the other stopped in the middle of the dirt road. Both had been traveling down the canyon when something had gone wrong. I could see a giant crater in the roadway, almost two feet deep. We had heard of natives using pipe bombs to disable rigs before but whatever left this crater was much larger. Both rigs had been burnt out, the fire not spreading beyond due to the lack of fuel. The last fire through the area had burned hot enough to kill off the microbes in soil, meaning even with the winter and spring rains nothing was going to grow back anytime soon.

Teddy was inspecting the dead beetle when he called me over. “Look at this…” I could see what he was indicating even before I reached the vehicle. The windows of the rig were melted but still partially intact. It didn’t seem like much but it was just the first sign that these were not normal fire service rigs. The windows had to be original spec, meant for the battlefield. Our vehicle windows would have burned up in an instant given the amount of scoring on these ones. Looking in through the melted openings of the windows you could tell the fires were started inside the rig instead of from the outside. The driver’s door was partially open, something that can only be done from the inside once the rig is occupied. Teddy crawled inside and made his way towards the back of the rig, “Nothing, no gear, guns, or bodies.” It was Donny that let out an audible gasp even though we all had been holding our breath. The other vehicle was a similar story. Teddy started organizing the salvaging of the two rigs before returning to where I was now standing, looking out into the canyon from the downhill side of the road. “What are you thinking happened boss?” It was a good question. “They are new or at least better kept rigs for sure. No guns though.” The presence of guns could have meant they had belonged to one of the private security services that were becoming an ever present reminder of how fucked things had gotten. In the green zones or back in the cities outside the fire regions there were still plenty of folks with enough money to pay for extra protection from the masses. There were always rumors about roving armed gangs but not out in the red zones. And they couldn’t have been Guardsmen, the National Guard’s rigs were in just as rough shape as the ones the fire service used. “Someone already pulled the good stuff from the looks of it. Left the guts though.” Radios, crew gear and fuel cans had all been taken but whoever stripped that stuff left a ton shit behind.

The MRAP still sitting in the road had no damage to the engine compartment. The fires set inside of both rigs damaged a lot of the interior parts that were worth something but they left a lot of valuable engine and drivetrain parts behind. All the Second had to do was unbolt the parts and lug them back to the rigs still waiting at the switchback. The good news was they wouldn’t return empty handed. Fire bosses hate it when you show up empty handed. A dark brown spot on the edge of the road had caught my attention, “What do you make of that?” Teddy bent down and ran a finger though the dirt mixing the substance further into the lighter color gravel. “You think they shot the crew here and pushed them over the edge?” It was as good a guess as any, as we looked down the steep slope. A body would drop a long way before finally landing in the rough rocks jutting out from the hillside. It would be hard to see from here. “Fuck it, grab what we can. Take the pictures for the missing shit and let’s get out of here.” It took a little over an hour to secure what they could. It was a royal bitch hauling everything back to the waiting rigs. Maybe whoever got there first did them a favor burning out the interiors. Before leaving I took a look at the driver’s maps to see how much further the road went. Sitting at the high point of the canyon was a small gray area. No name, or number listed, just a miniscule gray square. Whatever it was, this was where the missing crew had been coming from. As the rigs rumbled back down the canyon, I caught a glimpse of something on the back of the burnt out ClimaX sign, a crudely spray painted red fist. Vida De Fuego had been here.

By the end of 2029 the writing was on the wall. Beginning in the early 2000s, one out every two new homes being built in the state of California, was built in a high fire danger area. By 2020 this meant that 11 million homes occupied the most risky areas for wildfires. Images of the Golden Gate Bridge obscured by the eerie red clouds of smoke had become a yearly tradition, and for a tiny town in Washington state, the first rumbles about refugees had already begun. The small town located on the Olympic Peninsula two hours west of Seattle, had always been caught between great historical changes. Port Townsend was known for its Victorian buildings, many of them three stories tall lining the few blocks of downtown. Built to lure the railroad companies to choose it as the terminus for its western reaches, the dream of becoming a major port city died when the railroad ended in another sleepy town called Seattle. What followed was decades of stagnant growth as residents clung on to the only economic lifeline they had left, the local papermill. This obscurity had allowed Port Townsend to become a quiet and safe place for those that struggled to find refuge. A thriving wooden boat and craftsmen community began to emerge bringing with it artisans and a whole host of other creatives that had finally found a home. By the 1990s Port Townsend was being recognized for its safe if somewhat weird community. Titles like “Best Small Town” and “Safest Place to Raise a Family” were being thrown around.

