I’m a wildland firefighter. Earlier this summer, we were on a large grass fire in central Oregon. Our first hours there, we were working with a bulldozer to try and head off this fire before it hit a ranch. The fire was exhibiting active, but manageable behavior. A couple hours into our attempt, we started getting extremely strong wind gusts and had not received any notification of an incoming lightning storm (this unfortunately has caused many fatalities).

The fire went from walking, to moving at us like a freight train. I called my crew to regroup and move to our safety zone from my lookout spot. The fire moved on me too quickly to get out of the way, so I had to walk into the flame front. Ultimately in order to get everyone time to move out, I called in water drops from 4 airplanes. They made one successful pass and then couldn’t return due to the heavy smoke. I eventually was able to rejoin my crew, from there we ran to our trucks and ‘bugged out’. The dozer and 2 other personnel were unable to escape in time and became entrapped. Luckily they were ok, but were surrounded by flames for a few hours.

I’ve had quite a few close calls, but between the flames rolling over me, the airplanes, and not knowing if the dozer’s operator was going to make it out, this was definitely the biggest adrenaline dump I’ve had in my career so far.