Marc On Fire

Crazy Day on the Fires



Marc Hitson
Date: Tuesday, August 18, 2015 11:50 pm
Crazy Day


I’m working on the Fork Fire incident in California. Darvin is my partner as a two man crew of timber fallers working with the fire fighting crews. We support their efforts and help make things safer for them by taking out the super crazy dangerous trees they are not qualified or comfortable with falling theirselves.

We started the day being ordered out by a dozer operator who seems to enjoy running the show from the seat of his machine. He told us to go up a dozer line and do some tree removal operations to improve a fire line. We headed up. It was a whole mountain to climb – up steep shale inclines. We forged onward and upward taking a lot of breaks.

No sooner did we break up on top than we realized I had forgotten our gas container filled with mixed saw gas. It was a long way down. I headed back down and Darvin said not to hurry as he needed a break. I didn’t. I got down to the bottom and just the person I didn’t want to see, the dozer operator was parked right beside the truck. But he was so distressed he didn’t notice why I was back there and he had been chewed out by management for excessive radio traffic. (He talks a LOT on there).

They had made a better parking space on the one lane road around the steep mountain side and told me to move the truck to the better spot. I did. It was a couple of miles down the road at the bottom of the steep mountain we had climbed I was a long way out of the way for my path back so I took a short cut (!!) across country to the work area. It took awhile, and I thought I was lost but forced my intellect to rule my emotions and forged ahead.

By the time I got to the top again I was exhausted. Darvin was missing but I found the saws and packs and reclined to ponder my next move. I thought about taking a nap.

Pretty soon a dozer whose radio name was Bushy Dozer came up and told me my partner was looking for me. It had taken so long Darvin started worrying I had had a heart attack or something, and was probably in deep trouble and needing help all alone in the forest (we were both in our ’60’s) with no one to apply medical procedures.


After awhile he could be seen far below making his way back up the hill. He seemed tired and walked pretty slow – taking a few steps and resting, pausing in the shade of a bush for a break, etc.

He was mad. I got chewed out. We both needed a long break to rest up but it was noon and we had done nothing yet so we soldiered on up the hill cutting trees. For about 200 feet and 10 trees. Then Darvin was so tired he was shaking and said he needed to stop for a lunch break so we spread out our lunches in a picnic fashion and reclined in comfort for a few minutes leaning up against a pine tree. Bushy Dozer left seemingly in disgust ( mad Bro?) and went on back down the hill. We got up in a short while and forged upward and onward. Another 100 feet and a few more trees and we spotted flames. Fire activity was quite pronounced and trees were torching on both sides of the fire line. Something was wrong with this picture. We had learned in fire class that this was NOT normal. We could barely see up the fire line where our next trees were. I suggested our day was over.

Darvin called Division on our radio and got the reply no big deal it was doing that yesterday. “Hmmm” – My personal assessment: “Nope it was not good.” On my last tree I broke my saw. Darvin’s saw fell apart also a little while later while I was working on mine. It was a Monday. He called Division back and said we were not going to continue up the line so then Division decided to hike up. It took the young guy 45 minutes to power up to where they had sent us old guys to soldier on our own. Meanwhile we took apart both saws and came up with one that worked. Break time.


Division came up the hill, took one look and in the finest logger/firefighter lingo expelled a heartfelt word that means something like sex gone amuk. In less than 5 minutes it seemed the hill was swarming with more dozers, hand crews, supervisors and there began to be water drops from about 5 birds (helicopters).

We reclined on the sideline and watched the show in delight. It was about time we got to relax. They sent up two crews who were made up of inmates in bright orange
suits. They were jolly for the most part. One told us how hard the hike up was but then opined philosophically that if you could make it (with a grand gesture in our direction) then surely they could, “No offense!”, They politely exclaimed. “None Taken!” I gestured back with equal grandeur.


The many helicopters had varying degrees of success in hitting the appropriate hot spots of fire but at least three of them had considerable luck and success at dousing the orange suits with their water drops. After at least half a dozen such episodes, with orange suited convicts scattering like a flock of chicks in all directions, one began to suspect intent. One of the helicopters was a National Guard ‘Copter, which seemed most accurate at dropping water on the orange suits.

