An Epic Day on The Fire Line

When It All Burns

From Chapter 10, page 183

Jordan Thomas

Red was a naturally easy presence, but it was rare to see him relax.

In the months he had apprenticed under Edgar, Edgar had carved out a space in Red’s mind, like a mental watchtower built of wraparound

sunglasses and a square jaw. Red’s beard was growing in. He had lost weight. He looked good. I told him so. He said thanks. His friends

asked him what his secret was. He told them it was easy. All they had to do was put on a pack and walk up a mountain every day.

Red checked my spider bite once every hour until he decided it was nothing to worry about. I asked him why we weren’t assigned to the Dixie Fire.

Red despised gossip, so he brushed off the question.

“Dunno. The Dixie already has five thousand people fighting it,” he said. “They’re probably just keeping us fresh for the next round.”

I was bored, so I kept prodding. “Some people say Aoki is keeping us away from it because he doesn’t like working with Cal Fire.” Some

people obviously meant Scheer, who told me Aoki had friends in South Ops and knew how to pull strings for the assignments he wanted.

Red sighed, resigning himself to my pestering.

“Yep. There’s that too. A lot of the time, there’s trouble working in unified command.”

Wildfires enter “unified command” when they burn across jurisdictions, requiring state and federal agencies to fight them together.

“People butt heads, don’t see eye to eye. That’s how it used to be, for sure, but there are still remnants.”

I had heard stories. The culture clash between federal and statefirefighters trickled down from the command tents to the fireline.

A Cal Fire engine guy had told me he’d watched a federal hotshot crew cut line, then leave the line to chase a spot fire.

A state crew had stepped in to finish the job.

When the federal crew returned, they saw this as an insult and spent the rest of the afternoon fixing the work of

the state crew, which they said was too sloppy. “It’s like having two rival teams in different tents planning the same job, without talking

to each other except to yell insults at each other,” the Cal Fire guy had said.

From Red’s perspective, a lot of the conflict was cultural and came from having different areas of expertise.

“We have different ideas about fighting fire,” he told me.

“Cal Fire may tell us to back burn when we could still get it direct. Or they may tell us to go direct when we know the fire behavior

is too extreme and we should be burning. It’s a mess.”

“Sounds like it.”

“To make it worse, a lot of the time Cal Fire thinks us feds are just letting things burn or making fires bigger to get paid more.

But the thing is, Cal Fire doesn’t really know the mountains. They specialize in the interface.”

Red was talking about the WUI, which stands for “wildland urban interface.” This is where, he told me, dumbass people build homes in high- risk places.

The WUI was Cal Fire’s specialty. Red reiterated that they didn’t really know the mountains.

“Not like us,” I replied.

“Yeah. And they don’t work hard. I mean, you saw those guyspanting up the line the other day. Jesus Christ, it was hardly a slope!” I laughed.

“So yeah, might be something to that rumor. Aoki doesn’t like dealing with hostilities. The old red [Cal Fire] versus green [Forest Service] rivalries.

Not to mention it’s a clusterfuck.

Cal Fire takes all the hotels. Contractors fill up the camps. Hard to even find dirt to sleep on with so many people.”

Red’s voice had slipped to a murmur. He was drifting to sleep, so I moved to a nearby boulder to read a New Yorker novella on my phone.

While I perused my screen, a Snapchat popped up. A friend from my first year on the beginner crew was on a federal engine now and had captured a video of the Dixie Fire at night, flames reaching for the stars.

“How is it?” I typed.

“Epic,” he wrote. Three dots showed he was still replying. “No one here has ever seen anything like this. How’s LP?”

Red was snoring. The day was dragging. The most exciting event was when Scheer marched into the forest on the green side of the fireline to take a shit and found a smoldering patch of leaf litter.

A candle- size flame was licking inches from brush that would lift flames into the trees. Scheer scuffed it out with his boot.

We were one shit away from having a crown fire erupt behind us. I was surprised by my disappointment.

Red’s voice jolted me from my thoughts. “Thomas, c’mere. Quick!” His country accent had come out. He was panicking. I hefted my hoe, excited, ready to fight fire.

“No! Leave yer tool! Hurry!” Confused, I found Red lying on his side, panting, helmet thrown away, balding scalp gleaming with sweat.

“Goddamn bug crawled in my ear!” He handed me a canteen.

“Quick! Drown that sucker. I can hear it scratchin’ on my eardrum.”

I took the canteen. The folds of his ear were full of dirt. “You sure?”

“Yeah! C’mon! Quick!”

I poured in a thimbleful. Red snorted and shook his head then paused, listening. “Yep! Still in there scratchin’! C’mon, Thomas. Drown it this time!”

I poured the whole canteen into Red’s ear. He blustered through the water, then stood, head cocked, listening.

“Still in there. I’ll get you, you bastard. Hang tight here, Thomas.” Red hefted his pack and

ran up the fireline to find Barba, who probably, for some reason, had tweezers.

I checked my Snapchat again. “How’s being a hotshot?” my friend on the Dixie Fire repeated.

“Epic,” I replied, putting away my phone.

Jordan Thomas is a wildfire anthropologist and the author of When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World. He previously served as a wildland firefighter on the Los Padres Hotshot crew and is a member of California’s Central Coast Prescribed Burn Association. His writing has appeared in The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He also provides periodic commentary on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and others. He is currently a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Here's the link to Jordan’s website

Here's a link to where the book can be purchased

From WHEN IT ALL BURNS: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World by Jordan Thomas published on May 27, 2025 by Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 Jordan Thomas.