CHELAN — Dark smoke roiled off the hills on Lake Chelan’s south shore Friday as four Snohomish County firefighters dug up wild grass, cut back tree limbs and cleared brush around upscale homes with sweeping views of blue water and rugged ridges.
Finished with one line, the crew hiked up the hillside’s loose, rocky soil. They climbed over a wood post fence and past a couple stout evergreens, reaching a dirt road above.
“We can anchor here and come down by the fence,” one said.
After a brief, matter-of-fact conversation, they started digging a foot-wide firebreak with Pulaskis and shovels. The line is wide enough to stop a ground fire spreading when the wind isn’t blowing.
Fire authorities managing the Chelan Complex fires expect the flames to reach the homes, most of which appeared to have been well prepared by owners. Firefighters hope they can save all or at least most of them.
“A lot of what we do is preparing for the worst case scenario,” said Chief Travis Hots of Snohomish County fire district 21 and 22. He is heading up the county’s firefighter task force sent to battle blazes consuming vast tracts of Central Washington.
The hot, dry and windy conditions here mean a fire can quickly turn on firefighters, as it did in the Twisp River canyon on Wednesday. Three federal firefighters died and a fourth is critically injured at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center.
Fearing the fire would sweep through nearby Twisp, fire managers pulled crews off other assignments on the multiple wildfires around Chelan and sent them racing north to save the little town.
Snohomish County units were among them.
The reality that three firefighters had died weighed on their minds during the drive.
“Going up to Twisp, knowing what had happened and seeing the black smoke coming off the canyon’s hills, I was tense,” Hots said. “These guys are my responsibility. They’ve got families counting on them to come home.”
It’s a responsibility he’s learned in his more than 20 years as a firefighter, including from the tests he faced in March 2014, when he played a key role in helping the community respond to the mudslide at Oso.
Walking away from a blaze can be hard for a firefighter to do, he said. “When you have to disengage, you feel bad about that.” Especially if a home is lost.
But, he said, he doesn’t want to ever have to say, “I stayed engaged, and ended up getting someone killed.”
Like everyone on the fire lines around the multiple wildfires burning more than 252 square miles in Washington, Hots is careful, even with something as mundane as parking his truck while he checks up on the crews under his command.
“You always back in when you park,” he said. “That way, if things get bad, you can just jump in your rig and go.”
Things can turn bad in the span of a single breath.
Driving on the road hugging Lake Chelan’s south shore, Hots pointed up at the burned out hillside above.
“See that white ash” and cracked rocks, he said.
The ash covered the steep slope like flour. It was what remained of the slope’s underbrush. The tree trunks still stood, charred black.
It takes extreme heat to do that, he said. “That’s the kind of heat that would incinerate us.”
The flames, heat and smoke aren’t the only dangers to contend with, though. Most fires in Snohomish County are out in a few minutes or hours. Hots and many of his firefighters have already been here for more than a week, working 18 hour days. When the Twisp River Fire exploded Wednesday, they worked straight through to Thursday afternoon in hot, arid conditions.
Firefighters have to constantly drink water. Perhaps most important, they have to take care of their feet or risk getting debilitating blisters.
And walking through this scrub brush country, they have to watch out for rattlesnakes, which are a real danger on the east side of the Cascade Range, Monroe firefighter Clay Mattern said, as he held up his smartphone.
“Look at that,” he said, pointing to a picture of a woman standing beside a 9-foot rattlesnake he and other firefighters found in a barn last year while fighting the Carlton Complex blaze.
Even bees can be a distraction. They are desperate for water, so when crews fill up their tenders and trucks, bees often swarm, Hots said. “You can’t even focus on what you’re doing, because you’re swatting at bees.”
And then there are killer trees — partially burned timber that can easily topple onto firefighters below. Crews mark hazardous trees with bright orange tape printed with “KILLER TREE” and skulls and crossbones symbols. Follow-on crews then cut them down.
“There’s just all sorts of hazards here that want to kill you,” Hots said.
Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.
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