Firefighter's Act of Heroism

An out-of-control Forest Fire was raging in Montana near the north border of Yellowstone park while I was backpacking in NW Montana a couple of weeks ago.

Since it was late August prime fire season, and plenty hot, I wondered what I would do if a dry lightning strike caused a forest fire in the part of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area I8 was in.

The forest in that part of 'the Bob' was a mixture of very old growth spruce and fir and lodgepole pine. Some of those trees were incredibly tall, at least 150 or 200 feet. (when the trail I was on when up a steep slope and I was near the top of the trees, I could see their bases down in the canyon bottom in what seemed like hundreds of feet away).

The answer about what I could do if a dry lightning strike caused a fire was not much, other than pray to be spared. When the streamcourses were maybe 50 feet across at tops, surrounded by dense trees hundreds of feet tall, the likely solution of surviving the fire in a stream probably would not have worked.

A couple hiking in Washington State had to face the reality of this danger earlier this summer. Bruce and Paula Hagemeher had pitched their tent a few miles up the Chewuch River when they noticed a high cloud of smoke in the direction they had come. They decided to leave, since there is only one road out, and hiked back to their truck. As they drove down the road they met a forest service crew who told them the access out was cut off by the fire.

A few minutes later the Hagemeyers and the Forest Service crew heard the roar of the approaching wildfire. Twentyone firefighters and two civilians were trapped in a narrow section of the Chenoweth canyon by the fire that went from 5 acres to 2500 acres in 21/2 hours, according to the forest service fire report. The report stated that 'Fire shelters were deployed in an area surrounded by fire on all four sides.' (http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/fire/temp/nokf0711.htm )

In the minutes before the fire approached, Forest Service employee Rebecca Welch crammed the Hagemeyer's inside an emergency fire tent she had put up. The tent resembles a simple pup tent, and is designed for one person.

The fire crowned in the trees overhead while Rebecca laid on top of Bruce and Paula Hagemeyer, holding her fire tent over them. Rebecca suffered second degree burns . Bruce and Pauline had minor smoke inhalation. Four firefighters lost their lives.

'There is no question that she saved us,' Bruce Hagemeyer said, 'No doubt about it at all'. 'We would have died.'

According to Fox News, 'Dr. Ann Diamond, who treated Welch at the Country Clinic in Winthrop, said the firefighter (Rebecca) was injured because she could not get completely inside the survival tent.

"It was an heroic act," Diamond said.

"They said they were yelling for help and that Welch responded and deployed her shelter and helped them get beneath it," Diamond explained. "Then she crawled in on top of them, but she didn't quite fit."

Jim Furnish, a deputy chief with the Forest Service had this to say about Rebecca Welch:

"What she did was an unbelievable act of heroism," Mr. Furnish said. "There is no doubt in my mind that these people, if they were left unprotected, would have perished."

(from a New York Times article, July 13, 2001)

Detailed article about the Thirty Mile fire from the Yakima Herald: 'Trapped at Thirty Mile' http://www.yakima-herald.com/newsfeatures/thirtymile/entrapment2.html

Fox News Report: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,29406,00.html

Forest service Report:http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/fire/temp/nokf0711.htm

Seattle Post Intelligencer story: http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/31195_main13.shtml