Monroe's Fire II

By William Hanna

The firefighting experts (among whom the protagonist is senior), their wives and the government organization professional and non professional personnel are shown as they react to a threatening major fire in the Big Sur forested rea. interpersonal relationships are explored, especially between the austere central character and his intimate family relationships, as contrasted to that of his superior ad HIS deeply committed foreign-born wife, who serves also as his educated companion and uninhibited lover.

A series of family crises, unusual seasonal weather conditions nd an unanticipated out-of-season wildland fire ignition culminate in the near-death of the protagonist as a result of errors in judgement engendered by his despair and conflicted sexual desire for his superior's wife which lead him to inadvertent entrapment in the fire, the high tech efforts to rescue him, and his long-term partially successful recovery from life-threatening injuries in the state-of-the-art burn center medical facility and finally a reconciled family life ending in his inevitable death.

The author hopes you will enjoy the narrative as well as gain an insight into how the government firefighting agencies carry out their responsibilities with the aid of highly-trained personnel and sophisticated equipment and methods.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Hanna
• Release date: Sep 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466169241

William Hanna

A London-based freelance writer on democracy and human rights and author of several books including the The Grim Reaper (Goodreads Reviews: https://bit.ly/3cw8OHO. Further information including book reviews, articles, sample chapters, videos, and contact details at:https://www.williamhannaauthor.com

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MONROE’S FIRE II

Second Edition

By William C. Hanna

Near Miraculous survival in a California Wildland Fire

Copyright © 2013 by William C. Hanna

SMASHWORDS SECOND EDITION

ISBN 9781466169241

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

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For Sylvia, my inspiration, critic and editor

THE STORY

This book is primarily about a proud man in the twilight of a successful career and facing a failing relationship as a husband and father. The setting is the Ventana Big Sur coastal wilderness area just south of Monterrey California. The story follows the activities of the close-knit community of men and women who dedicate their lives to limiting the damage wrought by unintentional forest fires. The firefighting experts (among whom the protagonist is senior), their wives and the government organization professional and non-professional personnel are shown as they react to a threatening major fire in the Big Sur forested area. Interpersonal relationships are explored, especially between the austere central character and his intimate family relationship as contrasted to that of his supervisor and his deeply committed Italian-born wife, who is also as his educated companion and uninhibited lover.

A series of family crises, unusual seasonal weather conditions and an unanticipated out-of-season wildland fire ignition culminate in the near-death of the protagonist as a result of a nearly fatal series of errors in judgment engendered by despair and morally conflicted sexual desire for his supervisor’s wife all of which lead him to an unplanned retreat to his inherited cabin in the wildernes area and to subsequent boozy entrapment in the fire. The story continues to describe the high-tech efforts to rescue him, and his long-term partially and temporarily successful recovery in the care of a state-of-the-art medical facility and a reconciled family life.

The author hopes you will enjoy the narrative as well is gain an insight into how the government firefighting agencies carry out their responsibilities with the aid of well-trained support personnel and sophisticated equipment.

AND A WORST CASE SCENARIO

Jackson, a 54 year old veteran brush firefighter; John John, his 32 year old swamper, and Rebecca, 19 years old and a seasonal student on summer break, were working their way up the Toro Canyon ridge trail to investigate a possible ignition somewhere down near the bottom of the gorge. Their FD Brush Rig was in radio contact with Goleta Dispatch, but as they neared the end of the trail, at a rock outcropping, their radio was overwhelmed with static. This was not an unexpected event, as Jackson knew that brush fires can generate their own electrostatic charge. A heavy plume of acrid smoke rising from burning Chaparral was just now showing above the canyon ridge to the east of their position accounted for the radio problem, indicating a developing fire moving west now just below the ridge.

Looking over the edge they could now see open flames moving upslope and now nearing the ridge top both ahead of and behind them. Directly below, the fire was a bit farther down but advancing rapidly with a jet-engine roar. Jackson realized they were trapped and they could now only follow his training, break out their heat-reflective fire blanket, huddle under the rig, and hope the fire passed over them quickly.

