March 29, 1813 hrs

Rain and or overcast today Temp at this moment is 6C. Lilac buds are showing some color. We went to Norway House for lunch today.
Here is second part of "Fire In The Euchinko".

Chapter 3

W

e weren’t the seven men in a tub, but we were seven stranded firefighters on a tiny mud and stick island 50 feet from shore! Moses had come in this load so I asked, “Moses, you swim?”  Without blinking or smiling he replied, “ Wasn’t I was born in the bull rushes?” Of course the rest all laughed not without some slight hysteria.  So not to be out done I pointed at the shore and said, “ Then I wish your name was Jesus and you could just walk over there.”

 When everyone settled down I said, “ Moses, you and I will strip and swim over to shore, I’ve got my belt axe and we can start getting a raft ready.”

  We weren’t half way when there was a bunch of splashing behind us, five more brown bodies were paddling after us.  Plan B was better than plan A!  We knew we had just over an hour before the next load would arrive and we had to be ready to move it across and with the tools that would be there, improve and enlarge our raft.

  We found a cleared area that had been created by the beavers through the flooded trees and made our way on to dry ground.   Fortunately trees from the earlier fire had resulted in a preponderance of deadfall and very little axe work was necessary.  However these down dead trees would also prove to be a curse.  We quickly gathered and dragged trees into the water and commenced the construction of a raft.  We had no rope so our creation was totally dependent on the roughness of the wood and the many protruding knots to make it stay together.  As it grew in size we were forced to move out from the shore; we kept its form to a more skiff like structure as opposed to a conventional raft shape.  Did I mention horse flies, black flies and mosquitoes?  Being a swampy area and this was July; there were hordes of all of them.  Between all of us we had two bottles of repellent.  The problem was that between sweating and frequent immersion in pond water, the effectiveness of the repellent was short lived.  In desperation, those of us on land coated ourselves in mud; those in the water were relatively free of the insects but had to contend with leaches.  After almost two hours of intense labor we decided our craft was ready and within minutes of pushing it out to the beaver house the clatter of the returning Otter could be heard.  I left four men on the island to unload the plane and load and move the raft; the rest of us went back to shore.

   Pieter came in over the same trees and as gently as before set the plane down, turned and taxied to “Beaver Island”.  He again turned the plane and rested it up against the island only this time without the help of Jeremy as he had been left behind, obviously to lighten the plane.  As the tools, equipment and food were being off loaded I noted that it appeared that everything was in this one load.  This was great, as that would give us a two-hour earlier start.  Pieter passed on to Moses that he would have to take on fuel before the next trip so would be a bit longer, then he quickly repeated his earlier maneuver, except this time without backing the plane into the trees.  As he was taking off, the first trip to shore began with one man steering from the front and one man on either side to hold everything on and together.  Except for snagging a couple of trees as they maneuvered into the shore, the event was without mishap.  We now had some light cord (bindertwine) that was holding the tools in bundles, so we untied the tools and used the twine to strengthen the raft at the corners.  In the end this phase all went smoothly and we were well into a break when Pieter returned again.

  Again the landing and docking went without incident, but the looks on the faces of the rest of the crew as they disembarked were really quite hilarious.  But with only minor complaining they all stripped, loaded their clothes and boots on the raft and made the trip to shore.

Chapter 4

I

t was now almost 2 o’clock in the afternoon and we had a six mile trek across thickets of 8 foot tall pine and a mat of intertwined pine logs and offering an obstacle course sometimes three feet off the ground, we had to make time.

   Everything was divided as equally as we could judge and tied onto packboards, each man carried two hand tools.  The heaviest single item weighing 54 pounds was the Mark 1 Wajax pump, this I assigned to Pierre George, the huskiest guy in the crew.  The toolbox that went with it, I emptied and distributed the contents among us and left the box there.  The box alone was about 10 pounds.

  As soon as we were ready we headed due west.  Even when we found patches of fairly open ground we tried to maintain an even pace so as to conserve energy and to minimize over heating.  We only had two one-gallon canvas bags of water, these had to last until we got to the creek near the fire.

  The first hour went by without incident, everyone was in good spirits and we made fairly good time.  In the second hour, Pierre started complaining that he had the heaviest load and, “ it aint fair.”  I kidded him along until we stopped for a 5-minute break then he declared he wanted to change with someone else.  I hefted his pack and compared it to mine and a couple of the others, then suggested he do the same.  His was obviously lighter by a few pounds, so I told him he could trade with me.  At least he quit complaining the rest of the way.

  Other than insects, sweat and high stepping or climbing over dead trees, the rest of the trek was without incident.  We eventually left the old burn and entered a mature pine forest.  As tired as we were we picked up our pace and just after  five o’clock, arrived at the creek.

  After a brief rest I left Alec and the rest of the crew to set up camp and get some supper ready, while Moses and I went on out of the draw and on towards the fire.  While we had been resting, I noted that I could hear a slight roaring noise coming from the west; this could only mean that the fire had finally come to life.  Once up on the flat and away from the murmur of the creek the noise was noticeably louder and we could feel a breeze at our backs.  This could mean that a wind had come up; the fire was causing the wind by creating its own draught or both of these.  Any one of these meant trouble!

  After about 10 minutes we again entered an old burn area and perhaps a half-mile ahead we could see a smoke column, the breeze was noticeably brisker.  As luck would have it we stumbled right on to the first few rolls of hose that had been “free – dropped”.  They were all marked with colored ribbon streamers and were easy to spot.  We gathered the first 20 or 30 rolls into a pile then coupled 4 rolls together so that they could be carried over the shoulder two to a side.  I sent Moses back to camp with instructions to bring 10 of the men with their packboards and gather up as many rolls of hose as they could and get them down to the camp.  At this point I had no idea which way the fire was moving and I did not want to risk losing the hose to the flames.  There was a real possibility that the hose might become important to our survival!

  As Moses left, I turned and continued on towards the fire.   Some 15 minutes later, the noise from the fire was many decibels higher than a “dull roar”.  The one bright spot was that there was no ground smoke.  As close as I was, if the fire was moving my way, smoke and embers would be preceding it and I would be seeing and smelling it.  The upper levels of the smoke column were clearly visible and there was no doubt this was no longer the docile little blaze we had seen that morning.

  I turned back towards our campsite.  We were in a difficult situation, we were surrounded by pine forest, much of it bone dry deadfall mixed in with immature pine – a volatile combination.  There were no roads in any direction for at least 30 miles and the pond that we had landed on could not be used to evacuate us.  So what did we have going for us?  Well it was late in the day, so unless a wind came up the fire should soon start to slow down.  We had water at hand and we had a fire pump some fuel and now had hose for the pump.  But then there was tomorrow.