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oak. Gambel oak has the ability to retain moisture. It may look like it has burned, but there can still be a lot of fuel left in a Gambel oak.”
    â€œYou’ve read the report?”
    â€œYeah. It’s a bunch of crap.”
    â€œIt says that if the crew had dropped their packs they could have outrun the flames.”
    â€œThat’s a fucking lie. First of all, nobody drops their pack. Everything you need is inside. Your instinct is to hold on to it. The wind was forty miles an hour, the fire’s rate of spread was eighteen miles an hour, the slope was sixty degrees, the flames were one hundred feet tall.” Mike looked up at me as he rattled off his figures. He was very precise and sure of himself, and I was convinced. A narrow beam of sunlight had made its way through the closed curtains and across the room. It tapped Mike on the shoulder and he moved his chair to get away from it. “Fire moves faster uphill than down, people don’t,” he said. “The firefighters are also getting criticized for not deploying their shelters. You read that, too?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œNobody is going to take the time to drop their pack or get into their shake-and-bake when a fire is breathing down their neck. The pucker factor is too high. Your instinct is to run, but there’s no way anybody could have outrun that blaze. It blew up too fast and hot. The heat killed the hotshots before the fire did. It seared their lungs. Now the Forest Service and the BLM are trying to cover their asses. It’s easy to blame the hotshots; they’re dead.
    â€œBut the really bad decisions were made higher up. They’re criticizing Ramona because she didn’t see the blowup, but where the hell was the aerial surveillance? The Forest Service’s own meteorologist knew the cold front was moving in, but they never told us. We were getting our weather reports from the weather channel. Many of the hotshots had never fought a Gambel oak fire before. We were helicoptered to Thunder Mountain in the morning with no briefing. A couple of years ago there was a Gambel oak fire in Lone Ridge, Colorado. The crew boss, who’d lost three of his crew on that fire, prepared a report on the special properties of Gambel oak, but the Forest Service stuck it on a shelf and never showed it to a single firefighter. These were situations that shout watch out, but the Forest Service ignored them.” He picked up his pencil again and began moving it across the page with a quick, sharp motion.
    â€œWhy did the Forest Service ignore the dangers of the situation?”
    â€œBecause too many fires were burning then and resources were stretched thin. Because people are moving near wilderness areas and they expect the government to protect their houses. Because a homeowner will bitch to a congressman, but a tree won’t. Nobody’s house is worth risking a firefighter’s life for. Nobody’s. If this goes to court and you need somebody to testify for you, I’ll do it.”
    â€œThanks,” I said. Mike also had poetry in his speech. I guess that’s what you’d expect from a job that deals with life and death. He was articulate and angry, a mixture of precision and passion. The ability to reel off facts and numbers would make him a good witness for me, maybe even an expert witness, but the government’s lawyer would be likely to poke at the cinders of his anger until they exploded.
    â€œThis case may never go to court; Eric doesn’t want to sue. He feels that conditions were so bad that day that what happened was unavoidable.”
    â€œYeah, well, it makes it easier for him to accept Joni’s death if he thinks it was an act of God. But he was a firefighter and he knows better. He’ll change his mind when he gets to the site. A lot of firefighters don’t want to get involved because they’re afraid of losing their jobs. Me, I’ve got nothing to lose.