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English > Community > Interviews > Craig Thomas
This interview took place on August 9, 2001. Craig Thomas generously donated his time and thoughts to ThinkQuest Team C0119184's Josh Schwartzman, and the team greatly thanks him. All photos found on this page are copyright Craig Thomas. Larger pictures may be found in the photo gallery, here.
RealPlayer is required to view/listen to the audio and video clips of the interview. The whole interview is available for listening to, but only video excerpts are available because of file sizes.
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Quick Reading/Listening/Viewing Guide:
Text:
(Please note, that to understand some of the information, you may have to read earlier parts of the interview. Also, the description here is only part of what is contained in each section of the interview)
:: Introduction
:: Working on Lost Trail, and the machinery that Craig uses
:: Lost Trail and Machinery continued
:: The first experience Craig had with the fires of 2000 while he was working
:: Building an extremely maneuverable water tanker (Proteus Fire Master), for fire fighting
:: Proteus continued, and personnel management
:: The fire camp "city" at Bill Grasser's
:: Discontent with the "fire fighting"
:: August 6, Black Sunday
:: New leadership at Lost Trail
:: Hailing the Helicopter
:: Saving Bill Grasser's House
:: The Wall of Flame & Bill Grasser
:: The Sula Firestorm: a war zone
Video:
:: August 6, Black Sunday [3:44 min]
:: Hailing the Helicopter [4:32 min]
:: The Wall of Flame: The Sula Firestorm [1:29 min]
Audio:
The Whole Interview, Part 1 [29:28 min]
The Whole Interview, Part 2 [12:58 min]
:: Introduction [1:00 min]
:: Working on Lost Trail, and the machinery that Craig uses [3:23 min]
:: Lost Trail and Machinery continued [4:59 min]
:: The first experience Craig had with the fires of 2000 while he was working [2:45 min]
:: Building an extremely maneuverable water tanker (Proteus Fire Master), for fire fighting [3:45 min]
:: Proteus continued, and personnel management [3:01 min]
:: The fire camp "city" at Bill Grasser's [2:22 min]
:: Discontent with the "fire fighting" [2:35 min]
:: August 6, Black Sunday [3:39 min]
:: New leadership at Lost Trail [1:59 min]
:: Hailing the Helicopter [5:23 min]
:: Saving Bill Grasser's House [4:01 min]
:: The Wall of Flame & Bill Grasser [2:12 min]
:: The Sula Firestorm: a war zone [1:27 min]
 Listen
[1:00 min]
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Introduction | top of the page
Josh: Introduce yourself, and tell us what you do, and what you did last year.
The Lost Trail Ski Area parking lot and and lodge, from above
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Craig: Sure, my name's Craig Thomas, and I live in the Bitterroot Valley, I've lived here - let's see, we poured concrete here in 1978, and have been in the area since 1966. I spent 27 years with one logging company, was a resource manager for another logging company, and since 1993, we have had our own consulting firm, as well as log brokerage and saw mill. Last summer, at Lost Trail [ski area],
I was contracted by Bill Grasser [the owner of Lost Trail] to assist in the expansion of the Lost Trail ski area. When the fires came, we were in the midst of our activities in clearing the trails and
helping pour concrete and doing all kinds of different things, when all of a sudden, ash literally began to fall out of the sky. It was hot, it was dry. We knew all about that, but it was maybe more than we had anticipated than what occurred.
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Listen
[3:23 min]
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Working on Lost Trail, and the machinery that Craig uses | top of the page
J: What were you originally doing - you were talking about pouring concrete - what exactly did you have to do, and I was also wanting to know a little bit about the machinery that you used?
C: Ok, the last time Bill did an expansion, the Forest Service offered it as a timber sale, and they had conventional logging operation - actually, there was a mechanical side, but they addressed the needs of the ski area in a logging manner. When they put this sale up, I asked the Forest Service as well as Bill, not to put it up as a timber sale, but to put it up as a recreational enhancement, because that's what it was for. The outcome is to improve the ski area, not just to go out and log a bunch of trees.
When you're logging stuff, it's primarily an economic activity. Mills are considered as converting facilities, and what they do is convert wood into cash. This forces the logger, who is doing the work - he's under a set condition, a set price, and he must convert his activities to cash. You may miss some of the more important activities that need to occur on the ground. Particularly, in this area, we needed to feather the runways, and we didn't want to disturb the soil a great deal,
The Timco Feller/Buncher
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so we used different equipment than they had used in the past.
