Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Tastes like burning
As our helicopter took off from the mountainside I held Joeja's hand so he wouldn't cry from fear. We flew over the plane wreckage and forest fire one last time before landing at the Cascade, Id., airport, marking the end of an epic three days.
It all began Thursday, when our editors told us to pack our bags immediately and make the four hour drive to Grangeville (accurately referred to as Strangeville) to cover a large forest fire that was making a run for dozens of mountain homes.
It's what Joeja and I had been waiting for all summer: playing dress up with fire clothes at a real forest fire. So we busted ass up to the Idaho panhandle, getting ever more excited as we approached and the sun was more and more obscured by thick smoke.
We pulled in to Grangeville, a town of 3,000 on the Camas Prairie and near nothing, at 8 p.m. knowing nobody in town and had to report and turnaround a story in two and a half hours. So we headed for the fire. After, um, not seeing a few road closure signs, we ended up high up on a gravel mountain road near the fire lines, parking in front of of a modest home with a trailer in the front yard that belonged to Floyd, a 70-year-old retired trucker who would be goddamed if a little fire scared him away from his home.
Close your eyes and think about northern Idaho and what you think people there look like. You just saw Floyd. Wearing cowboy boots, jeans with revolver-adorned belt buckle, a tattered blue shirt and a mesh hat, Floyd looked every bit the rugged mountain man I imagine he is. Just for good measure he had sideburns that flowed into a thin mustache (no beard) and a faded tattoo of a naked woman on a swing on his arm, which he pounded into his mailbox when asked if he lived there, saying, "This is my mailbox, this is my house and I ain't leaving!"
You see, the fire was awfully close to Floyd's and many other people's homes in that area and a voluntary evacuation was in place but, just as with many other natural disasters, people have an uncanny desire to be in their homes when they're destroyed and a lot of people in Floyd's hood stayed put.
From there it was on to a public meeting about the fire in a school gymnasium located just past the only stoplight in town. Mountain man beards and cowboy hats were in full effect as about 200 anxious residents got an update on firefighting efforts. After that it was file, eat (expense accounts are a thing of beauty and grace) and find a place to sleep, which proved tricky. Grangeville is not set up to deal with the huge influx of people the fire brought and, maybe for the first time ever, every hotel room was booked. We got lucky with a cancellation and slipped into a room at the Super 8. Joeja got outside spoon.
Up bright and early the next day, the goal was to get local flavor before heading out to the fire. The town was covered in a choking, smoky haze from the fire (Joe claimed no ill effects but I was coughing up shit for a day after getting back from fire). For any of my city-folk readers who have a rosy notion of small town America as a place where friendly locals invite you in for a cup of coffee and piece of freshly baked apple pie while Norman Rockwell paints the scene, disabuse yourself of that notion. Grangeville residents were, first and foremost, suspicious. If you say you're a journalist from Boise you might as well be introducing yourself as a pointy-headed intellectual from New York who believes in global warming and protecting the spotted owl.
Fortunately my boundless charm prevailed and Joeja and I thoroughly rocked the piss out of the day, exploring the social, political and economic aspects of the fire (Don't kid yourself, fire is far from all bad for these towns. Business was booming in Grangeville with all of the outsiders paying top dollar for food and lodging).
In a town where we had to use a satellite phone to stay in contact with the office transmitting my story proved mildly challenging and I ended up plugging in to the only working phone jack in the Super 8 conference room — right under the keg tap members of the Harley meet-up were using.
Then it was on to what one of my bosses unwittingly termed, Operation Bush Watch. Disappointly, it was a story about the president. So Joeja and I packed up the car and hit the road again, this time heading to the mountain town of McCall, Id., where W is rumored to be visiting next week.
The drive from Grangeville to McCall took us through the Salmon River Canyon at night which was, to understate it, creepy. There really is nothing there, save the occassional Bates Motel-looking lodging, and we pretty much assumed we were going to be ritualistically killed and eaten when we saw an adopt-a-highway sign that said "Yaweh 666 Warning Assembly." I looked it up and I still have no idea what the hell that sign was about.
