The Hi Meadow Fire

The Hi Meadow Fire was named for the place of its origin: along the road, in Bailey, CO, named "Hi Meadow Road". That origin is a mere few miles from my house.

When the fire broke out, I was at work, along with most of the rest of Bailey. I got the first call from my wife, Tracy (KCØEFM) around 2:30pm. I called Padre, our neighbor and ARES EC, and he confirmed that district 6 had been activated. I left work early to catch the first bus home, which left downtown Denver at 3:25pm.

Operating inside an RTD bus can be a trying experience; it is a big, metal box which acts as an excellent shield, even when one sits beside a window. Add to that the impression that propagation just sucked that afternoon, and it adds up to a frustrated ham operator trying to get to the scene. Lesson number one: carry spare power for the HT, even if it does make your pack heavy.

When the bus rounded Windy Point, I finally got the chance to check into the net. I was able to rendevous with Daniel, NØBN, at the Safeway in Conifer, where ARES Staging was set up. After changing a flat tire, we picked up my Jeep at Pine Junction and he talked me through the road block on highway 285; a few minutes later, we were at Platte Canyon Fire Station Number 2, where incident command was set up.

It turned out that Tracy had already been there, and had gone back to the High School to prepare food for all; it was quite a volunteer effort. There were already some hams there, among them, John (don't know his callsign), Dutch (KØAWS) and Al (KCØDTP). Running things was Jeff, KIØFT.

After Daniel checked in, I was informed of his need for my clothes. No, really! Daniel had his Red Card^[1], and he was needed on the fire lines for communication. Now, in order to reach his assignment, Daniel had to have long pants and boots; he was wearing nylon shorts and Tevas, and the Sheriff had closed access into Burland, my subdivision, so it was a clothes swap or nothing. Fortunately, we're not too far off on sizes, and, after donning the Nomex, he was off.

It is worth making an important diversion here to note that the whole operation was being run, amateur radio-wise, by District 23, for a few good reasons.

First, Park County is rural; despite the fact that Bailey is almost a suburb of Denver, with many residents working in the Denver metro area (like I do), we're still a rural county, with rural infrastructure, and with a rural mindset. Not that that's bad, and it's not like a "Deliverance" rural, but it just needs to be known and accounted when dealing with something like this.

Therefore, District 6, while more than willing, was simply not able to field the personnel nor the expertise needed for such an operation. We're still working with the SO on arrangements for our support, we're still trying to organize ourselves into a cohesive group, we're still trying to organize formal training for our members... You get the idea.

Second, since Bailey nearly borders Jefferson County, the fire quickly spread into Jeffco, and D23 was the proper organization to handle the ARES/RACES side of the response.

Thirdly, they had training and infrastructure in place which was up to the task; they also had a much greater reserve of people from which they could draw to place in the necessary positions; did I mention that Park County is pretty rural?

While Daniel prepared to go out to the fire lines, the rest of us were out at the flag pole, with a mobile rig, a car battery and a quarter-wave ground plane antenna. My first thought was that we were out of the way being outside; but it seems more likely that as ham radio operators, we were something of an unknown quantity, so we were relagated to the flag pole.

My first assignment was to man the "Communications" station at the tables in the Operations Center; I was the only ham allowed inside, so that we weren't in the way. What I was supposed to do, was to be one link in a two-person chain between the personnel commanding the response effort, and the crew outside at the flag pole. So, the way it was supposed to work, was that Ops or Resources would ask me a question, I would go to the window behind me and scream for Dutch (KØAWS), and he would relay the message out to the crew at the flag pole. The response was delivered similarly.

At first, it appeared that the various agencies had trouble with the 800Mhz/low-band incompatibilities; someone mentioned to me about how the 800Mhz system was in place, but the HTs were too expensive for the individuals to buy, so the system, in its current state, was useless. After that, they were handing out cell phones, but there's really no cell coverage up there, so that failed, too.

Well, after it became obvious that we were the only mode of communication with the fire crews, the ham operators were moved inside command, and placed at the mapping table. After that, things went much more smoothly. As a side note, at one time, Joe, KR6NA, a ham and a firefighter, reported one-hundred foot flames and crowning.

Jeff prepared to go out to relieve one of the hams on the line, and he placed me in temporary charge of comms until our own relief arrived. They did so about 40 minutes later, and we handed off to them around 0015 Tuesday morning. By then, Sheriff Wegener was allowing residents into the upper part of Burland, so we were OK to go home; we counted our blessings and left.

Lesson 1

Tuesday morning dawned with the haze of smoke from the fire hanging in the air. I checked in to the resource net, making myself available. NCS asked if I had a "Red Card" ^[2]; not even knowing what it was, I answered in the negative.

Until now, the prevailing wind had generally been out of the west, blowing the fire away from our house, into Jefferson County and toward the town of Pine. Sometime in the morning of the 13th, that wind shifted to blow from the south east; pushing the fire back toward our house.

