Randy Cassingham's Blog

I was called out last week for Yet Another Wildfire, this time just over the county line from Boulder, about 20 minutes from my house. This time we weren't quite as lucky: one of the air tankers "bombing" the fire with retardant crashed, killing both of the crewmen aboard.

As you may recall, my wife and I do communications for the Red Cross in the mountainous terrain where cell phones don't work well. Just after the crash, my phone rang: the Communications Team Leader asked if we could come in to work, since things were in chaos. It turned out that they're close enough to civilization that they didn't really need us (cell phones work pretty well there), so we were released after just one day.

At the same time, there was a fire in the hills right above Boulder. It was pretty big for an "in-town" fire: 400 acres or so (photo below). Being interested in how stupid people can be, you'll appreciate this: a helicopter dropping water on the fire had to ask the police to clear people from around the lake he was dipping water out of because so many people were gathered around to watch it was getting dangerous. (Duh!) If that wasn't bad enough, another officer was dispatched out to have a talk with a paraglider who was trying to get a close look at the fire! If that wasn't bad enough, he was in the way -- of a tanker plane! Even I am continuously amazed at how stupid people can be.