Soon it was time to hike down the hill. We were thanked by Division for reporting the situation in time so that they might possibly be able to catch it. I.E. our timing was impeccable in my own words.

By the time we got close to the truck we were both barely managing with shaky legs and exhaustion threatening to make us look like losers to the young fellers so we set off across country where there would be no witnesses to our shameful lack of youthfulness. Bed was never so sweet. Dinner? Shower? Nah. Wash hands and face with hot water and hobble to tent and bed and drop. Lights out. Crazy Day Over!

Man Down On The Big Windy

Benny and I are timberfallers, loggers who go on fires in the summers during fire season here in Oregon. Some of the terrain is astoundingly extreme with steep ground, narrow logging roads and big timber. On the 4th day of our tour on the Big Windy Fire Complex we were headed up from base camp to the work area to meet up with our assigned fire division when we came to stopped traffic. I texted to my family:

Aug 6 8:45 AM “There appears to have been an accident. Traffic is stopped; firefighters are parked everywhere along the road. Ambulance and Police are going by”

About 9:45 We saw a medic along the road and stopped to ask about the accident, see if anyone was hurt. The medic was 6’+, sporting a goatee and mohawk with tattoo and earring, wearing Terminator sunglasses. A tear came out and was in his voice as he solemnly said in a rough deep voice, “I don’t think he was in pain very long”

About 10:30 we had a briefing and Division informed us of the fatality. News was scarce and we all wanted to know what was the cause. A young firefighter spoke up with some emotion and said that he had been first responder on the accident. He said that the brakes were burned up and were smoking so much they looked like they were on fire when he got there. He encouraged all the truck drivers to go slower, gear down and use their jake brakes.

Later I learned that he had texted a close friend shortly after the wreck to say that he had just came upon an overturned truck with a 19 yr. old driver underneath and had felt his pulse until it stopped.

As we were waiting with the division to deploy for the day I knew it was going to be a rough day emotionally. We all would be running the little bit of info we had over and over in our mind trying to figure out how a 19 yr. old truck driver could have died while engaged in the fire fighting process. Safety is emphasized so strongly and so much caution is taken to keep every one safe that the theme seems to be woven into the whole scheme of things here.


We knew that he was headed to base camp after finishing the night shift. We knew the road had many sharp corners and steep grades and that he was driving a water tender truck which could have up to 5k gallons of water. Usually, though they went down empty. 19 is pretty young to be driving these treacherous roads. I know from growing up in a logging town that truck drivers have to start in a low gear at the top of the hill and use engine compression to keep from burning up their brakes on the way down. Sometimes a wreck will happen when a driver miss-shifts and can’t get the truck back into gear so then he burns up his brakes and goes faster and faster until he can’t make a corner and crashes.

I overheard “Red”, the Division commander offering the young firefighter who was first responder the services of the Critical Incident Stress Team and heard him decline them respectfully. Pretty soon the young man came over to our truck, stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Justin, and I’m going to be working with you today.” We introduced ourselves and as he walked away, Bennie said “He is messed up!”. He felt that our primary mission was not going to be falling hazard trees, but helping Justin and his brother, Matt, keep their minds off the accident. So we fell to and engaged our self ascribed mission with a maximum effort – Benny cracking jokes, telling tall Marine tales, and generally entertaining with his spicy language.

Matt began to enjoy himself right away and join in the fun, but Justin is the quiet thinker type and he had those dark brooding eyes that told the story of what was going on inside. I certainly could identify, as we all felt sad about it and had not seen what Justin had, but by the end of the day his shell began to crack and I saw a few smiles.

Finally the end of the day came near. Justin and Matt were on the fire as a dozer and lowboy team and had the loaded truck parked at DP18, a staging area at the top of a mountain near our work area. The Division Trainee came by and informed them that the night crew was doing a burn operation and they should move the dozer down the hill to a rock quarry a few miles away so they left to do that. As we worked on down the road on our own, I saw Matt, who is a 19 yr. old college kid/farm boy making money on the fire, go driving by in the cab of the 10 wheeler truck and attached lowboy trailer loaded with a D-6 Cat. He had a big happy grin of pure joy in controlling the power and weight of big iron he was escorting down the hill and it was so bright and fun and such a contrast to our day that it just struck me deeply – he was the same age as the boy who had just had those bright fires of youth extinguished forever. It was so hard to imagine that Matt could possibly perish that way with the joy and skill he displayed.