On this particular area, we used a cut-to-link, or a feller/buncher in the woods, depending upon the size of timber, and what we were trying to accomplish. A cut-to-link system, is a large shovel, which would be, let's see how would I describe this… If you're driving down the road, and you see a backhoe, digging alongside the road, this would be approximately what this machine is, it is 230 horsepower, it is a story and a half high, and weighs about 60,000 pounds, and moves 1.5-3 miles an hour. It can rotate completely around itself. It has an enormous arm,
and it can reach over to the tree, and hold on the tree, and cut the tree off, and then slide it through an apparatus which de-limbs it, measures it to length, stops at certain diameters, certain lengths, cuts off a segment of the tree, a log, and it falls in a pile.
You can separate them into different size piles, and the brush is laid into a nice pile in front of you. That would be a cut-to-link system. If we were using the feller/buncher, what is basically does, is it has a rotating disc. The particular unit that we used up there, have what they call a hot saw. It has a disc that's about 48-52 inches in diameter, it is rotating at a high speed, and it's like a handheld circle saw, only you have 260 horsepower and a steel arm holding it. Kind of an Arnold Schwarzenegger thing, you know.
What you do, is you go over, and you cut the tree off, and then you grasp it, with the fingers above. The tree is actually severed from the stump, in an upright position, unattached to anything, and unheld by anything. Then the operator grasps the tree, and takes it and puts in a pile, depending on size, and various other reasons. It's a very interesting machine, that could cut, with a good operator, and a reasonable timber- something that was like 18 inches on the stump- a good operator could cut between six and eight hundred trees a day.
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Listen
[4:59 min]
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Lost Trail and Machinery continued | top of the page
J: How is that compared to conventional [logging methods]?
C: Well, an average sawyer, if he was to cut 100 trees in a day, he would be doing a yeomen's amount of work- really tough. You're working in these hot [conditions], and up there [at Lost Trail], the highest elevation we worked was 8200 feet, and there were times when the humidity was 6%, and the temperature was 95 degrees. Well, a man doesn't do a lot in a day like that. This has inner-coolers and turbochargers and air conditioning and stereos and all kinds of things, and it really doesn't affect the
operator very much. If the oil gets hot, they have limiting switches that will slow the machine down so it will cool, the particular machine that was there was a Timco, and they just really don't get very hot. They're very nice machines. Also, some interesting features of that particular machine, is it levels itself. So, as the operator is going up the hill, he sits level, so the tracks may be pointed up the hill at 50%, for instance, and
the machine is bent at the base, primarily, and the operator can sit level. Now if he pushes the wrong button, he can sit the other way too- that probably wouldn't be so good, but normally, that makes it so that you can swing around, and move the tree and place it where you want. It's just like a really strong man with a saw in his hand to cut the tree off in, and set it in position. What we were doing, was cutting runs, and I believe the
longest run was 7400 feet long, I think. We went from 6800 feet to 6200 feet [in elevation], and a ski run is a clearcut- it's serpentine, winds down through the timber, through the rocks, and the different little jumps and bumps and those kind of things, and we were clearing all the vegetative matter from it. That included the elder brush, which is between the size of your thumb to the size of your arm, and is really nasty to cut down with a chain saw. With this machine, a hot saw, the
Timco, you would have this circulating saw, that's larger than this table [we were sitting at a table that had a diameter of about four feet],
The Timco, hauling logs off the mountain
Another picture of the Timco Feller/Buncher
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two inches thick, runs continuously, and you just mow up the hillside like a barber cutting your hair. That's just about what happens, and it cuts down all of the stuff, and pretty much pushes it out of the way and piles it in a pile. Then, we would come along and in the more difficult runs, we used the feller/buncher to fall the trees, accumulate them by size, push the brush slightly to the side, and have an in-woods processing unit come behind them. It can also fall the trees, but since the little timber tends to make it throw the chain, we weren't using it- we were using the hot saw.
