Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [38]
In front of Fire Command, she arranged to meet Travis and the soldiers inside the park the following morning, when they would dig line on their first real fire.
Instead of leaving, Travis followed her toward the building. “I thought I’d report those migrants to somebody in the Forest Service.”
Perhaps because she was from Texas and used to workers from south of the border, Clare was dead set against Travis. “Sergeant,” she began. “Those poor folks mind their own business. They need the work and the town needs them during the summer season.” The worn, yet freshly washed dress, and the way the woman mended the pants rather than let her husband or son wear them out . . .
Travis’s chin came up, but before he could reply, she rushed on. “Second, and most importantly, the Forest Service and Park people have more than enough on their platter. My God, do you think you . . . the Army . . . would be here if the fires weren’t out of control?”
The latch clanged as Travis pushed past into the building. “I’ll let the authorities decide.”
Clare followed him into the command center.
Gathered around the maps, at least thirty men were meeting. Fire behavior expert Ken Roberts had the floor, holding up his Texas Instruments calculator containing the program he had developed, appropriately named PREDICT.
Garrett, seated in the front row, had told Clare about the program. The three main factors used in predicting were fuels, weather and topography. It sounded simple, but fuels could be anything from grass to four hundred-year-old trees.
“Back in July,” Roberts lectured, “the thousand-hour fuels had dropped to twelve percent moisture content. I refer to the practice of using four-foot lengths of lodgepole pine that would take at least a thousand hours to dry as an index. To give you an idea of how low that moisture content is, it’s the same as kiln-dried lumber.”
Clare imagined the forest as one huge stack of kindling.
“This week the numbers have dropped to below ten percent.”
A new plastic overlay had been added to the fire map with a dashed red outline that encompassed a large area that had not yet burned. “According to our estimates,” Roberts said, “the hundred-fifty thousand acres already consumed could potentially double before the season is out.”
Clare felt as though she’d been punched. If Roberts were right, she might be another three weeks getting home to Devon.
“Okay, everybody.” Garrett held up a hand. “There’ll be a press conference in an hour. We’ll release the predictions hammered out here.”
Sergeant Travis clumped over to the maps.
Clare went to the kitchen refrigerator. She downed a sixteen-ounce bottle of cold spring water and opened another.
Garrett followed her. “What do you think of their predictions?”
“It’s frightening to think we’re going to face that much more.” She removed her hard hat, set it on the counter, and riffled her sweat-damp hair.
“It’s going to get a whole lot worse than anybody imagines. Roberts’s program is designed for surface fires, not crown fires. When you get winds like we’re having and the fire leaps up into the treetops, all bets are off.”
She gripped the plastic water bottle. Garrett had seen a lot and if he thought it was bad, she believed.
“How’s it going with the Army?” He shot a glance at Travis.
“Okay.”
“That fellow giving you a hard time?”
“What makes you think so?”
“A hunch.”
Clare smiled both at Garrett and the sight of Travis retreating from the center without speaking to anyone about the migrants. “How’d you guess?”
“You forget I’m in the minority, too.”
She drank deeply of chilled water and looked up at Garrett’s dark face. “You’re right, I do forget.”
He poured coffee and stretched to pluck a pack of Fig Newtons from a high shelf. She surmised from the way he cached his sweets that it was an honor when he offered one. She took a cookie and ate it while Garrett downed five. Scanning the room, she confirmed that he was the only black and she one of the few women present. “Speaking of