Naturally, that caused my wife and I to get ready to evacuate at a moments' notice. Since we both have a Jeep Wrangler, there's not a lot of stuff we can carry. We went through the house, choosing things that we'd like to keep and mentally abandoning the rest. It's an interesting experience, going through all your possessions and thinking, "that can burn, that can burn, that I want to keep..." We filled our little Jeeps with the bare essentials, resolved to grab the cats and go.

After we completed that, we went over to a friends' house to see how they were doing. While we were in route, we met Ron and his family, who live on Lo Meadow Drive.

Ron was, obviously, prevented from going to his house, so he and his family were staying with Kevin and his family, a mutual friend.

OK, so we're stopped in the middle of the road, talking to him Jeep-to-minivan; no big deal, there's not much traffic on these dirt roads in rural Bailey. Anyway, he asks me what we've been up to, and we told him about our experience the previous night. At this, he got kinda excited and told us about how one of the news channels had reported that "a bunch of ham radio operators saved the lives of a fire crew last night".

At one point the previous night, Jeff, KIØFT, had grabbed Tracy and sat her down at the flagpole and told her, with some urgency, to take good notes. It was that effort in which she was involved that was apparently so successful.

We learned later, during the D23 debrief, that during the initial attack on the fire, a crew was forced to retreat from the flames. In doing so, they were driven east toward CO 126, the north-south road between Highway 285 and the town of Pine. They were unsure in which direction to head, so they called in asking for a direction, north or south. It took a while, but the proper direction was given: south. Had they gone north, they would have been blocked, and by then, the fire from which they fled would have engulfed the road itself.

We then joined Kevin, his sons, Ron and his family to go over to another friends' house; George and Michelle lived within sight of the current western edge of the fire. Indeed, when we got there, the smoke was presently blowing toward the house, and through the patches of clear sky we could see the fire on the other side of the steep-walled valley. We could also see fire fighters climing down to the fire to attack it; it was cool.

George had packed up his own family and shipped them off to places more secure; his neighborhood was not yet required to evacuate, so he stayed to look after the house. He had a handheld scanner, but was having trouble programming it to a particular frequency. I fiddled with it a bit, and got it on to the repeater that we were using. Shortly after that, we bid him good luck and left.

Back at Kevin's house, we sat around and watched the tanker planes go overhead. Kevin related how earlier, they were flying so low over his house, on their drop runs, that he could actually wave to the pilot and how the pilots would see him and wave back.

I had an extra HT, a Yeasu FT-50RD, so I left it with them, set on that repeater we were using. After a bit of socialization, Tracy and I headed home.

Last thing was to check in, once again, with the resource net. I was given an assignment to report to the ICP^[3] and receive further instructions at that time.

Wednesday dawned bright and clear, at least at my house; we breathed a sigh of relief and I got ready and headed out to ICP at 0545 hours local time.

I arrived at the Platte Canyon Fire Station #2 just in time to see them pack it all up and move to the Burland Ball Fields, where the new, much larger ICP was set up. OK, so I jumped back in my Jeep and headed off to the Ball Fields, not too far from my house.

Once there, I met Dutch (KØAWS - a workhorse if ever I saw one) and he relayed to me that I was to wait for one Mark Hall, KD6ZEK, and receive an assignment from him. This I did.

There were a number of Divisions which would be without any comm support, so I was keenly eyed for relative physical fitness, and assigned to be a Radio Operator. Now, I didn't have a Red Card^[4], but the need was apparently so great that since I seemed to be not too clueless, it was deemed necessary to put me out on the line.

FEMA was there, as were several Type 1 "hotshot" fire crews, and they had their own cache of gear. Mark brough me and one other guy back to Platte Canyon #2, and we got Nomex gear, a fire shelter and a Forest Service radio from the cache. After we donned the gear, we got our assignments and headed into the fire.

We went south on CO 126, and I was assigned to Division E. Division E was fighting the fire in and around the Pine Valley Ranch Park. The Division was waiting for some personnel in Pine, so I checked in with the Strike Team Leader. I went around with him for a while, until we settled into a routine, whereby I would simply station myself at the Crystal Lake Lodge and play human repeater. Local comms were handled on the Forest Service radio, and I was the gateway to the larger command structure, via our local 2m repeater.

I was on station at approximately 1030hrs, and our shift ended at about 1915hrs. I went back to ICP to check out (very important!) and there met Daniel, NØBN. He was scheduled to go on a shift the next morning, while I was not yet assigned, so I passed my nomex on to him. We exchanged some chatter and then called it a night.

By Thursday, I had missed too much work, and had to return. As I was driving back up from Denver, I checked in to the resource net, and was informed that ARES had just been given the order to stand down.

A cold front which none of the weather persona had seen had come diving into the area, causing the fire to "lay down" and allowing the fire fighters to get the upper hand on the blaze. At that time, the feds, having finally set up their portable repeater, declared that we hams were no longer necessary, as they had their own comms now, so we were stood down.

The effort to completely stamp out the fire went on for weeks, of course, but the worst of it was over, at least as far as the community was concerned.