February 11

Conclusion of 'Fire in the Raush'

Chapter 6 - Winding Down

Two days later with no escapes and the fire fully extinguished for a full tree length back from its perimeters, I decided to scale the crew back.  I would need 3 men for each funnel unit, one faller, a foreman and of course a cook.  I would be going out as well;, with the fire in the “mop up” stage, I could be better used elsewhere.  But when I looked over my list of people, I knew that finding a cohesive bunch to stay behind wasn't going to be easy.  I decided there would be no volunteering to go or to stay.  There wouldn’t be enough for three funnel units so I decided to shut down one and use the extra hose on the other two.

  The paramount thing was to have a crew that would work and cause no problems.

   Frenchy: I wouldn’t mind keeping but he had been showing signs of irritability. Holgar: he had to go. Scotty: the thirst was coming on.  In the end I chose George, Jim, Greg, Hank, Billy, the two new guys (Pete and Eddy) and of course Slim.  Greg would be foreman and Pete the designated faller. 

  That evening, I called McBride and arranged for the boat the next day.  Cougar was to be advised that there would be five men coming out.  The boat arrived around 2 pm and we were in McBride just after 5 p.m.  Frenchy and Holgar wanted to be paid immediately but I explained I wouldn’t have the payroll ready and their cheques prepared until the next morning.  Once again I was treated to some Finnish words I didn’t understand, a few French ones as well.

  Two days later some cloud settled in back in the mountains with a bit of drizzle during the night.  I made one more trip with Bill in his Beaver and came away satisfied that we could take a chance on pulling everyone off the fire.  It took another full day to get all the equipment and other gear to the boat landing and then two trips in one day to get all the men but Slim out to the mill and another full day to bring the equipment down river.  Slim insisted that he could bring all the horses down on his own, but I went up with the first trip for the men and told him I would “just walk along too.”

Epilogue

So after 23 days, the Raush fire was over.

 After Frenchy and Holgar got their cheques, they were never seen in McBride again. At least they had a little grubstake to start them off on the streets of Vancouver.  George stayed on in McBride; I would see him on the street occasionally. Harry was still working in the same mill when I left in 1960. Greg also stayed on.  Bob, I would see once in a while, always friendly, he eventually drifted on.  Jack died.  I heard it was of liver failure.  Hank went back to school, later he left McBride to study forestry.  Billy just kept doing odd jobs.  Scotty just kept partying; he died in 1967 just after I returned to the valley.  Coco was killed a year after the fire, run over by a car on the road in front of Scotty’s shack.  Ben recovered fully, he married a nurse that tended him in Edmonton and eventually started a cedar shake mill.  Slim stayed on at his stump ranch until his wife died.  I caught up with him in 1967 in an old folk’s home in Valemount.  I visited him about once a week. He died just after I moved from Valemount in 1971.

When I returned to the valley in 1967 as the Ranger in charge of the Valemount District, the Raush valley was part of my district.  By this time a road had been pushed in almost to the location of our boat landing.  I went there several times, but the first time I returned I walked up to our old campsite.  Tent poles, the table made of logs and trees marked by axes were the only evidence left of our time there.  The log bridge was gone, no doubt torn away by floodwaters the spring after the fire.  Up on the slope I could see solid green where young trees had seeded in and lower down except for a few spike tops here and there, there was no sign of disturbance. I took a seat on the riverbank and as I sat there, I saw Slim bending over the campfire, his old Stetson drooping over his ears. I saw Scotty peeling spuds and whistling some nameless tune.  I saw Holgar once again crawling across our bridge.  I saw Ben, his face flushed in embarrassment and pain. I saw the others swinging their pulaskis and setting a gravity feed. I heard them groan as they pulled off their boots and I heard their laughter as they sat around the campfire.  I saw again the tears as a little brown body disappeared in the rapids.  I remembered again my anger that night beside my Jeep and later my remorse for my loss of control.

  Although the fire had been a relatively mild one, what I had experienced with the men I worked with, ate with and slept beside and the lessons I had learned from their strengths and their failings had became imbedded in me. Later as I retraced my steps back down the trail I felt strangely uplifted and, in an odd way I even felt thankful for the transgression of Bob and Jack.