Later Matt was observed to say how a kid his age had just died in an accident doing what he did and that he felt lucky. I’m not sure luck has much to do with it. I am sure that the boy who died had those same fires burning.

Matt & Benny

Man Down on the Fork Fire

Man Down on the Fork Fire2

by Marc Hitson

A few days ago I came to get dinner after work and after it was already dark at fire camp and some medics were rolling in a gurney.    A man was lying on the ground by the mess tent and surrounded with medics.      I went through the line, got my food and went to sit down in the tent by the man on the ground.    As I walked by I glanced at him and he looked dead with a glassy stare straight up.    I sat at the table closest to him but with my back to the scene and as I sat down, the whole tent was staring at me.    But not really, they were concerned about their fellow fire fighter.   

I had the thought that maybe I was resented by the other firefighters for sitting there, but I was tired and so I continued.    As I respectfully began to eat my dinner with my very best manners since I was being stared at, I tried to get a handle on the scene I found myself planted in the middle of.    Obviously, this guy in trouble was a great person.    Their faces, maybe 20 or 25 fire fighters, all with the same uniform, were shocked, alarmed and some reflected an expression of horror — it must have been a bad experience for everybody.    I cannot imagine what took place as the fellow dropped from exhaustion just when he thought the long day was almost done and was trying to have dinner, but manliness can only take you so far.   

One firefighter with his dread locks tied back in a ponytail had bright tear tracks down his soot stained face.    Another in the back had his eyes closed and hands behind his head almost in an attitude of prayer.    No talking, just anxious grief stricken looks.    Not much eating was going on.   

The man at the table next to me was well groomed, in a National Guard uniform and looked like an officer.    He was eating alone and not one of the crew, but every time he looked up his eyes were stricken like he had just looked death in the face.    There was absolutely no humor in the tent.    After a while he got up and very quietly departed.

My dinner was good – fajitas and a nice dessert.    I took my time.    I reverently thought about the man down.    I have had experience with death this year as my family cared for my mother while she was dying and on hospice.    She seemed to want people around her and I thought that if I were that guy on the ground, dying, or dead already, I would want everyone to continue enjoying their dinner for my last few moments, not acting grief stricken, so that is what I did.    I might have put up a prayer or two for him — he must have been quite a fellow.   

As I was finishing my meal, the patient behind me must have been miraculously revived by the medics because everyone jumped up and started cheering

 and one fellow yelled, “Jiti!    Now you can get a bed finally.” They all whooshed out of there in one big happy suddenly garrulous group, following the gurney as it wheeled away.   

The next morning we all got a big lecture at briefing about staying hydrated.    It went something like this:    “Drink your damn water!”    “You can die”.

Today I went to breakfast early to have my oatmeal and bran flakes: the only thing my body can stand in the camp bfst menu lately.      A man sat down by me and engaged in conversation quite pleasantly. He was a Division commander, and we got around to the topic of the medics.    I mentioned the man down and it turns out the man was from this fellow’s division.    They were a crew from Alaska where the heat is less of a factor, so they were not used to it California style.    They had done a burn out that day and the man was an animal of a worker.   He had been hiking up and down the very steep hill carrying 5 gallon cans of fuel – 1/3 gas and 2/3 diesel for the drip torches.    He either must have had heat stroke and/or dehydration issues, which can kill a person in a bad way.    I am glad he made it.

Shane’s Logging Accident

The Logging Accident

by Marc Hitson

Logging is a dangerous sport/trade, especially for timberfallers, so I wanted to share this Shane story. I worked with him on my first fire- he was an Idaho cowboy who had turned timberfaller.  One off season he went to Alaska to work in the woods in the big spruce up there on the coast Islands where it rains a lot. I heard from our boss later that winter that Shane had been in a horrible logging accident.


He was at the Fire Safety class the next year and I got the first hand story from Shane himself (and he gladly regaled me with it). First, I was surprised and happy to see him walking and at the class, as it had been reported that he might not be able to work on the leg again, but Shane successfully passed the one mile light pack test with the whole class rooting for him. He does have a lot of spirit, the young lad does.

