Jaci Dawn

Thirty eight years ago, my husband was called up by the United States Forest Service. He was an experience wildland firefighter and had worked for Oregon State Forestry for several years, starting during his high school years. He was an employee (currently laid off) of a local logging company. We needed the money. The Santa Anas were blowing.

From Wikipedia:

“The Santa Ana winds are strong, extremely dry downslope winds that originate inland and affect coastal Southern California and northern Baja California. They originate from cool, dry high-pressure air masses in the Great Basin.

Santa Ana winds are known for the hot, dry weather that they bring in autumn (often the hottest of the year), but they can also arise at other times of the year. They often bring the lowest relative humidities of the year to coastal Southern California. These low humidities, combined with the warm, compressionally-heated air mass, plus high wind speeds, create critical fire weather conditions. Also sometimes called “devil winds” in conjunction with Northern California’s diablo wind,^[1][2] the Santa Anas are infamous for fanning regional wildfires.”

There were wildfires in Los Angeles in the autumn of 1980. Homes were built into the brush. There were no natural fire-lines. The hills were mountain mahogany, a plant that is pitch-filled and hot burning. There was poison oak, the smoke of which could poison lungs. The drought that has extended into 2018 had just begun.

Fire fighting is a scary and dangerous line of work. Fires can turn. Fires create their own weather and winds.  Fires jump boundaries.

One of my earliest memories as a child is of my mother sitting in the kitchen nook of a Forest Service house we lived in. She had the walkie-talkie turned on and was listening to the chatter about some fire my father was on. He was the Ranger, not the firefighter. She was clinging to the hope that he would walk away from the fire and return to us. I don’t remember whether she saw me or not, or whether she comforted me or not. I only remember the connection to her as she prayed Dad would come home.

1980. November. I wanted to have updates. I wanted to know he was OK. He was struggling with mountain mahogany and poison oak going up in flames. Men beside him failed when they inhaled the smoke from poison oak. He cursed the houses built into the brush.

I ate dinner with my father-in-law and my sister-in-law at some restaurant. He ate turkey sandwiches on the fireline.

1995. My mother died. My father, a veteran of 30+ years with the Forest Service, and my brother, took me on a ride up into the alpine levels of the Sierra Nevadas. We were struck by the California laws that didn’t allow home owners to cut trees or create a space where fire could be stopped. No: trees had to be left were they were. My father shook his head and predicted catastrophic results for this “environmental” strategy. He shook his head at the lack of salvage logging.

Agencies that fight fire are dependent on money from the Feds based on the previous fire year. If the year was light, the funds are light. A heavy year: more funds.

A fire fighter’s nightmare is having Federal funds cut off in the middle of a bad fire year. The safety of these fighters is on the line. My father. My husband. A friend who still fights fire. I get that people think there needs to be responsibility regarding how forests are managed out West. Sadly, they are from people who have no connection to the West or to firefighters.

I could give you a list of books to read. I could ask you to think about “what if my <insert relationship> was fighting fire, Or running from fire. Goddamit people. Animals. Livestock. Homes. People. #fuckpolitics