The Complete Hotshots

Introduction

Introduction

IHC, Interagency Hotshot Crews, are one of the backbones of wildland firefighting. Yet they were largely unknown to the general public prior to the disaster at the 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire in which nineteen members of the twenty-person Granite Mountain Hotshots crew were killed in a single burnover. Their position was overrun and, despite deploying fire shelters, the manzanita burned so hot that it melted the foil shelters (well past 1,500 degrees—three times the heat that a home oven can produce and on a multi-acre scale). I can highly recommend the movie Only the Brave, though it was made long after these stories were written.

These teams drive as close to fires as possible and then hike in. Often with minimal support, they are the ground team that directly confronts the blaze. A smokejumper is only called on the worst fires or when there is no other way to reach the fire quickly from the ground. A local fire department isn’t equipped or trained to handle a large wildfire—between local fire and the elite smokejumpers is the gap that IHCs walk into.

Hotshots cut a brush-free line with chainsaws and specialized axes called Pulaskis (axe on one side, adze on the other—essentially a sharpened hoe). They shovel dirt over flames to put out the fire and they dig up hotspots so they can drown them with portable pumps using inch-and-a-half hoses before the embers flare up and reignite a tinder-dry forest. They even use fire in controlled backfires to rob the main fire of its fuel—truly fighting fire with fire.

When Candace insisted that she wanted to start her own IHC, who was I to argue.

I found Luke easily enough. After researching so many active military scenarios for my other series, it was time to start telling the stories of those whose service hadn’t ended by choice. The first wounded warrior I wrote was Lois Lang in NSDQ (Night Stalkers Don’t Quit). She had lost her foot, whereas Luke had lost something deep inside.

I love the contrast of a woman so sure of herself, helping a man who once was. They would remain the heart of the team for the rest of the short story series, something I always enjoy.