By James A. Bond
For Carter County Times
On August 1, 24 sons and one daughter of Kentucky mustered in Lexington to deploy to Washington state for a two week detail fighting wildfires. I’m proud to say that I was fortunate enough to be one of them.
Every branch of the Kentucky Division of Forestry was represented, and to my knowledge that was a first in KDF history.
I was assigned to Charlie Squad, led by Jacob Bentley who is the Ranger for Floyd County, and it was a true honor and privilege to serve with him. The man is a natural born conservationist and outdoorsman, I never felt far away from home, and the things I learned from him were invaluable in my journey as an aspiring Ranger.
Our first few days in Washington consisted of a lot of travel and “hurry up and wait.” To quote my crew boss, “In this line of work, the only thing you know for certain is where you are at this exact moment.”
We were considered lend/lease, which meant we could be sent anywhere in the state. We thought that we were going to be fighting in Spokane, but they had enough resources there. We did get to witness the effect of the devastation while there.
We stayed in a small town called Cheney (chee-nee) and our hotel parking lot was filled with Washington plates, because at that point there were nearly 70,000 people displaced by evacuation orders, several of which had lost their homes and everything they had.
We were treated very well by the locals, and any time they saw our green jeans, they knew we were there to help. Some locals were even moved to tears when they learned that we traveled all the way from Kentucky.
I had never felt so much appreciation and heartache at the same time.
On the 5th, we finally got our assignment. We were being sent about two hours west of Spokane to work the Modrite Fire in the little town of Inchelium (inch-lum) on the Colville Indian Reservation.
The Colville Confederation consists of 12 tribes: Moses-Columbia, Okanogan, Nespelum, Sanpoil, Colville, Lakes, Nez Perce, Wenatchi, Methow, Chelan, Entiat, and Palus.
We were looking at over 50,000 acres of fire.
To say I was excited was an understatement. My biggest inspiration for this line of work came from my upbringing. My great uncle was once a Ranger for KDF, and he taught me to have an appreciation for the outdoors and love nature. He would always tell me stories of Simon Kenton and Daniel Boone and, most importantly, to respect Native American culture.
“Always be a friend to the Indians,” he’d said.
I wish he was still here so I could tell him about all this.
Knowing that the childhood dream of being adopted by a tribe was outside the realm of possibility, I could at least do my best to help them fight fires and save their homes. That’s an honor that no man can ever take from me, and I’ll wear that badge proudly.
My knees felt 33, but my heart was 10 again.
Our days were long, and tiring. The first week we were in camp, we didn’t see a blue sky once.
It was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen and the worst air I’d ever breathed. The mountains and trees in the distance were just silhouettes behind a shroud of smoke. You could stare directly at the sun without a squint; it was nothing more than a blood red pinhole in the sky.
The dirt was like talcum powder. We call it “moondust” because it’s so otherworldly. It really felt like walking on the surface of another planet. It got in everything, filled the air, and sometimes made it painful and uncomfortable to breathe.
Seeing whole swaths of ground that looked completely nuked was such an ominous feeling. The ground was nothing but dust and a thick layer of white ash, and the burned out stump holes looked like bomb craters.
But it was still beautiful.
Kentucky did a good job on the line.
They had us hold a road that was being pressed by a head fire. The division we were assigned to fully expected the fire to jump, even put in another dozer road beyond it because they were so sure it was going to jump, spot and spread.
Kentucky proved that wrong. We held it with man power, called in air support for water drops, and that dozer road was downgraded from a primary line to a contingency line.
It wasn’t all fun though. On the 10th, we were assigned to mop up a lot of the burned area when our crew had its first IWI (Incident Within an Incident).
Continues next week in part 2.
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