| When it's crowning you just get the people out, that's all .... outside of crowning, fire doesn't move on a broad front ... even in crowning it's not a broad front, it's spotty, jumping all the time .... you can find green areas hours after the fireline has passed by, and they're not necessarily damper areas either ... funny things happen, it's random effect of wind and flame ... whatever looks dramatic is gone already, forget it, concentrate on achievable goals, little wisps of smoke from blown sparks .... until you can do that, just get out of the way ... i've seen fire move five miles in five minutes, that was on what they call the Tay fire, 1967, Taylor arm on Sproat lake, Van Island, we were on the other side of the valley when the mid-day change of tide northwest breeze came, the smoke blew back and obscured our view for a few minutes, and by the time we could see it the fireline on the north side of the valley was five miles east of where it had been .... all sorts of machinery abandoned that day, some burnt and some didn't ..... the Mars bombers were dropping straight off their takeoff runs, then banking sharp right below us, and dive down for more water ... we got bombed with the gel once, direct hit, had to wash each other with the mister nozzle, no more smokes that day ... fires are logically snoose affairs, really |