The setting:

The Alaskan coastal islands get an absurd amount of rain and the trees, especially spruce, grow quite large and tall. They can be 15 feet in diameter and two to three hundred feet tall, and an average big tree (over 6 feet in diameter) would weigh around a million lbs.


The ground is steep and uneven making the ideal lay for the tree to avoid excessive breakage to be straight up the steep slope and this presents unusual safety issues for the workers. 

The trees grow faster than many other species in the area and form some unwanted swelling at the stump. The faller must manufacture some scaffolding from materials at hand in order to perform felling operations above the unwanted swelled stump area which he does mainly by conscripting smaller trees close by and using his chainsaw to cut short slabs approx. 1 foot by 4 feet by 2 inches thick. He then bores into the stump cutting a notch for the end of the slab to be inserted into forming a stepping board to stand on while performing his tree felling operations. Many such boards would be used on a tree this size.

Also, for safety reasons, the fallers work in pairs in order to have a buddy at hand in case of an injury while working this dangerous job. Of course it pays well to those brave souls willing to take the chances such as a somewhat wild Idaho cowboy in this case.

Well, as the story goes, one of Shane’s co-workers, Dave, had a close call while they were both falling timber up in Alaska on a helicopter logging show for Columbia Helicopters. Dave was falling a tree up the slope on a steep hill. In his mind he could see that the weights and lever forces involved were going to cause the tree to rock over a fulcrum up the hill, which was a rock outcropping, and the base of the tree was going to fly up in the air from the stump and then the force of gravity would pull the whole tree straight down the hill like a freight train. He could easily imagine this scenario in his minds eye.

As a faller, one’s survival depends on accurate assessments of extreme forces involving hundreds of tons of weight, the effect of gravity on the steep ground and properly devising a strategy of escape to safety. Flight speed is a very important element of the escape to safety.

To stay safe the faller does his best to establish where a safety zone might be and then devise a scheme of getting there in the three to 8 seconds the tree takes to fall. You can see that the survival skills of a logger include the implementing of real life engineering skills regarding what-if scenarios, and one’s accurate predictions of action/reaction. A lot of thought and reflection on previous experience goes into the planned execution of felling prior to the epic reactions which commence once the tree is released from the stump and the several hundred tons are committed to the forces of gravity.

Well, Dave’s what-if analysis turned out to be very accurate but he missed something. The one thing that can cause a slip up might be the least little factor, such as constant rain and mud causing one to slip during the escape route.

Perhaps he was getting pushed for production and failed to prepare adequate footing because he somehow overlooked the slippery situation in the mud and constant rain. As he attempted to make it to safety, Dave slipped and slid below the stump himself as the tree was falling and it popped off the stump and slid backwards directly towards him. Having made this mistake myself before, I can imagine the feeling of helplessness he must have felt watching it all unfold from the unsafe position of being underneath the falling/sliding tree. He had time to crab walk on all fours a step or two sideways which may have saved his life. A limb caught Dave’s clothes and pulled him down the hill at a high rate of speed as he bounced along the ground like a rag doll.

He was so traumatized by this event that he went to the bosses and quit immediately. The problem is, it takes awhile to quit in Alaska, as the boat ride out only happens on specified occasions, so the supervisors asked Shane to fall for Dave, and Dave would take the responsibility of 2nd faller and “bucker” so he could work. This arrangement was satisfactory to both men – Dave, who was done with falling, and Shane who liked to fall.

Thus the story begins. Shane was falling a 7′ diameter Spruce for Dave to “buck”, or cut into short logs that the helicopter could lift. Shane was using an 066 Stihl with a 54″ bar and chain to cut the big tree which must have weighed around 500 hundred tons (according to a spruce density calculator I found). There is so much rain in Alaska that the trees on the coast and the islands grow very fast and with misshapen stumps and roots and the big Spruce that Shane was cutting had roots flaring out so that he had to ‘springboard’ up to a height of around 6 to 10 feet to get to where the main trunk of the tree began and where the wood was suitable for the felling procedures. Shane had several of these springboards inserted so that he could walk around the back of the big Spruce while sawing several feet above the ground.