Before long Port Townsend became a desirable place to live for a wider range of people, despite the lack of economic opportunities. Most of the new arrivals were those retiring or with the economic means to survive the lack of tourists during the winter months. When the decade ended, locals were already used to hearing “California” when asking where their new neighbors were from. When the Great Recession hit in 2007/2008 and the growing city of Port Townsend wasn’t spared, but unlike other areas property prices really didn’t suffer, it was more like they sort of froze in place for a few years. This was the first real sign of danger to locals that had bought homes in the community before it became trendy. It was even more troubling for those already struggling to find an affordable home. These were the people that had been born here, or bought one of the decaying structures before Sunset magazine told them too. They watched as the housing market was flooded with cash offers for homes that should have been nearly worthless. Who can afford to live in a place with no jobs? Three years after the country learned the name “Mortgage Backed Security'' the city of Port Townsend was back in business. Sure there were some people that got hurt in the recession, lost their life savings, facing the real possibility that they would never be able to retire, but they were many more ready to purchase their failed dreams. For the working class, the area offered few jobs that made purchasing a home a reality. The city had little interest in them, they couldn’t afford to buy a two bedroom home for nearly a million dollars.

In a state with no income tax, property and sales taxes rule supreme. As the big fires in California started becoming household names, Port Townsend was fast becoming a refuge for those with the means to escape the fires. We didn’t call them refugees or migrants at the time but that was what they were. At the end of 2022, despite the Covid pandemic, the average home price for Port Townsend was nearly $650,000 while the average income for the community was $29,000 per person. Yard signs telling Californians to go home sprang up. It didn’t help that across the street from many of them an older home was being torn down to make way for someone’s idea of what a modern home should look like. The old wooden boats sitting in front yards that once brought the town its charm were now seen as eyesores hurting property values from going even higher. New arrivals complained about the smell from the papermill and openly celebrated its financial decline. Real locals became a dying species, more hardened in their opposition to newcomers. After the Pay Day fire, outright protests occurred in the city of Port Townsend. In a weird twist both old and new residents marched past the historic city hall demanding action to stop the sale of city property.

Following the 2026 fire season California saw a mass exodus of nearly 1.5 million residents. 2021 was the first time in over a hundred years that California had seen a population decrease, as just over a 100,000 people left the state. Five years later the trend had finally crossed the million mark. The city of Port Townsend saw a huge jump in property values as migrants of means looked for a safe landing spot. Seeing the opportunity the City decided to offer part of the old high school campus up for sale. The site contained a set of buildings the city couldn’t afford to retrofit to meet the state's earthquake requirements. The slow decline in attendance due to fewer families being able to afford to live in the community left the buildings unused. Residents weren’t fooled by the win-win the city was selling. Developers wanted to build multi unit dwellings that would drastically increase the number of residents in their precious town. Residents cited the already strained local healthcare system, outdated infrastructure, and the overdrawn water supply as reasons to stop the development. Residents that only escaped to the city two years ago, demanded that the door be shut on these newcomers for fear their new town would be ruined by outsiders. In the end a compromise of sorts was made, the thirteen acre piece of land was sold at public auction with the stipulation that any development on the property meet the county density requirements for undeveloped land. The property went for north of forty million dollars despite the buyer only being able to build four homes on it. The buyer was a former Palmor insurance executive wanting to build his dream home in the quaint little Victorian seaport of Port Townsend.