It [the feller/buncher] was just like a chain saw, and if the little fibers or the little trees the size of your thumb, or the size of your wrist, will get behind the chain and throw the chain off,
so the operator stops
the machine, unlatches all the safety devices, climbs out, puts the chain back on, gets back in, and he doesn't really get a lot done. The hot saw is over there wacking and stacking, we call 'em, as it just mows them down like an enormous barber clipper. This person went along, and he picked the logs from the piles, de-limbed them, made them to length, and set them in a pile. We used pieces of timber that were as small as 4.5 inches on the small end, nine feet long. We shipped those for 2 x 4's. Normally, that would be considered
waste, but we were trying to recover as much funds as we could in a reasonable manner. We wanted to remove the brush from the hillside so you weren't
trying to ski through all of this stuff. Then we came along later, and we piled the brush, and that made the run. To move the logs off the hill, we used a machine called a forwarder, which is basically a very heavy duty log truck, and this particular machine has a rotating cab on the front so the man could continuously rotate 360 degrees in a circle. It looks kind of like a centipede- it has eight wheels, and each pair of wheels, the chain that goes around it, (you can see the picture, Proteus, we called it). This machine can go up and down the hill at up to 9.8 miles per hour, and it can
haul 20 tons of logs- that's 40,000 pounds- that's about as much as a semi [truck] that you would see down the road would haul.
This hauls this material down up to 60% slopes- a 60% slope is extremely difficult to walk up, or down. This machine is tremendously capable- you can't go sidehill - you must go [straight] up or down the hill.
So, when we packed all of this stuff down to wherever we wanted it, and then we came in with log trucks and hauled it off, and turned it into cash.
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Listen
[2:45 min]
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The first experience Craig had with the fires of 2000 while he was working | top of the page
J: What was the first experience you had with the fire?
C: The smoke that you could see from a long ways off.
J: Did it affect anything- what was the first thing that affected you working on the ski hill?
C: Our situation was significantly different than other folks, because we were working for the Forest Service, and we were working for a recreation thing, and it was different- basically, we weren't by the fire until the fire crews started showing up. Bill [Grasser] leases the ground on a long-term lease from the Forest Service. So, when the fires began, he offered his lodge, and the parking area, and all his facilities to the Forest Service, to be used as a fire camp. It's an excellent location- good for helicopters, and lots of room, and it's a clean area, and it has nice gravel- it's a good spot. Level place on the face of the earth, and
it was between Idaho and Montana, and close to the fires that were approaching. They were coming from the wilderness in Idaho. The first thing that really affected us was crews started showing up- there's all these people in helicopters and all kinds of things, and we're kind of blinking our eyes, and looking around, and seeing that there's a city developing at a high rate of speed in very close proximity to our activities. In fact, we would have to move some of our materials so that they could park another bus, or another fuel truck, or the helicopter could be there, and drive past, and this kind of thing. But, we had continued with our harvesting
of the timber, moving the brush around to where we wanted, and we had progressed to the portion of pouring concrete for the towers.
Now, the towers are scattered in pretty much a straight line up and down the hill from the lower elevations to the upper elevations, surveyed in different distances, and you have to get concrete up on the hill. We found that with our machine, we could move it about between 1/3 and 1/5 the price of having it flown with helicopters, so we built a container for the back of the machine. Actually, we had one, that was built, but it didn't work out just perfect, so we built another one during, and around, and amongst the fire camps. When we were hauling concrete to the different poles, which is a really interesting activity, because when you get there to clean
the tank out, you had to open the lid and climb in there with a shovel, and shovel out the rest. Now concrete, when it sets up, creates its own heat, and it's really hot inside this tank when it's 95 degrees and less than 10% humidity.
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Listen
[3:45 min]
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Building an extremely maneuverable water tanker (Proteus Fire Master), for fire fighting | top of the page
J: I know I heard about you guys building another attachment, similar to the concrete attachment, but this was for holding water- how did you get the idea and how did it develop?
C: While we were working on the concrete tank, the Forest Service would frequently come by and ask us how come we were welding in this fire season- this kind of thing- so we were completing this tank. When we got pretty close to done, so that it was a recognizable item, and we set it on the forwarder (you just pick it up with a boom, set this on there, you can pick up about 10,000 pounds). This tank would hold about 5 cubic yards of concrete, and I forget the gallonage, but it's a big tank. When your normal fire truck, that you would see, in a city, drives up alongside this small tank on the forwarder, it is dwarfed. It looks really small. One of the
Forest Service walked by and said, "Wow, can you hold water in this thing?" The fires, at that time, are still burning in the wilderness, and it's a let burn policy, so we're just kind of watching this wall of flame and smoke, approach (because we're doing the natural thing). As it gets closer, everybody is kind of getting concerned, because they don't want to burn up Lost Trail. So, we finish pouring the concrete, and head off to Missoula. I actually went there an negotiated with Peterson Equipment, and they built this tank to the contractors, Scott Wilke, and Larry Wilburt's (WW) specifications. I added a couple of specifications myself- helicopter refueling bucket [being one of them]. We didn't built it until the Forest Service said that they would put it to work.
