Standing at the Edge of the Inferno: A Veteran Recalls Fighting Fire With Fire : Wildfires: Despite advanced techniques and tactics, those who fight California’s wildfires stare terror in the face.

PALO ALTO —  With the summer sun, the wildfires have returned to the West. Sweat ran down my face and dripped off my nose as the radio announcer began to describe the first big fires of the year in Arizona and California.

My attention switched from the papers on my desk and focused on a small color photograph in my office that I took 10 years ago. It’s a midnight photograph of a firefighting crew standing on a ridge; the fire burning in the canyon below lends the night an apocalyptic brightness. We look like a group of people waiting for entry through the gates of hell. The radio announcer finished her story by eulogizing the firefighters who died in Arizona.

I thought about how easily it could happen to anyone facing a wildfire’s wall of smoke, ash and flames. Firefighting has been described as long periods of boredom, interspersed with moments of sheer terror. Despite the development of one of the world’s finest firefighting organizations, when the wildfires start to burn in California, those moments of terror can turn into hours, days or weeks. You recall the significant moments. The rest seem to vanish into the haze until a fellow firefighter reminds you of a shared experience.

My first season as a firefighter was also my most terrifying. I remember chasing wildfires through subdivisions, only to be chased myself by the flames when the winds changed. The wind-driven fires often moved faster than our fire engine. One moment the streets of homes would be safe, the next, every house would be threatened.

At one point, our engine was protecting a house from the advancing fire. I was waiting on the end of a hose line as the wind blew the heavy smoke and the heat of the fire straight at us. Although I couldn’t see the fire through the smoke, I could hear it burning toward us. I couldn’t even see the fire engine--even though I knew it was less than 100 feet away. The hose line literally became my umbilical chord, my lifeline to our engine. To communicate, we sent runners up and down the hose line.

Suddenly alone, panic-stricken, I wanted to drop the nozzle and run, but I didn’t know which way to go. Like an apparition, a veteran firefighter emerged through the smoke. His presence and steady voice reassured me. We stood our ground and saved the house. Then we moved on.

Another time, I struggled to pull a hose line through brush and up a rocky hill to halt the advance of a wildfire through a subdivision. As I neared exhaustion, suddenly the hose line seemed to be floating. I looked back and saw homeowners had fallen in line behind us to help advance the hose. Beside us, neighborhood children pounced on every ember. The fire was quickly extinguished on that flank.

On the other side of the subdivision we were not so lucky. In 30 minutes, 16 homes were lost. Few things are more frustrating than driving up a street with one fire engine and finding three houses on fire. Before we could get set up, three more houses were aflame. All six had shake roofs or dry brush growing right up to their sides. Shake roofs are akin to covering a roof with kindling; uncleared brush close to a house the equivalent of surrounding it with Roman candles.

We began concentrating on two unburned homes. There was a swimming pool next door, but we couldn’t get close enough to use it for a water supply. One of the houses caught fire and the roof on the other started to smolder. We were running out of water. Someone shouted, “Incoming!” From above, a helicopter dropped a bucketful of water, quenching the flames. It dipped down, refilled the bucket out of the swimming pool and continued its airborne campaign.

But down the street, the fire raged. A Eucalyptus grove caught on fire. Suddenly, a tree-lined street became a tunnel of flames shooting more than 100 feet in the air.

The only thing that wasn’t burning was the asphalt pavement, but it was shimmering under the heat waves. We moved our engine out quickly. But as we looked back, we saw a woman standing in the middle of the road and ran back for her. She was in shock, mumbling about her car. We told her not to panic and eased her down the street, surrounded by flames.

The smoke and fire were getting close. Suddenly, a contractor appeared with his bulldozer. He was digging a foundation in the area and wanted to know if we could use his help. We didn’t know whether to kiss him or his bulldozer. He agreed to cut a line through a field of brush, creating a firebreak. Desperate, we decided to fight fire with fire and started a backfire. Then, while we patrolled the fire line, we stood, awe-struck by the incredible intensity and destructive beauty of the two fires as they burned together. Overhead, air tankers and helicopters circled, ready to assist us in case our hastily constructed fire line was threatened.

Our pace slowed after we stopped the fires’ advance. I realized that every time I blinked, my eyes hurt more. In the fire engine’s rear-view mirror I could see my eyes were almost swollen shut. I looked at the rest of our crew --their eyes all looked the same. We washed the soot, ash and dirt from one another’s eyes and, exhausted, climbed back on the engine and begin to patrol--looking for hot spots and dreaming about showers, food and sleeping, after spending 36 hours on the line.

In the middle of the destruction we found one house unscathed. It was constructed of fire resistant materials and was surrounded by a wide band of fire resistant vegetation. “I don’t know if I would be embarrassed or proud if I owned that place,” a fellow firefighter said.

Generally, you don’t realize the devastating impact of a wildfire until after the weather settles, the fires ebb and the smoke begins to clear. Then, as residents are let back into the area, the horror hits. How do you help people who have lost everything? How do you help people who have lost generations of photographs, mementos and property? Next to being burned, the most horrifying aspect of catastrophic fires is watching home owners sift through the ashes. No matter how many fires, you never get used to seeing it.

As the news report ended, I realized that I’m no longer the rookie firefighter I was a decade ago, when that snapshot was taken. I’m rarely overwhelmed by the cataclysmic nature of wildfires. I’ve become one of those calming voices who can reassure his comrades through the smoke and flames.

Some would call me a veteran. But thinking back over the destruction I have seen; how helpless I have felt trying to stop those fires; remembering that two of the firefighters I fought wildfires with during my first season have died, I only feel lucky.