The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

The Grizzly Bear Complex Fire mostly stopped growing a couple of weeks ago, but it still covers about 116 square miles of the Wenaha Tucannon Wilderness and surrounding lands. While many areas in the interior of the fire still smolder away, fire crews from around the country, and even the world, are keeping the perimeter from growing.

Last Thursday I got a close-up look at the efforts of some of the more than 1,000 people who were either fighting the fire then, or supporting the firefighting effort.

The logistical challenge of coordinating all of those people and the tasks they are performing became clear right away. It made the work they are doing all the more impressive.

I met up with Debbie Wilkins and Holly Hutchinson at about 8:30 in the morning at Fire District 3's new station just east of Dayton on Patit Road. Wilkins was serving as the Public Information Officer (PIO) for the team working in Branch I of the fire – its northernmost section. Hutchinson is a PIO trainee, and will soon be qualified to shepherd clueless reporters around on her own.

At the station I was handed pants and a shirt made of Nomex. (Nomex is a flame-resistant material made by DuPont.) I was also given a hardhat and leather gloves. This is all required apparel out on the fire line.

I also got a copy of the "Incident Action Plan" for Thursday, Sept. 3. This is a 36-page booklet filled with very small print that lists all of the lead personnel in each division and what their tasks are for the day. Lots of other information is included, such as logistic information, safety and risk assessment information, the weather forecast and a fire behavior forecast. In the back of the book is a blank medical incident report, just in case.

Wilkins drove us up Fourth Street and out North Touchet Road toward Bluewood ski area. In her regular job, Wilkins is a Forest Service Ranger who recently took over the ranger position in the Siuslaw National Forest, near the central Oregon coast. She's an Idaho native who has spent her career with the forest service working all around the western U.S.

Hutchinson grew up in Michigan and now works in the USFS office on Rose Street in Walla Walla. Her husband is a full-time forest service firefighter who is currently working in the Colville area.

Frustrated Hunters

About three miles before we reached Ski Bluewood, we passed two men standing next to a pickup and camper. One of them waived at us to stop. The road was closed to the public just beyond this point because of the fire, and they weren't happy.

"I have a bull (elk) tag that I've waited 15 years to get," one of the men said. "Now I can't get up to the camp to use it."

The elk archery season was to start Saturday. Wilkins patiently explained that with so many firefighters and support personnel using the roads, it was important for their safety and ability to do their jobs that the public, including hunters, be restricted from those roads.

"They're probably going to open that area up on Monday," she told the men. "No one else can go up there either, so the elk will all still be up there when you get there."

They didn't seem satisfied, but Hutchinson gave them the phone number for the office of the ranger overseeing the Umatilla forest and said he was the one who made road closure decisions. Then we proceeded south.

Noxious Weed Mitigation

A couple of miles farther, we came upon an equipment washing station. It was located at the Touchet Corrals area just before the Bluewood entrance. Two young men about 20 were sitting next to a trailer with a water tank and several pressure washers. Two small tents were set up nearby.

Brandon and Bryce are from Idaho and work for a company owned by Brandon's father that contracted with the Forest Service. They'd been there over a week. Their job was to wash down trucks and other large equipment before it headed out of the forest.

Wilkins explained that the purpose of the washdown was not to make the equipment look prettier, but to avoid transporting noxious weeds out of the area.

Base Camp at Bluewood

More than two dozen small tents of various colors lined the left side of the parking lot at Ski Bluewood. Additional tents were set up under the chairlift on the uphill side of the lodge building. This was the main staging area for the firefighting effort on the north side of the fire.

We met Jess Hancock, who was in charge of the camp. He is from Utah. Hancock explained that the owners of Bluewood had allowed the forest service to take over the lodge. "They've been really cooperative," he said.

Bluewood's generators were up and running, and a catering company from Pendleton was using the lodge kitchen to prepare meals for most of the forest service workers and contractors in Branch I.

In front of the lodge was a large area of tables and chairs under a big yellow awning. Meals were served here.

Hancock said that, at the Bluewood camp, supplies of gasoline and diesel fuel were available for vehicles and equipment working the north side of the fire. Several water tenders were also based here.

A supply area was set up on the side of the parking lot. Hancock said that Job Corps workers from South Dakota and Wisconsin were here working to sort and dispense supplies for the several hundred workers and contractors on the north side of the fire.

At Bluewood, we met the supervisor for "Division Yankee," Ken Wright, and a trainee working with him, Brandon Davis. They are both BLM employees, also from Utah.

Wright and Davis would lead us up the hill to the Godman Springs Campground, where another camp was set up. We drove back out the Bluewood access road, following Wright's pickup, and then turned left and headed into the mountains.

After about five miles, Wright stopped near a clearing and off to our right I could see billows of smoke – my first view of the actual fire. I took a few photos, but I would get much better ones later.

A couple of miles farther, we encountered a gray SUV coming the other way. "That's the Safety Officer," Wilkins said. "Good thing we have our hardhats with us."

The driver seemed put off when Wilkins told him she had a reporter with her, but we ended up talking to him for a couple of minutes anyway. He looked to be in his fifties, and he said he lives in North Carolina. He is a former firefighter for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

When asked if he missed being out on the fire line, he smiled and said, "Nope, I have my memories. That's all I need." Then he drove off in his comfortable car.