What happened, is I went down to the S.O., and Jack Kirkendall is there (he's the fire person on the supervisor's office), and he
The back of the Proteus Fire Master
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said I can't order it- we need to have one of the teams order it. So, we went back to Sula, and as the walls of flame are approaching at 11:23, the guys came out of their meeting, and they said we could go ahead and build this tank. So, I went by the supervisor's office, and told Kirkendall I'd be back in seven days with the tank. Now, this is a pretty major thing to be building in seven days. I went to Peterson Equipment, and Scott and I talked with Lonnie, who is basically a genius of metal and machinery- this guy is just amazing. Anyway, he converts our ideas and dreams, over the night, into a
CAD drawing, which was faxed to Liarson's in Spokane [Washington]- the stamped out and build the steel the way we wanted it. His partner, the financial person backing him, Larry Wilburt, who also runs the in woods processor machine, went to Spokane, and got the steel, brought it back to Peterson's equipment, and they assembled it (by welding, for the next six days- pretty much solid). We purchased the last BB4 pump, which is a standard Forest Service pump, that was available in the United States of America, and (we were really fortunate to get that) we got it to Peterson's Equipment, and we did all of this plumbing, and testing, and we painted it green, and on day eight, we had it back to Kirkendall's office.
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Listen
[3:01 min]
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Proteus continued, and personnel management | top of the page
Now, when a fire truck drove up alongside the concrete tank, it was dwarfed. When it drove up alongside this 3,000 gallon tank, that is
The Proteus Fire Master
Filling the water tank of Proteus
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helicopter refillable, and has foam, and is strong enough to push over trees, it's a really big thing, so it's a very impressive piece of equipment. We had a lot of good fortune with it. Now, the Forest Service at first, when fighting the fire, was getting established, and I believe, if I recall correctly, the Bitterroot was the last forest in the United States, to get a major fire team.
When you're last, you don't always get the best, because a lot of people are already divvied out to other things. They assemble these teams from, well, there were several folks from the BLM from Alaska, and there were people from Florida, and these people, a lot of them, have never seen one and other before. Although, there is a group that kind of goes around to these different fires and are frequently on different fires, but this was such a massive activity in the United States of America. They were strapped for personnel, and they would draw them together, to start this activity. In their planning process, this is an enormous activity. I used to work for Champion [Lumber], and I indirectly directed about 500 sawyers for cutting specifications and we
would log as many as 442 truckloads of logs [per day]. One year, I think it was 84 [1984], we booked and accomplished 442 truckloads a day, every day, for 200 days of the year.
Now this is a lot of stuff happening. This endeavor that the Forest Service was in, was significantly larger than this activity. So, their management problems, with people that are unaccustomed to working together, and with other people (their sawyers, and firecrew, and local residents that they have), aren't accomplished as working as a team. It takes a while to get a team started, so these folks had a tremendous job, of getting this all coordinated, and all of it sitting together. Meanwhile, this wall of fire was marching our direction. This is like heroic efforts- these people are really working hard. At first, it's easy to get very discouraged, because they're not out their putting the fire out. This is pretty much past putting the fire out. Basically, what is
happening in this case, where I was at, this year, was you had dug in, and you're trying to keep people alive, trying to keep people safe, and you're trying to keep their stuff from burning up. Not the forest stuff, their personal stuff- their car, and their house, and that kind of stuff. And they're moving horses around, and their moving cows around, and they're doing all kinds of stuff.
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Listen
[2:22 min]
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The fire camp "city" at Bill Grasser's | top of the page
It took about a week to get set up- that means, like starting the big camp, and they moved it from the Lost Trail ski area. They moved another one into Bill's [Glasser] ranch, just north of Sula, just north of the Forest Service station. They didn't have enough ground at their Service Station to put it in there- they moved it into 80 acres at Bill's place. Bill happened to be gone that day, and he kind of left me in charge, so he had a consultant working for him, and the Forest Service came up- Dave, the ID Team guy, from Alaska, came and and said, "Boy, is there a good place to camp?"
"Well, how about, there's two highway entrances, and three [the two words right here are indiscernible], we're at a creek, 80 acres of level ground, and a hayfield."
"Cool, this is good." So, when Bill gets back from Salmon [Idaho], we now have several semis [trucks], cook tents, pup tents- all over, equipment, fire pumpers, helicopters, and other stuff in his field, and he comes and he says, "What's going on over here in my hayfield, Thomas?"
"Well, I rented that to the Forest Service."
"Really, well, what are they doing there?"
"Oh, they're setting up a fire camp."
