May 16th

I'm a bit late today, its now 1014 temp is 11C and o/c.
We stayed overnight at cousins and watched the Canucks win, then this am we had our shingles vaccine, pricy but better than getting shingles.
The fire in Alberta (Slave Lake) is pretty awful, unfortunately the potential of spring fires is often underestimated. They basically travel before the wind fueled by grass and light fuels, their speed of advancement is often just  below the speed of the wind that drives them.
I did find  time yesterday to start a (fire) story from one of my experiences. It's not finished but there is enough to start posting.

IT WASN’T A BIG ONE

BUT—

  I’m pretty sure it was in the summer of 1961. There were forest fires all over the central interior. At the time we only had one of any consequence going, it was down in the Tatuk Lake area and my fellow Assistant Ranger, Ron, was looking after it.

  Our biggest problem was that the Danger rating was extreme and at least all of the western part of the region was under a thick blanket of smoke. Visibility at ground level was about a half mile and thickened skyward for fifteen hundred to two thousand feet. Lookouts were completely hampered from seeing any new fires and air patrols were basically useless over much of region.

  However Fort St. James our neighboring district to the north was a bit better off and were still able to call for limited patrols.  One Saturday morning they had called for one of these patrols but were unable to get it until the afternoon , as luck would have it, their patrol was assigned to an aircraft that was checking out a smoke report in the Quesnel area to our south. When the plane diverted for Fort St. James it flew at an elevation of six thousand feet directly over our town of Vanderhoof on a heading to “The Fort”.

  We received a call from the pilot about four pm, his call went something like this: “XLT28 Vanderhoof, XLT28 Vanderhoof, this is charlie hotel romeo. You Copy?”

  George, our Ranger was on standby for the weekend and because we had an active fire, he was in the office. He replied, “C H R, this is Vanderhoof go ahead.”

  “Roger, Vanderhoof, I’m an estimated twelve or fifteen miles north west of you, I can’t see the ground because of the smoke, but I have a bubble in the smoke layer that may indicate there is a fire down there.”

  “Roger that C H R , can you give us an approximate grid?”

  “Standby one Vanderhoof.”

  “Vanderhoof ‘by.”

  A moment later the pilot came back with the map number for the area and a grid reference  that put the location somewhere in a ten mile square area north west of town. “Sorry I can’t get it any better than that Vanderhoof, I’m guessing as it is”

  “Roger C H R, we’ll work with that, thanks much, Vanderhoof out.”

  George plotted out the information then phoned me at home. “Hey John can you come in? Just got a report of one somewhere off the road to ‘The Fort’.”

  Ten minutes later I pulled into our compound, hurried into the office and with George examined the given location and our District wall map.

  There were several logging roads that ran from the Fort St. James road east towards the Stuart River, The pilot’s report put the location on the east side of the road, but which road or was it on any road?

  Together we decided that I would leave the closest road which ran all the way to the Stuart River until last. It was reasonably well traveled and if a fire was along it, there would be a good chance someone would report it. I would start with the one we called the Blue Mountain Road which ended at an old sawmill setting about fifteen miles in.

  I did a quick check on my fire season gear that I kept in the truck, added two more back pack pumps to the two I usually carried and filled them with water. I was on my way twenty minutes after my arrival.

  Immediately north of town it was all farming area and the main road followed along section lines, right angle corners every mile for the first five miles then onto the gravel road that led northerly to Fort St. James. When on my way I disregarded speed limit signs and fifteen minutes after leaving I turned off the main road onto the Blue Mountain Road.

My speed was now reduced to a maximum of thirty miles per hour which was okay as I also had to keep watch for any ground level smoke as well as keep sniffing for the smell of fresh smoke.  The first five or six miles was all through a mature pine stand then about a mile of immature pine, I crossed a small creek and I remember thinking ‘I sure hope it isn’t in the next few miles.’ This thought was because I was now entering an area where a twister (tornado had touched down about five years before and had left a swath of broken twisted and uprooted trees covering an area of about twelve square miles. The area ran on an angle from the west and crossed the road about another six miles further on. During those dry times it posed an extremely difficult situation in the event of a fire.

As I drove along I started catching glimpses of the ‘blowdown’ area through the trees on my right, then just before I got to where it would cross the road I caught a whiff of fresh smoke! ‘Oh crap!’ I thought, ‘It’s going to be right in it.’

  I kept going, driving slower, I still didn’t know which side of the road it would be on and I knew it would be difficult to spot unless it was really active. Finally just before where the storm had crossed the road there was an old skid road leading off to my left and on a hunch I stopped and got out of the truck. The smoke was definitely stronger, there was no wind so no clue as to direction; following my hunch I started picking my way up the skid road, as I proceeded the smoke got stronger and I realized that the smoke layer above was acting as a cover and holding the smoke down, within a thousand feet of leaving my truck I spotted open flames.