The Johnny Cash Fire

After our first fire, things seemed to quiet down a bit. We would have our occasional campfire getting out of control or someone running their vehicle off the road and ending up halfway down a canyon. But nothing big. Sitting around or just doing maintenance on your equipment tends to put you a bit on edge. Someone would say something and it would be taken the wrong way and an argument or fight might break out. We were like race horses waiting for that gate to open. We had been trained to fight wildfires. We had gotten a taste of the adrenalin rush and we wanted more.

                                                                                   
Then the call came in. Fire in the Los Padres National Forest. The Los Padres is located in Ventura County. It lies along the coast just south of Santa Barbara, California. Assistance needed immediately. The Los Padres National Forest contained the San Rafael Wilderness Area for the endangered California Condor. The Condor is a prehistoric bird that exists in only two places in the world, here and in the mountains of Peru. It's a vulture with a ten foot wingspan, and which lives high in the coastal mountains. The Condor uses the updraft provided by the sea breeze to help it take flight.

Every firefighting resource the U.S. Forest Service had was being thrown at this fire to protect these endangered birds. The Los Padres Forest is located about a 120 miles north of where we were located. The quickest way to get there was by the freeway system. Our Ford truck, fully loaded with equipment and men, was not the fastest vehicle on the road that day. You've heard about the race between the turtle and the hare?  We  were definitely the turtle. We would wave at the folks that passed us by. Some would give the thumbs up, while others would give us the middle finger. We just smiled, because we knew we were headed for what we wanted to do most, fight the fire!

About 20 miles from our destination we saw it, a mushroom cloud of smoke rising 20,000 feet into the air. You knew this was a big one. You've got to have a really hot fire to get that kind of cloud. Your heart starts racing. The adrenalin starts pumping. This is what you've been trained to do. Just get me there!