My Lost Brothers by Brendan McDonough

Author:Brendan McDonough
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs, Nature / Natural Disasters
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2016-05-02T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

One morning, we got a call to southern Arizona. A fire was burning out of control in what we call the wildland-urban interface, the point at which the wildlands meet human habitation. We were being called in to save people and their homes.

When we arrived, we pitched right into the fight the first day. But the blaze kicked our ass, plain and simple. It was unstoppable, roaring up and over the sides of hills. And on those hillsides were houses: ramshackle cabins, million-dollar mansions, and everything in between. People were getting burned out.

The fight was more personal here. We were on a quest to save lives and homes. We worked the brush, cutting and swamping, constructing fire lines and trying to rob the blaze of fuel before it reached the condo developments that were all over the hillsides. But it was being driven by strong winds; it was a shifty fire. I swear to God you got to thinking that it was alive, trying to find a way around us so it could feed. We’d get a break cut, and spot fires would appear past our break. New fires would pop up.

It was backbreaking work, sixteen hours straight. I was ready to drop by the end of the second day. We knocked off around eight p.m. and headed back to where we were sleeping that night. We got to camp and were horsing around, trying to cheer each other up after a bitch of a day. We wanted to go home and see our kids. I, as the crew’s class clown, was doing some dance moves as I waited for our meals to heat up.

I got a few of the boys laughing.

“Donut,” Chris said, “you ain’t all there, boy.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “That’s just fine. Check this one out.” And I went into some techno robot moves. Awkward as hell. I can’t really dance. But the boys were loving it.

Finally, the grub was ready. I sat down and rubbed my hands together, ready to dig into my plate. I heard something to my right, at the edge of the camp, and looked over. In the flicker of the campfire, I saw a bunch of people—men and women, even a few children—huddled around wooden picnic tables. They were wearing civilian clothes. The adults weren’t hotshots, for sure.

What the hell are they doing out here?, I thought.

I took a bite of the chicken. Delicious. “Hey, Boone,” I called. “Who’s that?”

He looked over. “Those,” he said quietly, “are the people who lost their houses today.”

I looked again. These people were homeless because the fire had outwitted us. Because there weren’t enough of us, not enough hotshots, tankers, and dozers. Because we’d failed.

I put my plate down. I felt a mixture of anger and shame. I’d lost my appetite. I wanted to go back out to the fire line and start up all over again. We all felt the same way. Those people had nowhere to go and we were sick about it.

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