Godman Springs

At the Godman Springs Campground, the Forest Service owns a small group of cabins that are normally available for rental by the public. However, at the moment, they were wrapped in what looked like tinfoil.

The nearby campground had been the sleeping spot for many firefighters and other workers in the area. However, because the threat of the fire growing had diminished considerably, the camp was being broken down that day and these people were moving back down to Bluewood.

We were told that many of those folks were unhappy about having to move – they preferred the remoteness and all the wildlife in the area. But the difficult logistics of moving supplies here daily meant that the camp needed to broken down as soon as possible.

Some of the supplies that were already here were being moved to a makeshift storage area, in case conditions changed and personnel needed to return.

As we were leaving Godman, a firefighter offered to pose next to his truck, which was parked in front of a cabin wrapped in foil, right down to the handrails. It reminded me of a scene from photos I used to see of WPA workers in the woods during the depression – except for the tinfoil and the modern truck.

Firefighter Lunch

At Godman I was offered, and accepted, a firefighter sack lunch. It was a regular-sized lunch bag stuffed to the top with goodies. Back in the car, I grabbed a great-looking turkey sandwich from the top of the sack and ate it. It was pretty good.

Then, as I dug down farther, I found a little baggie with tomato and lettuce and a pouch of mayonnaise. Dang, that would have been a first-rate sandwich. Oh well. These lunches were designed to eat at a picnic table, not in a passenger seat.

Also in the sack were potato chips, an apple, trail mix, cookies, a nutrition bar and apple juice. There were a lot more calories there than I'd burned that morning, but I ate it all (except the loose tomato and lettuce).

Little Turkey

While I ate, we followed Wright and Davis on up the road to a spot called Little Turkey. As we approached, I saw a number of bright yellow shirts under hard hats on both sides of the road. And I heard chainsaws.

This was a hand crew clearing brush along the roadside. Wilkins said that USFS hand crews always work in groups of 20. We drove around a chainsaw and a couple of fuel cans that were sitting beside the road. Most of the workers waved as we went by.

Little Turkey consists of a small group of what are called "Residence Cabins." These are privately owned cabins that sit on forest service land. Their owners lease the land from USFS and build and maintain them themselves. All of the cabins here were wrapped.

A group of workers with chainsaws were busy here cutting and stacking downed wood. "These cabin owners are going to be happy when they see all the wood waiting for them," Wilkins said.

Two portable containers that looked like small swimming pools sat near the stacked wood, filled with water. There were no water sources here, but I was told the water tenders visited regularly.

Near one of the cabins at Little Turkey I met a group of loggers. Wilkins and Hutchinson told me that the forest service hires professional loggers to fall large trees that hand crews aren't trained to handle.

I spoke with two of the loggers, who said they were from Roseburg and Cottage Grove, Ore. "What a beautiful area this is," the Roseburg logger said. "We've never been up around here before."

They explained that they are private contractors who work for logging companies in central Oregon most of the year. But during the summer, they often contract with USFS to work on fires.

"It's a great deal for us," said the Roseburg logger, "because the forests where we normally work are often closed in the summer due to fire danger. It's good work and we get to see other parts of the country."

The Cottage Grove logger said he had seen wolf tracks the day before just up the road from where we stood. On his phone, he showed us a photo he took of a track in the dry dirt, with his own boot print next to it. The wolf track was as wide as his boot. "I didn't know their feet got that big," he said. "I saw cougar tracks crossing the road at a right angle to the wolf tracks," he added.

Viewing the Fire

We drove out of Little Turkey, and Wright and Davis led us to a ridge where we got a great view of the interior of the Grizzly Bear fire. Plumes of smoke rose throughout a broad area of forest below us. The terrain looked incredibly rugged.

I asked Wright if any firefighters were working down in that area and he said absolutely not. There are no structures or people living in that part of the National Forest, he said. "We just let it burn."

The goal of the firefighting effort is to hold the perimeters of the fire and keep them from moving. As of Tuesday, the Grizzly Bear Complex Fire had not grown for many days.

On the ridge, Hutchinson took photos of the smoke plumes on her iPad, and I did the same with my official Times news camera.

Back to Base

We said farewell to Wright and Davis and headed back to Dayton. We made the hour-long drive back past Godman, and then over a different set of roads than we came up on. The more easterly route led us to Skyline Drive and then Eckler Mountain Road, which dropped us down to Mustard and Fourth Streets in town.

Ken Graham

Bluewood base camp manager Jess Hancock (with gray cap and beard) talks to Job Corps workers at the supply unit in the Bluewood parking lot

Back at the Fire District 3 station, Wilkins and Hutchinson said they needed get to work on updating road closure notices. I changed back into my civilian clothes and then insisted that they come outside for a photo before I left.

My day on the fire lines left me with a couple of strong impressions. First, we not only live in a beautiful area here in the Touchet Valley, but just a few miles away is one of the most incredibly beautiful and rugged areas of mountains that can be found anywhere. And I rarely make the effort to go there. I promised myself I would come back sometime after the firefighters are gone.

I also have a great new respect for the complexity involved in fighting a wildfire. The coordination and communication effort required to identify the work needed to be done each day and assign it to the right people is immense. I can only imagine the additional effort required to recruit all of these workers and get them here on short notice.

And I thought I had a hard job running a three-person newspaper office.