A Sudden Little Fire and a View from the SEAT

Single-engine air tanker drops retardant at the Horse Park Fire
in southwestern Colorado on May 28, 2018.

I was just about to make the turn to the post office at 9 a.m. on Saturday, June 2, when my cell phone rang, and suddenly I was a volunteer fireman again.

A little blaze had popped up a few miles from town, possibly caused by lighting three days previously, but so far no one is saying so officially.

We got one brush truck with three volunteers as close to it as we could by driving through pasture land — the fire was nearby on national forest. A colleague and I were just tightening our bootlaces preparatory to walking up there and scouting it when the Forest Service arrived — in force.

There were command vehicles, wildland fire engines — and here came a line of crew buggies, which turned out to be the Twin Peaks Initial Attack crew, normally based in Utah. They formed up and started marching up the slope.

The Twin Peaks Initial Attack crew from Utah pauses to confer before climbing to the fire.

We looked at each other and said, "Well, it's their fire now." Our second brush truck was on-scene by then. We got a new mission, to visit all the homes nearby that had been put on pre-evacuation notice, look for potential problem areas, chat with the homeowners, eat cookies . . . and watch the air show.

Two Single-Engine Air Tankers (SEAT) arrived early, flying out of Fremont County airport. A four-engine tanker swooped down low. Two helicopters circled, dropping water. The fire already had a hashtag: #hardscrabblefire

Large air tanker dropping retardant (Ole Babock).

The bigger tankers can do the most, but it felt good to see the SEATs come in early.  The video above, found on the Fire Aviation blog, gives you a view from the pilot's seat.

Everyone is on edge about the drought, but the fast and heavy response stopped this little quickly.  Bullet, dodged. By five o'clock, some of the nearby residents who had decided to evacuate were coming home again.