"Really?"
You've got light plants, all kinds [of stuff], I mean, this is a mobile city. So, we're kind of sitting around like a couple of chipmunks, and after working you butt off all day fighting this concrete, [and they decided] let's go over and eat- since it's his [Bill's] place (laughs)- sponge off the Forest Service. But, it was really neat watching the fire plans come out, and all of the different things. Now, this is a time while this Proteus machine's water tank is being built, and we're still pouring concrete. We had to haul the machine to town, and assemble it on there - that took a couple of days - and come back, and we're right in the middle of fighting fire.
We were welding on the concrete tank- there was actually ash [that] fell on the ground. There were piece of ash, the size of your finger fall on you and actually burn you. You frequently get burnt when you are welding, so it's not something that's unexpected, but how's it getting back here? [Craig point to the back of his neck].
J: (laughs)
C: You're kind of thrashing around, trying to put the this out, and it was pretty incredible.
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Listen
[2:35 min]
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Discontent with the "fire fighting" | top of the page
Now, there were a lot of folks, and myself included, were discouraged that there wasn't more activity occuring on the forest.
Because, you're first thought of a logger being as, "Let's put this out." Well, that's a little different from what had happened in the past. Since we were in structure protection mode, and public safety mode, we're not actively fighting the fire. We'd drawn lines back- we'd get so close to this house, we're going to protect this house. That was their strategy. For the size of the activity, that's a good strategy. Now, it would be nice to put it out on the hillside, so it doesn't get close to the house, but with the resources that they had, the manpower that they had. Leadership was a real problem, because everybody was on some fire someplace, so they were
all timed out, wore out, going home to rest a little bit and come back. So, there were a lot of things that didn't happen like a normal fire year.
Now, that lasted six teams- we had one team that set it up- they were there for four or five days. We had another team come in- they stayed a little while, and then, as the fire in the valley was changing, it was real easy to get tied up in your little spot, like I was at Lost Trail. There were lots of things happening there. It's burning, there was this stuff falling out of the sky, and then it's smoky, and you can see flames, and it's getting real enormous, and there's these clouds that go up like thunderheads. It's pretty easy to get wrapped up in your own thing. This team was moved to Blodgett, because the fires were coming out of the Selway Bitterroot, and
they were approaching the town of Hamilton- well, there's lots of people there. The urban interface goes right down into town, and there's lots of bio-mass there that's going to burn. They have to get their bodies over there, and organize this.
J: and Lost Trail is just this little ski area.
C: Yeah, right. You've got this little thing here- so, Lost Trail is dear to our heart, and we want to do this- it's really logical for the Forest Service to say, "Hey, we're going to pull this good team off, and we're going to pull them over here, and we're going to have to get set up at Hamilton, which they did. So, that set Lost Trail back, and we got a new team, and it takes about a day to figure out who's name is what, and they're kind of learning one another. You start get stuff moving in, and helicopters going in, and it gets so smoky that the helicopters can't fly- it was very hectic.
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Watch
[3:44 min]
Listen
[3:39 min]
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August 6, Black Sunday | top of the page
On the sixth of August, there is an event that happened at Sula- I think they called it Black Thursday [it was actually Black Sunday]. The fire camp there was overrun by the fire. Well, we have a wall of flame coming at us from the west, which is several miles wide, and the wind decided to blow that day. Well, so, if you've ever built a campfire, you blow on the paper to make the fire burn better, right? Well, God decided to call it Mariah, and get with this really big blowing thing.
So, it approached at (I wasn't there)- I did come home on that particular day, but you could see it from my house, 70 miles away, moving. You could watch the cloud move. Bill estimated, and other folks have estimated, that it came at them from 40 to 60 miles an hour. This is like standing out on a freeway, only having instead of cars driving by, a fire [is] coming at you. When the walls of flame [came at them], several of the folks there that I know well, and don't exaggerate things, said that the flames would be two to three times as high as the trees. The trees there are 100 to 130 feet tall. So, here, at 40 to 60 miles an hour, a couple three hundred feet high, comes this wall of flame. And I have some pictures from Rob Lewis, who was the hot saw operator,
who took some pictures of those things coming, and it was just literally overwhelming. It ripped down the cook tent, and blew it away, as well as tables and chairs- they were flying in the air. I personally do not have any pictures of those, but several of the folks that were there, said there were tables and chairs, and the tent flying literally in the air.
J: So, it's making all of its own wind.