While we were knocking out the Bush story, I got a call from my editor that I thought was a joke. She said a plane had crashed in a remote mountain area close to McCall, three people died and the wreck sparked a forest fire. It was true, so we knocked out Operation Bush Watch and drove down to bustling Cascade, Id. (pop. 997) to cover the plane crash.
"Wouldn't it be funny, if this trip ended with a chopper ride right to the fire lines," I joked to Joeja. This was clearly a joke as fire crews are notoriously tight with access (Joeja and I got just as close to the fire lines in Grangeville on our own as we did while escorted by a fire agency spokesman). The problem with covering this crash and fire was that it was so remote there was no road access and the only way to get to the fire was to have a chopper land you on the side of the mountain, which is how the fire fighters were getting there. After initially getting brushed off when we requested access to the crash site, we were told we could get up in a Cessna and fly over. Then I got a call from the PIO who said we would be getting a ride in a chopper and landing at the crash site. "Get your gear on and get to the airport in 15 minutes," he said.
The briefing before the flight did not inspire confidence. We were told what buttons to hit if the pilot passed out and where the fire extinguisher was in case of a fire. I quickly forgot all of this remembering only the crash position (chin down, bowels evacuated, or something like that).
Once in the chopper we were plugged into a headset where we could talk to the pilot and hear him talk to the other pilots in the air over the fire. This was a tiny airport so there was no control tower coordinating operations and there were four aircraft (three helicopters and a plane) over the crash site at very close quarters avoiding collisions seemed based largely on visual contact. The crash site wasn't particularly grisly unless you really thought about it - the plane hit so hard that all that was left was a couple scraps of metal and blackened ground - and the fire was burning in a forested area surrounded by an idyllic mountain meadow, providing a stark contrast. It was good for the story but I won't lie, it was mainly a fucking blast to ride in the chopper. We landed near the fire, dropped off some supplies and buzzed the treetops on the way back down to the airport.
Then it was back to Boise, to return as conquering heroes (delusions of grandeur: check).
It all began Thursday, when our editors told us to pack our bags immediately and make the four hour drive to Grangeville (accurately referred to as Strangeville) to cover a large forest fire that was making a run for dozens of mountain homes.
It's what Joeja and I had been waiting for all summer: playing dress up with fire clothes at a real forest fire. So we busted ass up to the Idaho panhandle, getting ever more excited as we approached and the sun was more and more obscured by thick smoke.
We pulled in to Grangeville, a town of 3,000 on the Camas Prairie and near nothing, at 8 p.m. knowing nobody in town and had to report and turnaround a story in two and a half hours. So we headed for the fire. After, um, not seeing a few road closure signs, we ended up high up on a gravel mountain road near the fire lines, parking in front of of a modest home with a trailer in the front yard that belonged to Floyd, a 70-year-old retired trucker who would be goddamed if a little fire scared him away from his home.
Close your eyes and think about northern Idaho and what you think people there look like. You just saw Floyd. Wearing cowboy boots, jeans with revolver-adorned belt buckle, a tattered blue shirt and a mesh hat, Floyd looked every bit the rugged mountain man I imagine he is. Just for good measure he had sideburns that flowed into a thin mustache (no beard) and a faded tattoo of a naked woman on a swing on his arm, which he pounded into his mailbox when asked if he lived there, saying, "This is my mailbox, this is my house and I ain't leaving!"
You see, the fire was awfully close to Floyd's and many other people's homes in that area and a voluntary evacuation was in place but, just as with many other natural disasters, people have an uncanny desire to be in their homes when they're destroyed and a lot of people in Floyd's hood stayed put.
From there it was on to a public meeting about the fire in a school gymnasium located just past the only stoplight in town. Mountain man beards and cowboy hats were in full effect as about 200 anxious residents got an update on firefighting efforts. After that it was file, eat (expense accounts are a thing of beauty and grace) and find a place to sleep, which proved tricky. Grangeville is not set up to deal with the huge influx of people the fire brought and, maybe for the first time ever, every hotel room was booked. We got lucky with a cancellation and slipped into a room at the Super 8. Joeja got outside spoon.
