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After
the COs had extinguished one fire, Abram J. Thiessen and his fire
crew cleaned up the pumps, shovels, and hoses.
“In
the process of collecting the equipment we crisscrossed big areas
of the burned out forest that now was a giant muddle of soot blackened
trees lying in every direction. At one point we took a short-cut
through the jumble but mostly over, sometimes as high as ten feet
[3 m] above the ground. As a matter of fact it would have been
literally impossible to walk on the ground; so we walked along
on top of the fallen trees. It was quite an experience to travel
about one mile [1.6 km] without touching ground.” [ASM ,
33-47]
It
was on this fire that Thiessen's crew had been so far from the lake
that their pump could not supply water at more than a trickle. The
situation at another fire he fought was much different.
“The
third fire I went to was only about ten miles [16 km] from camp
and had been started by sparks from a lumbering operation. As
it was on fairly level ground as far as BC is concerned, the lumber
company had as soon as they had been able, bull-dozed a wide fire-guard
completely around the fire and our job was to now patrol the guard
and pump water on to the fire and keep it as cool as possible.
Whereas at the first fire we were handicapped by lack of sufficient
water pressure to be really effective, now we had so much pressure
that it took two and sometimes three men to control the water
hose. For one whole day and well into the night I was at the nozzle
directing the stream of water and could reach as high as 40 or
50 feet, such was the force of the pressure. We never saw the
pumping equipment but could hear it all the time. At first I thought
the noise came from a big Caterpillar but later was told it was
a one cylinder power-saw which was able to be converted to serve
as a water pump and was made in Germany. At any rate it delivered
water at a rate commensurate with the noise that it made.” [ASM,
33-47]
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| The aftermath of a fire: a burned out landscape where
the COs later worked at clearing snags. |
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