C: Oh yeah, it's making its own wind. In fact, they put the helicopters on the ground then, because it was so rough, and airtac [air support for the planes] stopped flying, borate bombers [slurry bombers, or retardant planes] stopped flying- this is go under the cover and hide in the weeds, here comes the fire.
It burned from the 2 Percent Saddle, to above Bill's place, right at the highway station, and that would be like 10 miles, and it went across that in front, and the whole thing happened in about 20 minutes. It jumped a valley that was a half-mile wide, and started burning back at them from the other side, and so not only do you have it burning from this way, but weeds, grass, and other shrubbery around you is catching fire- these people are not going to forget this. The firestorm, several of the Forest Service folks who, basically are professional firefighters, said they had read about, heard about it, heard theories about it, but never had anybody really seen this kind of stuff happen. It was a really neat day.
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Listen
[1:59 min]
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New leadership at Lost Trail | top of the page
Now, that was before Proteus showed up, and Proteus came back- through a series of events, we had changed ID teams for the sixth time, a new leader that had came,
The Proteus Fire Master, putting out spot fires, and moving burning logs
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was a fellow named, who was name requested by Jack Kirkendall, from the Umqua [a National Forest in Oregon], he came, and his name was Dan Schindler. When this fellow had showed up, they had decided to save Lost Trail. Within 48 hours, he had a ring around, fire line around, his area of responsibility, and in seven days, there was no smoke in his quadrant of operation. He used a single helicopter for ferrying water, a helicopter for visuals, he used Proteus, a 550 John Deere Cat [Bulldozer], and about 80 firefighters, not counting overhead.
J: So, a little bit different from the operations before.
C: Yes, he came to either put it out, or burn it all up, in his words. He was a master at getting things done, and doing the right thing- he had uncanny skill of timing things right. He selected for one of field people, a fellow named Bruce Reid- he lives in Lewistown, Montana- he's from the BLM. He was absolutely, an expert at doing this. These two folks, teamed together, just did incredible things. Particularly in light of the circumstances they operating under- they didn't have a lot of [fire] hose, they didn't have very many tractors. All they had was one tractor, Proteus, a couple of fire trucks, this helicopter, and he had to make do with that. It was just incredible what those particular folks did.
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Watch
[4:32 min]
Listen
[5:23 min]
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Hailing the Helicopter | top of the page
J: I was wondering if you could tell a little bit about how you got that one helicopter?
C: Oh, (laughs). By now, Bill and I had become discouraged with some of the activities, and had asked some of the fire folks to just leave, because they weren't doing very much. Anyway, we said, if you're not going to fight the fire, would you please depart the area, and just go away, so, six helicopters, and, well, a bunch of other stuff, and a lot of people, and fire trucks, and all this left. So, when Schindler shows up there, he has no helicopter, and looks on the map, and says, "Well, this says that this is a helibase, Thomas, what's the deal?"
"Well, I ran them all off"
"Well, brilliant, just really brilliant" (laughs). So, he kind of chewed us out, rightfully so, because he could use the stuff. Now, about this time, Bill and I are discussing some strategy on where to go, and he had got the crew out on the hill. In difference to many other groups, he would come up and, there would be six people standing together, and they're going to make the team decisions. The second person in command was on the hill, pulling [fire] hose. Schindler was the guy in charge, and he was there, arranging things for the errand boy, and stuff- getting whatever they could, and supporting them in whatever manner they could. About this time, there is a 212 Bell helicopter, coming from Salmon [Idaho], going to Hamilton [Montana]. Well, Hamilton is actually not fogged in, but smoked in- there is an inversion, and that particular day,
you couldn't of lit [land] into Hamilton- you'd just fly there and come back. Schindler looks up, and sees the helicopter, and gets his radio out, and says, "Hey you, in the white helicopter, you, you, yeah, look down." So, this guy, apparently looks down- he was flying straight, well, all of a sudden the helicopter kind of does this kind of number [he makes a curvy path with his hand]. He looks down, and he [Schindler] says, "You, you, that's it, right, you, land, right here, right now. See me waving? Now, land in front of me." So, this guy hovers, and he lands down there, and he shuts it down, and Schindler goes over and, says, "You belong to me, you stay here, you get back in the helicopter, start up your radios, call your support crew, but do not start the engine, and do not leave." This guy is like, whoa, this was Fransisco, I don't know the gentleman's last name, but Fransisco was the name on his suit. Pretty soon, about an hour later, the crew shows up.
