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