The intense fire did pass quickly and in the process it had consumed the oxygen in the air to sustain combustion as it reduced the brush to ash in its wind-driven climb up the slope at the rate of 30 miles per hour. It took only a few seconds to pass over and destroy their fire rig, but by then and the two or three minutes the fire took to reach the ridge they had lost consciousness from lack of oxygen and died soon after the flame front had passed. The roiling cloud of thousand-degree incandescent nitrogen trailing the flame front did not burn them directly, but the oven heat melted the dead flesh from their bones…

However disturbing this brief scenario may be, it is repeated over and over worldwide in the work-life of wildland fire protection personnel. While not common, many lives are lost among firefighters who—usually as a result of some command mistake—are suffocated by lack of oxygen in the close vicinity of burning vegetation. The story that follows is about just such a fire, an endangered man, and how he survived along with indigenous animals able to flee to safety in advance of the flames, due to a government system tuned to and equipped for just such an emergency.

F

or a feel for the ambiance of the Ventana Wilderness Area, the reader might want to first read the poignant poem "The Ballad of the South Coast" at the end of the story.

Toro Canyon Fire behind Santa Barbara May 2009

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FOREWARD

While this is a work of fiction, it is based on the anatomy of real California mountain brush

fires, with real people (fictional names) and real places. This particular fire never happened, but could have. So, in 1986 December 25th was a Friday; the day a Wilderness Fire was ignited on the east side of the coastal mountains of the Big Sur area of California. The story covers just a few days of the fire’s short life, however, my fictional fire scenario incorporates fire-management technology and resources that, in some instances, were not available until a decade or two later.

While continually evolving public-safety resource management and technology applications, brought to bear on extensive natural-fuel fires, have improved significantly over the past three decades, many such old-growth vegetation conflagrations in rugged terrain areas have yet to be prevented (if that is really desirable) or, once ignited, effectively limited to those areas which actually benefit from the destruction of old growth plant species and promotion of the rco-friendly natural re-growth and reduced fuel density over the next decade or so until the next fire. The habitat of countless animal species, ranging from bacteria to deer, mountain lions and bears, depends on this timeless cycle.

Nonetheless, modern methods have helped to control the destruction of natural habitat and man-made structures (which should probably not be built in the wilderness areas in the first place). While many such fires are ignited by the carelessness of man, most are still lighted off by lightening strikes as part of the natural forested-land cycle of grow, burn and re-grow which is as old as the forests themselves and are a part of the endless reproductive rhythm of nature.

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BOOK ONE – The World of Scott Monroe and the Fire that….

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Before I tell you this first story, let me introduce:

SOME OF THE PEOPLE YOU WILL MEET

Scott Monroe: Scott is the second-in-command deputy fire control officer assigned to the California Fire Department San Luis Obispo Ranger Unit. Scott is 52 years old, fair skinned, thinning blond, 6 foot 2 inches and a robust 195 pounds. A San Luis Obispo native, he was educated there through high school and through a number of CFD training programs state wide. Scott is descended from a Kansas farm family, whose patriarch (Scott’s Great Grandfather) took advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862 to claim land in California’s coastal wilderness area. Scott’s father was born in 1912 and apparently lived on the homestead for a number of years, eventually moving with his family to San Luis Obispo. Scott’s father was selected for officer training in 1932 and was initially stationed at Fort Hunter Liggett and served in various locations until retirement in 1947 in San Luis Obispo where Scott remained with his mother.

Scott consistently wears a grumpy gimlet-eyed expression of constant irritation telegraphing to all about him his ill-concealed contempt for intellectuals and conflict with a world that does not suit him very much. Scott is regarded among his cohorts as a not-very-friendly-guy with a talent for command, particularly in risky fire situations, and for being generally tough on subordinates as well as for spiking his frequent tirades about good people losing control of the world to intellectuals and lawyers with shit and ’fuck’ expletives. While clearly an effective up front leader in active