Beech Tree News Network

Earlier this week, I listened to an interview with an Incident Meteorologist on NPR.  The meteorologist’s name was Makoto Moore, and he explained that an Incident Meteorologist is one who goes in with firefighting teams to watch the weather and detect any shift in conditions in order to warn firefighters when conditions change to the point that their lives will be in danger if they stay in the area.  

Moore described the tools he takes with him into the fire area.  They include a balloon and an instrument packet that hangs from the bottom of the balloon, as well as a handheld fan to detect wind speed direction.  

The reason Moore became an Incident Meteorologist is because of an event that happened over 20 years ago.  It was the 1994 South Canyon Fire that occurred outside of Glenwood Springs, Colorado.  Smoke jumpers dropped into the fire (caused by a lightning strike) and began working the fire, but as they did, a cold front started coming into the area and made the winds shift sharply.  The weather forecasters 90 miles away tried to warn the fire team, but the warning never made it to the firefighters on the ground.  The team tried to outrun the wall of fire.  Some escaped, but 14 died. 

Rae Ellen Bichell, with NPR News, said there are now about 70 Incident Meteorologists across the country that go in with the firefighters, “camping with them, eating breakfast with them, delivering forecasts in person, and radioing them throughout the day.”

That story reminded me of another fire story I had read.  I found it online at azcentral.com.  It was about a helicopter pilot, Gary Dahlen, who guided a fire captain, Kevin Fleming, and his men out of harm’s way by radioing directions to them.  It was a during a wildfire, called the King Fire that happened in the fall of 2014 in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, toward Lake Tahoe.  

Dahlen had heard the radio orders, “All available helicopters prepare for an emergency launch.”  It was a command he had never heard before.  He thought several structures must be burning.  Dahlen flew a yellow Bell 205 that picked up water with a bucket attached to the bottom of the helicopter.  He soon learned that a fire crew on the ground was stuck in front of the fire.  The fire captain, Kevin Fleming, had ordered a shelter deployment.  Deployment meant the firefighters had unpacked their reflective foil blankets and were getting ready to climb inside them.  It is a last resort.

In 2013, nineteen firefighters, members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, deployed their fire shelters during the Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona, but none of them survived.  When Dahlen caught sight of the 12 silver shelters below him as he neared the scene of Captain Fleming’s team, the Granite Mountain Hotshots were very much on his mind.  He could see the men were on a bare strip of logging road with the forest all around them.  He could also see a wall of fire coming toward the men consuming 100 percent of what was in front of it.

Dahlen spotted a clearing up ahead.  He made the split decision to radio the men to get out of their shelters and run for the clearing.  Captain Fleming gave the order to run.  Dahlen radioed directions to Fleming, “Turn to the left, now to the right.  Run faster!”  Every man made it to the clearing.  Every man was saved because of those directions.

I read once that “fire makes weather of its own.”  The recent wildfires in California have shown evidence of this, creating actual fire tornadoes that have engulfed structures so quickly, residents have barely had time to get out.  I’ve watched on TV as fire fighters have gone door to door warning people to get out as the fire rages all around them.  I can’t imagine what fire fighters go through, and I don’t think I could ever have the kind of courage it takes to put myself in the path of a fire.  I do understand one thing about fire though.  Just as fire makes weather of its own, it also makes heroes of its own.