Up bright and early the next day, the goal was to get local flavor before heading out to the fire. The town was covered in a choking, smoky haze from the fire (Joe claimed no ill effects but I was coughing up shit for a day after getting back from fire). For any of my city-folk readers who have a rosy notion of small town America as a place where friendly locals invite you in for a cup of coffee and piece of freshly baked apple pie while Norman Rockwell paints the scene, disabuse yourself of that notion. Grangeville residents were, first and foremost, suspicious. If you say you're a journalist from Boise you might as well be introducing yourself as a pointy-headed intellectual from New York who believes in global warming and protecting the spotted owl.
Fortunately my boundless charm prevailed and Joeja and I thoroughly rocked the piss out of the day, exploring the social, political and economic aspects of the fire (Don't kid yourself, fire is far from all bad for these towns. Business was booming in Grangeville with all of the outsiders paying top dollar for food and lodging).
In a town where we had to use a satellite phone to stay in contact with the office transmitting my story proved mildly challenging and I ended up plugging in to the only working phone jack in the Super 8 conference room — right under the keg tap members of the Harley meet-up were using.
Then it was on to what one of my bosses unwittingly termed, Operation Bush Watch. Disappointly, it was a story about the president. So Joeja and I packed up the car and hit the road again, this time heading to the mountain town of McCall, Id., where W is rumored to be visiting next week.
The drive from Grangeville to McCall took us through the Salmon River Canyon at night which was, to understate it, creepy. There really is nothing there, save the occassional Bates Motel-looking lodging, and we pretty much assumed we were going to be ritualistically killed and eaten when we saw an adopt-a-highway sign that said "Yaweh 666 Warning Assembly." I looked it up and I still have no idea what the hell that sign was about.
While we were knocking out the Bush story, I got a call from my editor that I thought was a joke. She said a plane had crashed in a remote mountain area close to McCall, three people died and the wreck sparked a forest fire. It was true, so we knocked out Operation Bush Watch and drove down to bustling Cascade, Id. (pop. 997) to cover the plane crash.
"Wouldn't it be funny, if this trip ended with a chopper ride right to the fire lines," I joked to Joeja. This was clearly a joke as fire crews are notoriously tight with access (Joeja and I got just as close to the fire lines in Grangeville on our own as we did while escorted by a fire agency spokesman). The problem with covering this crash and fire was that it was so remote there was no road access and the only way to get to the fire was to have a chopper land you on the side of the mountain, which is how the fire fighters were getting there. After initially getting brushed off when we requested access to the crash site, we were told we could get up in a Cessna and fly over. Then I got a call from the PIO who said we would be getting a ride in a chopper and landing at the crash site. "Get your gear on and get to the airport in 15 minutes," he said.
The briefing before the flight did not inspire confidence. We were told what buttons to hit if the pilot passed out and where the fire extinguisher was in case of a fire. I quickly forgot all of this remembering only the crash position (chin down, bowels evacuated, or something like that).
Once in the chopper we were plugged into a headset where we could talk to the pilot and hear him talk to the other pilots in the air over the fire. This was a tiny airport so there was no control tower coordinating operations and there were four aircraft (three helicopters and a plane) over the crash site at very close quarters avoiding collisions seemed based largely on visual contact. The crash site wasn't particularly grisly unless you really thought about it - the plane hit so hard that all that was left was a couple scraps of metal and blackened ground - and the fire was burning in a forested area surrounded by an idyllic mountain meadow, providing a stark contrast. It was good for the story but I won't lie, it was mainly a fucking blast to ride in the chopper. We landed near the fire, dropped off some supplies and buzzed the treetops on the way back down to the airport.
Then it was back to Boise, to return as conquering heroes (delusions of grandeur: check).
# posted by Druz @ 12:53 AM 
