sizzling my way across the west... was 106 all the way to twin falls, idaho. made it to yellowstone and cooled my heels in the Madison River, a spectacular hatch of giant mayflies going on, they are bigger than any fly i have ever tied, i will have to retool to mimic them. catch and release actually makes sense to me now, so few places like this left...before i considered it with disdain, as i love fresh trout. My feeling is that if you drive down a riverside road and your windshield is smeared, the watershed is healthy.
anyway, i was trapped with either listening to Rush today or listening to the latest bonnie raitt cd for the 12,000 time. I gave into rush as an epinephrin source. He went on the usual rant about the economic crash of 2008 being obama's fault, etc. but he had a whole bunch of whining that sure sounded like he is almost conceding the 2014 midterm House election to the democrats.
Found an NPR discussion about the hotshot crew. it sort of sounds like the outwash from a thunderhead may have reversed their winds... but that is a phenomenon that every fireman knows about... if you see a thunderhead approaching from the red side of the fireline, time to pull back, and those guys are used to thunderheads this time of year... guaranteed erratic winds under and near them. I bet the fire behavior analyst and fire weather specialist on that fire feel about 2 inches tall about now. And if they were doing their job, then it would be a safety officer that will probably take the fall. Mostly because there is enough redundancy to nearly eliminate human error in such situations... i imagine they will release preliminary findings in a few days. I don't quite understand why there wasn't a safety officer if they were out in front in a dangerous situation.. but there was no cooked safety officer so something was amiss. Normally when a fatality occurs, all personnel are replaced on the division with fresh troops to minimize emotional suffering... when you walk back to the fireline and start again, there is no avoiding walking past the burned over safety zone.
When i was doing it, it wasn't so much of an interagency thing, the forest service usually ran most of the show, but budget cutting has spread the load to other agencies as well, such as the Prescott Fire Department, whose personnel were lost. Normally i would blame part of it on inexperience, but clearly it was a top-notch crew... an epically sad situation.
Dang, i very rarely drink coffee, i guess it got me into campfire story mood.
