Watching our World Burn
Wildfires in the West
I'd planned to write something political tonight, but it felt callous while thousands of people in Los Angeles watch their homes burn to the ground. It's something all too familiar for any one of us who lived near mountains in the past decade, but also something I'd bet most of us never experienced as kids. Wildfires, it would seem, are the new normal.
For our family, it was living in the Bitterroot range of the Rocky Mountains just south of Missoula Montana. In the summer of 2017 we had three little kids, a typical split-level house, a couple cars, and were used to breathing in smoke late in the summertime from Canadian wildfires or something further west. But never us.
We'd gone to Anaconda for a couple of days to hang out at Fairmont Hot Springs, swim in their massive pools, play a little mini-golf, and watch a fantastic thunderstorm work its way across the western horizon. Montana is known for it's spectacular mid-summer storms, a clash of humidity and bone-dry air that brings with it sheet lightning and hail the size of softballs. But we were safe on the balcony, hugging the kids and enjoying the warm, wet air on our cheeks before bed. It was July 10th.
Sometime during the night a bolt of lighting reached out and struck Lolo Peak, a few miles south of our house on the backside of the mountain. These things happened and weren't much of a worry, usually squelched by the rainstorm that followed, but this one smoldered and smoked, reminding us for days that it was still alive and making decisions. Lolo Peak is high and fairly treacherous, unreachable by rural fire or hotshots, so we waited, watching that pencil-thin streak of smoke smolder at sunset every night before bed.
The fire grew so slowly we hardly noticed until a mobile fire information unit pulled their trailer into the parking lot of the Town Pump and we started getting InciWeb updates on our local Facebook Community page every couple of hours. We couldn't see the column of smoke in the haze, and were too close to have perspective on the overall size of the fire, but it had grown out of sight on the back of the mountain and was making its way to the top. Again, no big deal for us mountain folks. We liked things rugged, a little risky, and most of us lived across the highway, which felt like a pretty good buffer.
But the fire exploded on August 16th and began moving toward our tiny town at full speed. Everyone up Highway 12th had to evacuate in the middle of the night, and we regularly received video texts from friends' backyards, fully engulfed in flames.
"Come on, Steve," I could hear a friend pleading in the background. "Stop with the hose, it's not worth it. Get in the car!" Steve, like many people who'd lived up the mountain for generations, was willing to put his life on the line to save his house. But the fire ate everything in its path, and deputies and local fire chiefs stopped begging people to leave. They couldn't put their own crews in harm's way to save someone who refused to save themselves. But they did anyway, and firefighters were lost.
Down the mountain all of us packed. My parents were in the evac zone and threw as much furniture as they could in the back of my dad's pickup truck and Mom’s Explorer, all the bikes, family photos, their hard drive, and parked both cars a mile away in our driveway. We put air mattresses on the living room floor and camped out, but no one slept. Our pastor's wife sent us pictures from her back porch in Missoula to show us what we didn't know. The fire had consumed the entire side of the mountain, and us with it. We'd had no idea it was this big. Perspective is everything.
Two days later it was my birthday, and we did our best to play "normal" and have a good day, packing a picnic and heading into Missoula to eat at McCormick Park and let the kids play in fresher air. None of the adults said much, just sort of listened to the birds that had gone silent south of town, put our feet in the water, tried not to think.
"You know," my dad said, "I just wish I could see the future. Just one week. I just want to know where we'll be and how we'll make out. Just one week," he said again. I didn't answer but I got it. And we were lucky, honestly. It was just us, a couple grandparents, a few kids, some photo albums, no pets. We had it easy. The mad scramble for cattle and horses off the mountain in rented trailers and donated equipment looked like a long parade down the highway back into Missoula. People had to figure out how to feed and house their livestock, where to stay, and when, if ever, they could go home.
Chinook helicopters flew back and forth from Oz Ranch to the Bitterroot River, scooping thousands of gallons of water in big orange buckets, while fire planes flew lower over the rooftops, spraying everything with red retardant. It felt like a war zone, and when we drove back to Lolo on the highway I asked my husband if we were supposed to be going home. Everyone else was leaving.
"I don’t know, but we're not evacuated," he said, though I'd heard rumors that if the fire hopped the highway we wouldn't have more than a couple minutes to get out. The kids learned to watch for wildlife running down our road. If cougars, black bear, and deer run together, you'd better run, too. So we watched.
The night of the 18th the fire exploded to 30,000 acres and our kids' bedroom window glowed red. We kept them all together on our side of the house, sleeping in their shoes just in case. I didn't trust we'd hear the doorbell, but none of us slept, scrolling for updates and local news broadcasts. Just after midnight I hopped in the car and headed down to the highway just to get a glimpse of the damage. Apparently everyone else had the same idea. Lolo was hopping, every parking lot filled with tailgaters cracking beers and watching the massive glowing fire inch down the mountain toward the town. Most of these idiots had come from far away, here to take in the "show,” blocking Highway 93 for three days, and making it impossible for fire crews to get to the fire. But now everyone was quiet, just staring at the monster that engulfed Lolo Peak, and soon the town. Only at night could we see the massive flames that spread toward the highway and south toward Florence. And for a moment I surrendered, overpowered by the terrifying beauty of the fire.
In all, Lolo Peak burned 54,000 acres across three national forests. Three-thousand people in two small towns were evacuated, two homes burned, and one firefighter, Brent Witham, was killed felling trees to create a fire line. We were lucky, and when I watch the L.A. fires in the Palisades on the news our fire seems so small, like we shouldn't have been afraid.
Our kids said a prayer at bedtime, for all the families losing something tonight, for everyone who cannot sleep, for the people who don't have a backup plan, can't afford gas or a hotel, or don't have family nearby. We're praying for the water pressure to hold out, for the safety of the crews, and for levelheadedness and calm for everyone evacuating. We're praying for open routes of escape. We're praying for the elderly, and the friendless, and the lonely ones whom no one thinks to check on. We're praying for rain.
Godspeed, safety, and good wishes, Los Angeles. We are all Dodgers fans tonight.
Ellie is an author, editor, and owner of Red Pencil Transcripts, and works with filmmakers, podcasts, and journalists all over the world. She lives with her family just outside of New York City, and is represented by Vicki Marsdon at High Spot Literary.
Watching, and waiting in the eaves…
Gripping.