The trees that big can be around 300 feet tall. Shane is a good faller and has no trouble making the tree go where he wants it to go. When the undercut, or “directional face cut” was installed he began the final “back cut” to release the tree from the stump, taking care to leave the uncut strap of wood across the diameter of the stump which allows the faller to control the direction of the fall. As the tree begins to tip over, slowly at first, the faller must keep up with the sawing of stump wood to keep control and prevent unwanted splitting or “pulling of slivers”. Shane was worried that the tough spruce would pull up a root out of the ground which could dislodge the springboard he was standing on. As the tree started going faster and having properly cut up to the control strap, or “hinge.” Shane turned off his saw and set it up on the stump in the ever faster opening cut and concentrated on keeping his footing on the spring boards. The tree hit the ground with all its length and weight with a spectacular crash, taking out smaller trees and squashing down the underbrush. He took a moment to appreciate the majestic forces he had just witnessed. The vibrations dislodged a fallen tree upslope. Shane said he heard something and turned around to see the tree coming but it was already on him and pinned his leg to the stump high in the air.

He ended up hanging upside down by his pinned leg. He could just barely reach up and get his fingers on the stump and pull himself up so he was sitting on the stump of the Spruce tree, still pinned. By this time he was yelling for Dave who came running with his saw. Shane wanted Dave to cut him loose to get the tree off his leg. Dave didn’t want to do it as he was afraid the tree would slide on down the steep hillside and crush Shane once he cut it in half. Shane had to get himself under control, calm down and quit yelling and tell Dave how he wanted him to do it. Dave still had doubts. Shane yelled that he didn’t care, just do it, so Dave did and it worked.

Shane told me as he was relating the story that it wasn’t that he was correct in assessing it but just that he didn’t care at that point he wanted that tree off him. He checked his leg and realized it was pretty bad – his foot was backwards and hurt real bad. He pulled his foot around and it felt better. He started to take his boot off but Dave said, “No, it would be better to leave it on”.  He radioed the helicopter logging crew and the logging operations were immediately shut down while men and rescue helicopters were mobilized.

They had to pack Shane down to a clearing area where the helicopter would have access. It came in with a “long line” and a basket where he was loaded into the basket and tied in. When he was being loaded into the basket it was too small, and the helicopter was not equipped with a splint so the man on the ground loading him had to fold the leg back in an unnatural position and strap him in which did more damage. It hurt. They gave him morphine, and it still hurt. They gave him more until they were all out.

Shane was flown to the log landing area where they put him down in the basket, landed the helicopter, put him inside and flew to a hospital in Ketchikan. Shane spent the next 10 days in Ketchikan on pain drugs and he said it is mostly a blur – he doesn’t remember it much.

His leg became swollen and the circulation was bad and they were talking about amputation. Because of the swelling they could not put it in a cast or set the bone. Finally they decided to send him to Bend, Oregon where specialists performed operations to restore circulation. They could not set it for the first three months and Shane showed me two big scars on either side of his calf about 3” wide and a foot long. I observed that it looked like it probably took all the skin off his butt to patch that, and he said, “No”, they took it off his thigh and that hurt pretty bad in itself. He ended up with a titanium rod in his leg. They still were talking about amputation for awhile and it was touch and go but he was young and kept healing up.

That’s pretty much the story. He is now able to limp along and has been talking about going back to work. Whew! That story was an adrenalin rush just to write about and to picture! Loggers!

Revenge of the Old Fallers

Two different faller boss styles

The old faller boss is ready to retire. He has a sense of humor that won’t quit. Some may frown on that, but he has that old guy get ‘er done mentality and the ability to do it.

For instance, my division leader ordered 4 sets of fallers, but there were no faller bosses, so we all sat around for a day. The next day they brought in Benhower, whom I call Ben Hur. My partner, Bennie calls him Boomhaur. He does not object to anything we do to the hapless feller, in fact he seems to appreciate it. In fact, I came up with the saying “who killed Bennie?” for a comedy line which Ben loved and also sparked a hilarious South Park routine from Russell. [Read more…]

Change Of Plans

Well, I got in late last night. We hiked in 1.5 miles to work on the west flank of the Warm Springs fire near Mt. Jefferson. We worked until 6 and then hiked back to the rigs, and then hauled tents and camping supplies up a trail several hundred yards and set up a spike camp just before dark. The wind was blowing strongly and the camp was in some trees. To get there we had to walk through a bunch of burning trees. [Read more…]