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Photographer- Firefighter on Attacking Wildfires |
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By Tom Foreman Inside Base Camp |
| May 7, 2003 |
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The first time I encountered a full-blown, forest fire was in Yosemite National Park in 1990. My TV crew and I arrived in the town of El Portal well past dusk to find a blue gloom of night and smoke draping the tiny cluster of houses. All day, firefighters had been making a stand in the hills around town, and as we walked toward their position, we saw small blazes flickering everywhere. Our throats and eyes burned, the crackle of two-way radios echoed, and it looked like a miserable, slow night of waiting on the battlefront. Then a puff of wind swept the valley. The flares a hundred yards away leapt skyward. The treetops exploded and the fire rushed upon our position faster than I ever thought possible. A team of firefighters emerged from the inferno yelling for us to get out. The flames roared overhead, and we ran. People who face these fatally unpredictable fires, year in and out, are a unique breed; and Mark Thiessen is one of them. He is a National Geographic photographer who spends most of the year taking pictures of dinosaur bones, fossils, people; but Mark is also a trained wildland firefighter and every summer he heads west to fight and photograph. Tom Foreman: You have described wildland fires as the only force of nature that man tries to control. What do you mean? Mark Thiessen: Hurricanes; we run out of the way. Tornadoes; we run out of the way. But with fires, we try and control them. And a large fire, you can't stop it directly. You can just kind of herd it around a little bit. When I see a big raging front coming, I feel very small, very fragile. It's like standing in a pool of gasoline and you're just waiting for someone to light a match. If you're looking at a crown fire, a crown fire can put off as much energy as a Hiroshima nuclear bomb every 15 minutes. Tom Foreman: And what you mean by that [crown fire] is where the fire is up in the tops of the trees and it's just rushing through? Mark Thiessen: Right, 20 to 30 yards (18 to 27 meters) it can leap—in seconds. And you can't stop that, you just have to get out of the way and come back and fight it another way. Tom Foreman: And yet, you want to be there? Mark Thiessen: Yeah. It's not that I want to be there for my own personal thrill. I want to be there to capture this culture of the wildland firefighter. I want to show in my pictures the expression on the people's faces. Tom Foreman: What do you think that you find so fascinating about fire? Mark Thiessen: What I find fascinating about it is that it's one of nature's fiercest forces and it's unpredictable, and you're just right there looking at something that's been going on for thousands of years. Tom Foreman: Unless you've been to a western wildfire, I think it's difficult to comprehend the ruggedness of the terrain and just how incredibly explosive these things can be. Mark Thiessen: That's right. The western mountains are steep, very steep, you know, we're talking 60 percent grade, 45 percent grade. Tom Foreman: And you're already, in many cases, at 10, 11, 12,000 feet (3,048 to 3,658 meters) in the air… Mark Thiessen: …and if you're a firefighter, you're carrying hoses, all your gear, shovels, chain saws, and you're humping it up and down these slopes, digging fire line all day long. But, you know, before you've even gone into that situation, you've looked at your safety zones and your escape routes. A lot of people think that the flames are what gets you and it's not. You can always see where the flames are, but once the fire is out, you're mopping up—that means, you know, putting out embers that are smoldering. And, days or weeks later, trees can just come tumbling down without any warning. Tom Foreman: You were nearly taken out by a boulder. Mark Thiessen: A boulder the size of a washing machine came running down after some guys went up a hillside and an air tanker dropped a load. But that can happen. The roots have been burned that held that rock in place. And that's where people get killed; where your guard is down. Tom Foreman: Is it difficult to come to grips with the reality of danger out there after you get used to it? Mark Thiessen: Yeah, part of wildland fire fighting school, is they teach you not to get complacent. They teach you to always be aware of what's going on around you, and it becomes second nature to look for potential risks that can get you. But there is nothing else like it that has this much adventure and this much fun, because all of these firefighters will tell you they love doing what they're doing, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. Inside Base Camp's Tom Foreman on Work, Guests Presidents and prisoners; scientists and soldiers; the heroic and the hated—all have sat down with National Geographic Channel Senior Anchor Tom Foreman as he has traveled the globe for the past 25 years. Starting out in small town radio in Alabama, he progressed through local television to join ABC Network News when he was 30. For a decade he covered virtually every major news story for World News Tonight, Nightline, 20/20 and Good Morning America. Now, as host and managing editor of the Emmy Award-winning Inside Base Camp with Tom Foreman, he brings his years of experience—and dozens of riveting guests—to the National Geographic Channel at 12:30 p.m. ET Monday through Friday, and Sundays at 11:00 a.m. As the show's name implies, Foreman asks the intimate, revealing questions that cut to core of the passions that drive his guests. Read an interview with Tom Foreman>> Recent Inside Base Camp interviews: Actor Danny Glover on Africa Activism>> For Reporter Laura Blumenfeld, Revenge Is Family Affair in Middle East>> Aliens "Absolutely" Exist, SETI Astronomer Seth Shostak Believes>> U.S. Unprepared for Bioterrorism, Expert Laurie Garrett Says>> "Superhero" Peter Knights Swoops in to Stop Poachers>> Q&A: Extreme Environmentalist Leslie James Pickering on "Radical Change">> Rocker Ted Nugent: Hunters Are Conservationists>> |
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