Corps had built in the 1930s, called the Control Road, contained the right flank. Walk Moore Canyon sat perpendicular to the two lines, between the houses and the flames, and connected the legs of the
H
.
Though Walk Moore Canyon was thick with ponderosa pines and cured logs, the incident commander planned to use the dry and rolling wash to push the fire around the subdivision. When the Dude approached the homes, firefighters would intentionally burn out the canyon, thereby blackening the fuel between the fire and the houses and forcing the flames into the unburned forest just beneath the rim. The key to the operation lay in an old jeep trail threading through the canyon.
The day before, a bulldozer had widened the trail into a fire line, and seven crews piled into the upper third of the mile-long wash. Around noon on the 26th, the hotshots closest to the top of Walk Moore started burning out while the other six crews widened the line and watched for spot fires. The operation didn’t start well. Embers from the burnout immediately rode plumes of smoke across the lineand ignited multiple spots just beneath houses in Bonita Creek. One spot took an entire hotshot crew to control.
They didn’t know it at the time, but far more dangerous than these spot fires was the effect of the hotshots’ burnout. It poured additional heat, moisture, and energy into the smoke column, which now billowed into the base of a fully developed thunderstorm. Firefighters coming to the Dude from six states could see the mushroom cloud, a pillar of gray boiling into the otherwise clear sky, from more than a hundred miles away. Inside Walk Moore Canyon, the day looked overcast.
“If it’s burning like this now, imagine what it’s going to be doing at one P.M .,” one hotshot told his superintendent. Upon entering the canyon, another simply quoted Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade”: “Into the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred.”
—
The Perryville inmate crew was one of the seven crews tasked with the burning operation in Walk Moore Canyon. Five hotshot crews worked above them, and one, the Navajo Scouts, below. Shortly after 2 P.M ., the Perryville inmates huddled tightly around a ten-gallon water can just delivered via ATV. They’d been building fire line nonstop since 1 A.M ., and most hadn’t had a drink in hours.
Unlike hotshot crews, Perryville used a rotating cast of superintendents, and on June 26, Dave LaTour, a professional firefighter from Tucson with a Tom Selleck mustache, commanded the crew. Beneath LaTour were seventeen inmates and two guards—Sandra Bachman and Larry Terra—who also acted as squad bosses.
In most cases, inmate crews aren’t used for frontline assignments, but when the Dude broke, the incident commander made an exception and requested Perryville by name. He’d recently worked with the inmates on a fire outside Prescott and considered the crew capable and hardworking.
Many firefighters hold inmate crews in similar regard. After serving their sentences, it’s not uncommon for former inmate firefighters to get jobs on wildland crews. Southern California first used prisonerson the line in 1949, and other states quickly adopted the program. Inmates proved an effective and inexpensive source of labor. In 1990, Perryville prison paid firefighters forty to fifty cents an hour to do largely the same job as hotshots. Working on the crew was more about pride than payment, and the prisoners competed fiercely for positions on Perryville.
“You were somethin’ special. You know what I mean?” said Perryville firefighter Steven Pender. “It was like,
that’s
the fire crew. You gotta be elite to get on that.”
Predictably, Perryville’s crew members were a varied lot. Among them were Curtis Springfield, an artist in for assaulting his girlfriend; Geoff Hatch, convicted of burglary and theft; and James Ellis, serving a twenty-year sentence for manslaughter. Each was immensely proud
H
.
Though Walk Moore Canyon was thick with ponderosa pines and cured logs, the incident commander planned to use the dry and rolling wash to push the fire around the subdivision. When the Dude approached the homes, firefighters would intentionally burn out the canyon, thereby blackening the fuel between the fire and the houses and forcing the flames into the unburned forest just beneath the rim. The key to the operation lay in an old jeep trail threading through the canyon.
The day before, a bulldozer had widened the trail into a fire line, and seven crews piled into the upper third of the mile-long wash. Around noon on the 26th, the hotshots closest to the top of Walk Moore started burning out while the other six crews widened the line and watched for spot fires. The operation didn’t start well. Embers from the burnout immediately rode plumes of smoke across the lineand ignited multiple spots just beneath houses in Bonita Creek. One spot took an entire hotshot crew to control.
They didn’t know it at the time, but far more dangerous than these spot fires was the effect of the hotshots’ burnout. It poured additional heat, moisture, and energy into the smoke column, which now billowed into the base of a fully developed thunderstorm. Firefighters coming to the Dude from six states could see the mushroom cloud, a pillar of gray boiling into the otherwise clear sky, from more than a hundred miles away. Inside Walk Moore Canyon, the day looked overcast.
“If it’s burning like this now, imagine what it’s going to be doing at one P.M .,” one hotshot told his superintendent. Upon entering the canyon, another simply quoted Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade”: “Into the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred.”
—
The Perryville inmate crew was one of the seven crews tasked with the burning operation in Walk Moore Canyon. Five hotshot crews worked above them, and one, the Navajo Scouts, below. Shortly after 2 P.M ., the Perryville inmates huddled tightly around a ten-gallon water can just delivered via ATV. They’d been building fire line nonstop since 1 A.M ., and most hadn’t had a drink in hours.
Unlike hotshot crews, Perryville used a rotating cast of superintendents, and on June 26, Dave LaTour, a professional firefighter from Tucson with a Tom Selleck mustache, commanded the crew. Beneath LaTour were seventeen inmates and two guards—Sandra Bachman and Larry Terra—who also acted as squad bosses.
In most cases, inmate crews aren’t used for frontline assignments, but when the Dude broke, the incident commander made an exception and requested Perryville by name. He’d recently worked with the inmates on a fire outside Prescott and considered the crew capable and hardworking.
Many firefighters hold inmate crews in similar regard. After serving their sentences, it’s not uncommon for former inmate firefighters to get jobs on wildland crews. Southern California first used prisonerson the line in 1949, and other states quickly adopted the program. Inmates proved an effective and inexpensive source of labor. In 1990, Perryville prison paid firefighters forty to fifty cents an hour to do largely the same job as hotshots. Working on the crew was more about pride than payment, and the prisoners competed fiercely for positions on Perryville.
“You were somethin’ special. You know what I mean?” said Perryville firefighter Steven Pender. “It was like,
that’s
the fire crew. You gotta be elite to get on that.”
Predictably, Perryville’s crew members were a varied lot. Among them were Curtis Springfield, an artist in for assaulting his girlfriend; Geoff Hatch, convicted of burglary and theft; and James Ellis, serving a twenty-year sentence for manslaughter. Each was immensely proud
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