Paradise by Lizzie Johnson EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Lizzie Johnson
- Language: English
- Genre: Disaster Relief
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 5.9 MB
- Price: Free
DAWN AT JARBO GAP
For weeks, Captain Matt McKenzie had longed for rain. It would
signal the end of wildfire season, which should have concluded by
now, but November had brought only a parched wind. The jet
stream was sluggish, failing to push rainclouds up and over the Sierra
Nevada into Northern California. Since May 1, 2018, Butte County—150
miles northeast of San Francisco and 80 miles north of Sacramento—had
received only 0.88 inches of precipitation. The low rainfall broke local
records. It was now November 8, and with three weeks to go until
Thanksgiving, the sky remained a stubborn, unbroken blue. Plants withered
and died, their precious moisture sucked into the atmosphere. Oak and
madrone shook off their brittle leaves.
Ponderosa pine needles fell like the raindrops that refused to come,
pinging against the fire station’s tin roof and waking McKenzie from a deep
sleep around 5:30 .. A pinecone landed with a thud. He curled up on the
twin bed in his station bedroom, feet poking from under the thin comforter,
and oriented himself in the darkness. He didn’t feel ready for the day to
begin. Blackness edged the only window. Outside, gale force winds wailed
through the hallway. He pulled aside the window blinds for confirmation:
no rain. The sliver of a waxing moon and winking stars pricked the sky’s
endless dark. In an hour, the sun would rise.
After more than two decades of firefighting, McKenzie, forty-two,
possessed a certain clairvoyance. He had dedicated half his life to the
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, helping to battle
conflagrations that sprouted in the vastness of California during its fire
season. In such a huge state, urban departments could cover only so much
ground; there had to be a larger force to stop fires before they burned too far
or too fast in the wilderness bordering cities and towns. Known as Cal Fire,
the state agency was one of the largest dedicated wildland firefighting
forces in the world.
McKenzie had learned to read the agency’s weather reports like tea
leaves. When conditions were right, all it took was a spark to ignite an
inferno. McKenzie and his crew were trained to anticipate and react
aggressively, jumping into action while the fires were still small and easily
contained. Nothing was left to chance. They did this the old-fashioned way,
by digging dirt firebreaks and spraying water from their engines. The
method was effective: Only 2 to 3 percent of the wildfires they tackled ever
escaped their control. But fires broke out all over California every year, and
members of his outpost, Station 36, were called upon to help quench the
most destructive ones as part of the state’s mutual aid agreement, by which
jurisdictions pledged to help each other out during emergencies. The crew
spent the year crisscrossing the state, from barren Siskiyou to coastal San
Diego.
Innocuous mishaps—a golf club or lawn mower striking a rock, a
malfunctioning electric livestock fence, a trailer dragging against the
asphalt, a catalytic converter spewing hot carbon—could beget a blaze.
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