Christian Nally's News

written Jul 25, 2006 8:29 AM

Dearest Galiano-philes,

Here is my account of the last few rotations of the earth. It's been quite a ride and all appears to have ended as well as could be hoped.

I forget precisely when the initial call came out, perhaps 4 p.m. "All South Galiano Fire Department Pagers please respond to Guston road to a fire in the gravel pit". We were in gear and enroute in minutes and already knew that it was going to be a big one, but nothing impresses like the first views of a large amount of flame pushing into a tinderbox of forest. We likely had as many as thirty people on scene right away.

The gravel pit trails off into a ravine of sorts. One attack line was sent up the hill, another through the ravine troff along a old dirt road. My experiences were with Richard and Jurgen. We were 'attack one'. The tasks at hand were to drag hoses and equipment up that road and get water onto it as fast as we could.

My first task was to wet down the way we came in, which was the only real exit that we could run down if required. It was about 300 feet up the road from the start point and there were certainly times when the smoke was enough to induce more than just a little concern. It was then that I recalled that you can filter smoke out of the air using a very light flow wide-nozzle spray. Sitting behind a light umbrella of water made keeping that safety exit safe an achievable endeavor.

After that I spent some time on the business end of the attack hose. It was my first experience with live fire in a fire supression experience. It turns out that firefighting is like playing a real life version of the carnival game "whack a mole". Wherever you see fire pop up, hit it ! Your sense hearing is your friend in this situation. Every few minutes a nearby bush would come alive with crackling but where I was the single hose I had was enough to keep the line.

In addition to our efforts and the efforts of the North Galiano department, we got air support very early on. I gather that they don't show up for any but the most serious fires, and the fact that they were there so early was testament to the fact that we were in for a bit of a wild ride. I'd heard about the water bombers and the 'bird dog' before... if you hear the bird dog's whistle, find it in the sky. If its path is directly over your head then you know that you're about to get "bombed". Act appropriately.

We also had experienced forestry firefighters drop out of the sky very early on. They were great guidance and fantastic to work with.

One thing that was clear right from this early stage of the fire was that we were going to get a lot of vital community support with this fire. There were people there at the staging area very early on offering everything from sweat equity to drinking water, food and something I won't forget... a much needed pair of work socks! My bleeding shins are still reminding me what I should have had stashed in my coveralls.

After some time holding that one start flank of the fire, it was time to try to find the rapidly advancing front... imagine a rapidly growing triangle eminating out from the start point.

Larry, Dave and I took a pick-up and went bouncing down a back-road that connected us from the Guston Pit back around to a north-south trail situated off the end of Georgeson Bay road near the end of Sticks Allison. It was here that we would have our most engaging experiences with the fire. When we arrived, the west side of the trail was fully involved, and the right side had just started up. We layed down a couple lines then and there and started what would be approximately 3 hours of trying to keep that flank. I'm looking forward to getting back into that area to see whether our efforts at that spot ended up being a boundary of the final damage area. I have my doubts.

It was here that the local crew of scarf-clad volunteer hose runners was at their most impressive. Head scarves over their faces to try to reduce the effects of the smoke, fire bandits if you will... they dragged hoses from the new staging area directly into the middle of the advancing forest fire. They had a big impact on the speed with which we could get hose line down the path.

Somewhere around this time... the first sunset and twilight flew by. One great way to get an impression of what the scene was like would be to check out some of the footage that Duncan got. At one point he asked 'how long have you been out here?' I responded 'a couple hours', when in fact it had been something closer to seven hours. Time flies when you're having fun? :-/

After three hours on the new front, it was clear that we weren't going to be able to kill everything and we needed to try a 'new line in the sand' further back toward the homes. We fanned out doing a search of the properties, looking at fuel and general access to the area. Some notes here... big propane tanks = bad. Wide driveways = good.

At that point a driveway far out on the end of Georgiaview road was selected as what we hoped would be our last stand. We had one truck pumping water up the hill, and another gathering it at the top. Two hose lines came off that truck and we watch two forestry firefighter squads with backpacks of water putting out ignitions. They were -very- economical in their use of water and very effective. Yoman's service was done by the guys bringing truckload after truckload of water to the pumping truck.

There was a time when the front line fire crews would be winning whenever we had water, and would be losing whenever we didn't but in the end that front would turn out to be our successful "line in the sand" and no homes would turn out to be damaged.

From there we went into 'firewatch mode'. With the previous day's strong winds dying down, there were some earily beautiful scenes to behold. It wouldn't be until the next day when the water bombers and 'cranes' took to the sky that the successful fire supression would start. One of their major concerns was the area of broom below the electrical lines that feed power to Vancouver Island. That area is the forest fire equivilant of a fuse, and fire would have travelled down it rather rapidly, spreading the fire all the way down to the south eastern end of Sticks Allison.

From my perspective as a newbie firefighter, the best luck we had with the whole experience was that the advancing front never got to the power lines on that first night of high winds. We wouldn't have had air support at that time and there would have been little we could have done, if had made it that far.

As of this morning, two sunrises after the initial call, Sticks Allison is still evacuated and the place has a very eary quiet about it. I'm looking forward to checking out the new network of nature trails cut by the firefighting effort, checking out some of the fronts we were trying to keep and seeing what eventually happened there, and getting a more complete picture of the whole damage area.

One thing that puts the whole fight into perspective is that it's relatively hard to find damage areas by simply driving around Galiano's main roads. That fact tells you that to fight the thing you had to get into Galiano's version of the outback, and that by a combination of luck and help from above, the damage was limited to areas a little less travelled.

yours in relief

Christian