cheaper and more efficient to drive the men to blazes, and today hotshots rarely leave their crew buggies behind.
By the nineties, hotshots had evolved into an esteemed organization in the wildland fire community, and the crews became accelerated pipelines for career-driven firefighters. In a matter of a few large fire seasons, a hotshot could spend more than 250 shifts on fires—more than most structural firefighters spend on blazes over their entire careers. Because of their ample fire-line experience, a select few hotshots go on to highly skilled positions in fire management, becoming smoke jumpers, incident commanders, investigators of fire fatalities, or, like Cook, academics whose research can shape the future of fire-line decision-making.
Though the early hotshots were much more militarized and in vastly better condition than the civilian teams Forest Service rangers like Ed Pulaski had raised to battle violent blazes decades earlier, they still relied on only a few qualified firefighters to make decisions. The biggest difference between the new crews and the old militias came down to cultivated pride. The young hotshots believed they were the best firefighting force ever created, and that anybody who cared to claim the title needed to earn it first.
—
While Crew 7 were trying to become hotshots, during one shift on a blaze in Oregon, a firefighter from another crew grabbed a can ofspray paint and drew a line in the middle of the road. Next to it he wrote, DON ’ T CROSS IT . Many firefighters simply refused to talk to the guys or eyed them up in the chow line. The Forest Service firefighters’ concern, whether justified or, much more likely, not, was that a municipal crew wouldn’t have their backs on the fire line. Marsh and his men were officially given a chance to prove themselves in 2007, when Crew 7 was made a hotshot training crew—one step beneath actual certification.
By then he’d changed Crew 7’s name to Granite Mountain and upgraded its second-rate gear to the best equipment available. A sign in their gear cache read, TOTAL COST OF A WELL EQUIPPED HOTSHOT: $4,000. Marsh sold the vans and bought two $150,000 white-and-red crew hauls that, when parked beside the green trucks of the Forest Service and the yellow trucks of the Bureau of Land Management, announced that Granite Mountain was proudly different. Perhaps best of all, Marsh moved the men out of the rat-infested radiation barn by the lake and into the downtown fire station. The city gave Marsh $15,000 to fix it up. To get the most out of the money, he and the crew did much of the work themselves and cut costs wherever possible, even scrounging chairs from the side of the road or the dump. They had Steed’s brother install the linoleum floors, inlaying in the white floor black tiles that read GMIHC (Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew). If any rookie touched the black tiles, he had to do ten push-ups.
Granite Mountain’s two seasons as a hotshot-crew-in-training were intense. It started with a live certification drill, similar to the one 2013’s crew would be going through in Prescott National Forest but with considerably more scrutiny. A pair of longtime Forest Service hotshot superintendents shadowed Marsh and his firefighters as they were put through a series of tests meant to replicate any scenario hotshots might encounter on the fire line. The other superintendents threw at Marsh and his crew a drill that demanded they guide in air tankers, coordinate fire-line operations with bulldozers and a half-dozen fire engines, operate without Marsh as superintendent, and decide when it was safe to attack a blaze and when they needed to stepback and watch the fire burn. The crew put out rapidly expanding spot fires, felled enormous trees, and dealt with medical emergencies in the form of bee stings, heat exhaustion, chainsaw cuts, and burns.
Marsh and Granite Mountain excelled, but they wouldn’t hear the other superintendents’
By the nineties, hotshots had evolved into an esteemed organization in the wildland fire community, and the crews became accelerated pipelines for career-driven firefighters. In a matter of a few large fire seasons, a hotshot could spend more than 250 shifts on fires—more than most structural firefighters spend on blazes over their entire careers. Because of their ample fire-line experience, a select few hotshots go on to highly skilled positions in fire management, becoming smoke jumpers, incident commanders, investigators of fire fatalities, or, like Cook, academics whose research can shape the future of fire-line decision-making.
Though the early hotshots were much more militarized and in vastly better condition than the civilian teams Forest Service rangers like Ed Pulaski had raised to battle violent blazes decades earlier, they still relied on only a few qualified firefighters to make decisions. The biggest difference between the new crews and the old militias came down to cultivated pride. The young hotshots believed they were the best firefighting force ever created, and that anybody who cared to claim the title needed to earn it first.
—
While Crew 7 were trying to become hotshots, during one shift on a blaze in Oregon, a firefighter from another crew grabbed a can ofspray paint and drew a line in the middle of the road. Next to it he wrote, DON ’ T CROSS IT . Many firefighters simply refused to talk to the guys or eyed them up in the chow line. The Forest Service firefighters’ concern, whether justified or, much more likely, not, was that a municipal crew wouldn’t have their backs on the fire line. Marsh and his men were officially given a chance to prove themselves in 2007, when Crew 7 was made a hotshot training crew—one step beneath actual certification.
By then he’d changed Crew 7’s name to Granite Mountain and upgraded its second-rate gear to the best equipment available. A sign in their gear cache read, TOTAL COST OF A WELL EQUIPPED HOTSHOT: $4,000. Marsh sold the vans and bought two $150,000 white-and-red crew hauls that, when parked beside the green trucks of the Forest Service and the yellow trucks of the Bureau of Land Management, announced that Granite Mountain was proudly different. Perhaps best of all, Marsh moved the men out of the rat-infested radiation barn by the lake and into the downtown fire station. The city gave Marsh $15,000 to fix it up. To get the most out of the money, he and the crew did much of the work themselves and cut costs wherever possible, even scrounging chairs from the side of the road or the dump. They had Steed’s brother install the linoleum floors, inlaying in the white floor black tiles that read GMIHC (Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew). If any rookie touched the black tiles, he had to do ten push-ups.
Granite Mountain’s two seasons as a hotshot-crew-in-training were intense. It started with a live certification drill, similar to the one 2013’s crew would be going through in Prescott National Forest but with considerably more scrutiny. A pair of longtime Forest Service hotshot superintendents shadowed Marsh and his firefighters as they were put through a series of tests meant to replicate any scenario hotshots might encounter on the fire line. The other superintendents threw at Marsh and his crew a drill that demanded they guide in air tankers, coordinate fire-line operations with bulldozers and a half-dozen fire engines, operate without Marsh as superintendent, and decide when it was safe to attack a blaze and when they needed to stepback and watch the fire burn. The crew put out rapidly expanding spot fires, felled enormous trees, and dealt with medical emergencies in the form of bee stings, heat exhaustion, chainsaw cuts, and burns.
Marsh and Granite Mountain excelled, but they wouldn’t hear the other superintendents’
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