Thread by @stuartpalley

(n/n) Story time! | The making of “Feather River’s Revenge” October 2020, I was on assignment for the US Forest Service, it was the middle of the night... (continued below) #terraflamma #wildfire #nftphotography.

(1/n): I’d just spent a week at the Glass Fire in Napa on assignment for National Geographic, after weeks of back and forth covering the 2020 NorCal Fire Siege. I’d barely been home, my dog was at daycare more than with me, and I was exhausted, physically and mentally.

(2/n): My equipment was falling apart, rubber grips peeling, sensors filthy, lens zoom cams gritty with ash and dust. My nomex fire pants had holes in them, my leather boot laces tied at multiple points after breaking from hiking all over and the heat.

(3/n): I’d planned to be gone for a week when the call came in from the US Forest Service, asking if I could commit to helping out the incident management team (IMT) and their Public Information (PIO) staff on making photos of the fire to share with the public.

(4/n): I had small outdoor wedding to attend, and after 5 weeks nearly nonstop at fires, was hesitant to say “yes.” But I knew firefighters toiling away at the blaze, and the North Complex outside of Quincy was a fire corridor close to my heart and soul.

(5/n): We negotiated a 4 day assignment that would require 16 hour days to capture all the items the team needed for the archive, public messaging, future training, etc. My first day briefing in at the Incident Command Post (ICP) I learned of a *massive* firing operation.

(6/n): A firing operation is when firefighters intentionally set fires ahead of the main body of fire, to help moderate and corral the blaze within a containment box. Sometimes those boxes can be 100,000+ acres and many miles long.

(7/n): This fire was no exception, having destroyed hundreds of homes, burned 200k acres, and cost multiple human lives. This fire needed to be put to rest, and with contained at 90% the firing would help increase containment to full.

(8/n) Enter the Feather River Hotshots, one of 50 or so elite US Forest Service crews in just California alien working to fight this blaze. However, the odds were already stacked against them.

(9/n) In the first days of the same fire, their entire crew base in Berry Creek was destroyed. Crew barracks, family homes, their extra tools, personal gear, mementoes, years of hotshot history, gone with the whole damn town.

10/n) The crew was off at another fire, so they couldn’t get in to rescue anything. Only the crew chief made it back in to save his home, which miraculously survived.

(11/n)One Feather Fire hotshots’ family was living with their parents while he was off fighting the next fire. They hadn’t even had time to proesse the trauma, just onto the next literal fire to put out.

(12/n) Back at the ICP, I find out that it is FEATHER RIVER doing the firing operation! Except firing ops don’t happen at set times. It depends on the perfect weather combination, usually at night. Once its green lighted, they are off to the races.

(13/n) It could happen at 10pm, it could happen at 3am, there was no way to know. The sun was setting and I’d been up since 5am, and the evening shift briefing was happening for plans that night.

(14/n) introduced myself to the crew and the division supervisor that I’d be around for the firing operation. The firing was long PG&E “penstocks” or water lines that dropped 5000 feet into the Feather River Gorge.

(15/n) It was a 45 degree slope and one wrong step would mean a twisted ankle or worse. They loaned me an ATV to get around on, but it had a flat. I went to take a nap away from the fire to recharge for the firing op.

(16/n) All of a sudden the firing was a “GO” on the radio, and i woke up and raced over to where they were preparing to fire. I chugged a diet red bull to wake up from my groggy state.

(17/n) In minutes the crew descended like clockwork on the hill, dropping fire with drop torches to increase containment, moving quickly and with propose, fighting this blaze that had taken their base.

(18/n) They worked fast downhill as I made photos, and I knew I needed to get down to the river as they finished to get the down canyon angle Only issue, it was 90 minutes from gorge top to river bottom, 35 miles of winding dirt and country roads.

(19/n) It was 2am when I started driving, I’d been up for 21 hours. But I had to push. I got down to the bottom of the hill, and rounded a corner, and BOOM, there was the photo. It was nearly 4am as I made frames. Fire on the mountain, above water, a crew dancing with flame.

(20/n) Eventually the crew finished their work, and since I was on assignment, was actually able to give one of the rew members a ride back to their buggy. We loaded the drip torches amongst my tropods.

(21/n) I’d been up for 25 hours straight. I slept like the dead, satisfied with the image, and even prouder to have documented Feather River giving the North Complex fire the last one-two punch to button it up. Feather River had gotten their revenge against the blaze.

Fin.

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