Then, Schindler is grilling Bill and I about, "Where did the helicopters, go get water?" Well, they flew off toward Idaho, and it took seven minutes for them to come back. Well, if I was running a logging job, and if you're not making every minute or so, you've got some kind of a problem. You might take up to three minutes to make a round, but you're hauling a heavy load- [with] this seven minute stuff, they're just going too far. And sometimes, they would come back, and they would not have any water, because they're picking out of a very shallow little pond, and it would pick up some sticks. In the bottom of the bucket, it has overlapping flaps, and it would get a stick in there, so when he picks it up, it has water. So, when he picks it up, but when he starts flying this way, the bucket is way behind him, and the helicopter pilot doesn't see the bucket
very well, and the water is draining out, because the stick is between the two flaps, and this is draining the bucket. So, when he gets to the fire, he lets it out, and the stick falls down- no water (laughs).
J: (laughs)- makes more fire-
C: Yeah, right, so you're like, "Shucks," so, back you go to get some more [water].
Well, Schindler rounded up two 6,000 gallon bladders, set them at an elevation that was much higher than any of the water in the water, took the fire trucks, which he was already paying for, each day. They couldn't get to the fire, because it's just coming out of the wilderness, on to the ski area, and they couldn't drive around on the ski area, anyway, so he had them go down and ferry water up to these bladders. The helicopter would fill from the bladder, and then go over and drop on the fire. Now, this is a perfect situation, because he's at the same elevation, so instead of having to a bunch of climbing and descending, he can just curve around the hillside, and he has filtered water. Schindler had the guys foam the water, and that's a retardant- it makes the fire fighting capabilities of
water about 7 to 15 times more effective, depending who you talk to, what kind of foam you have, and how good you are, and other things. So, Fransisco is having a great time- he is coming over to this nice, clear, big bucket of water, the bladder- picks it up, goes over here, drops it on the fire, and he was literally amazing.
I would say, it would be my estimate, from what was occurring before, and what Schindler was doing there, that he increased the productivity of the helicopter four to six times- that one helicopter was doing more than the others. By good management, and the pilot was very capable of course too, but he changed the situation around until it was very beneficial. In the meantime, we had this machine called Proteus, driving around on the hillside, and instead of the guys when they run out of water with their pumps, have to walk all the way off of the mountain to get water, we just show up, and fill their little backpack with water from Proteus. Then, it can go around, and with the bucket on the front, it can pick logs out of its way, and spray water off the boom, and it's a really handy thing. Anyway, with all those things, Schindler and Reid, in a couple three days, had everything just about taken care of.
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[4:01 min]
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Saving Bill Grasser's House | top of the page
J: I was wondering if I could hear about how Bill was trying to protect his house?
C: Oh yes, the day the fire camp got overrun. Let's see, three days before that, Bill and I came down to the house [after working at Lost Trail that day], and I'm staying him, because his daughter is concerned about him having a heart attack [just meaning he was very stressed out, not necessarily literally]. So, I'm kind of staying at the house,
Bill Grasser's house (notice the burnt forest behind it)
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and we're talking, and reviewing things, and planning on our next day's activities, to assist in whatever with the Forest Service, and doing our things on the ski area. Just before Black Thursday, three days before Black Thursday, we were outside looking at the house, and we were walking over to eat at the fire camp, and I said, "Boy, Bill, with a Bic lighter, I think I could burn this house down"- you've got this clapboard siding, it's all wood, and it's all dry, and nice and everything. "I think If I went over to one of these corners, upwind side, and lit my Bic lighter, it'd catch it on fire and burn it down."
And he says,
"Oh, yeah, you know, it does have a shake roof."- bad deal, and it had this clapboard siding- it's all old, and it's at least, three maybe, four stories high- it's an enormous building. And he says "Yeah, what are we going to do about this?" And I said,
"Well, let's set up your irrigation system, since you're not haying (laughs), since the Forest Service here has this fire camp here, and you've got all this irrigation system."
"Well," he says, "we haven't run that in the last three years, but that I've been working real hard at the ski area, and I haven't been haying the field." And I said,
"Well, this is the year."
"Hmm, yeah, that's a good point." So, we get out and start working on this thing. Of course, you've got rat's nests, you've got mice nests, you've got birds, all kinds of things [inside the pipes], so you're trying to get this three phase system, going, and all of these pipes are plugged up with all kinds of nests and stuff. If you leave the end caps of them, skunks, and all of the other kinds of rodents think, "Wow, what a wonderful tunnel system." Well, they go in there and they help you out. So, we turned these things on, and it goes "Phhhht," and these big gobs of stuff are shooting out the other side, but anyway, we got done, then, and we didn't want to go to town. Let's see, we had Al come down, and we had his father come down, and we had Al's boy come down, and his wife was there, and Bill, his daughter [Judy], Scott [his son], and Arlene was there, and myself, and so that's how many folks- must've been eight people or something- all
one day, with a backhoe, to try and get this pond cleaned. All these things fixed from just sitting around for last couple three years
We got down to the end of it- it'd pump water, it'd squirt water, but we didn't have one end, to plug it off. So, you'd have this six inch fire hose of water coming out there, "Ohh, man, we've got to do something here," well, "You going to drive all the way to Missoula?" It's the middle of fire season, you've got serious problems here. We just got the tractor out, bent one of the pipes in half, run over, so it flat, bent it in half, and then bailing wire, literally- actually, we took some pig wire of our fence, and took the bottom strand off, and then wrapped it around this, bent over, so it would stop the water from coming out. It leaked a little bit, but it's a sprinkler kind of thing anyway. Then we set this up as close as we could get it to the house. Then, we took some of the sprinklers off, and hooked up the garden hose to them, and ran the garden hose over around house, so we were watering the lawn- you've got a 25 horse, three phase electric motor- you can pump a bunch of water.
He has all of the irrigation right, so you're pumping this right out of a creek- it's just fogging the area. Then, we took a fire hose from my little pump- five horsepower pump that we've been hauling around behind my truck, doing stuff. We put that tanker at the house, we filled it full of water, and then we put a garden hose in it so we could fill the tank back up at as fast as you're pumping out the other way. Then, [we] had Scott shinny up on top of the building, which is now all wet, slimy (shake roof on top)- he climbs up on top, and he nails sprinkler to the approximate center of the house- "Spft, spft, spft, spft, spft," up there.
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[2:12 min]
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The Wall of Flame & Bill Grasser | top of the page
Three days later, here comes this wall of flame, and this was a really exciting afternoon- Scott had come to Missoula, and I had come to Stevensville- both of those towns are north of the area- one's 70 and one's about 100 miles away. So, Bill and his daughter were there, alone, when the firestorm came through. They stood outside during this, and sprayed water on the side of the buildings. The irrigation was shut off- they thought the [electric] poles were going to burn off, so the Forest Service had them come and shut it off, so it didn't fall over and start a fire (laughs). Anyway, they lost all their water from the pump, and they stood there with this little five-gallon pumper, and a garden hose, spraying water on the building. They were pretty excited about that. I got back there about dark, that night, and Bill was really excited [worked up]- he doesn't curse, and he was really excited.
He was just pacing back and forth, all dirty and wet, and it was black- everyplace was black. Black is beautiful, but this was kind of like enormous black- it's just everyplace you look, it's black. Well, it wasn't all this black, it was kind of gray. Then, there was this smoke, which was just incredible. In the building, from here to the camera [which was about 7 feet], Bill would look like a fuzzy movie thing. You could hear [he makes a coughing sound], everyplace he went. The only place that I could get out of the smoke, was either get in the pickup truck and turn the air conditioning on (he didn't have air conditioning in the house), or you crawl under the bedcovers- about five quilts, and just keep breathing in there- pretty soon, you've filtered it all, and you were re-breathing clean used air. That was quite an evening.
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[1:29 min]
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[1:27 min]
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The Wall of Flame: The Sula Firestorm | top of the page
Of course, a lot of folks don't know what was happening. They go up there [on Highway 93, to the southern part of the Bitterroot Valley], and there's inversions, and stuff falling on the road. There were places, when it blew across [the road], that night, in the Sula area there, that looked like what I would envision a war zone (I didn't go through a war). The hillsides on both sides of you were ablaze. You could turn your lights off on your vehicle, and it was an eerie daylight. There were burning chunks of trees, that had rolled down the mountain, that were sitting in the middle of the road, catching the asphalt on fire. There were pieces of [fire] hose, across the road, that was burned off on both ends, that's there, when they were fighting their way from the [fire]. The Rocky Knob [a restaurant on Highway 93 at the entrance to Laird Creek), when it got overrun, crews fought their way back to the Sula store, and those
people then made a stand at the Sula store. This is a store where we're [the firefighters] going to go to, there's lots of water here, they put sprinklers on top of the buildings, fired up the fire trucks, and foamed themselves down- this is it, there's no place else to go- everyplace you look, it's on fire. That's what they told me- several of the folks that were in that part [said] it was almost indescribable. It would've made a really good movie.
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© ThinkQuest Team C0119184 :: Credits & Sources
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