Citizen self-reliance - it's not just for hurricanes

 

From Wyoming comes a tale of citizens fighting fires, even after the authorities recalled all "official" firefighters to safer places.

When the Elk Fire was bearing down on all three sides of the Horseshoe subdivision west of Dayton, evacuating the area was the last thing on resident Warren Tritschler’s mind.

He wasn’t going to leave the home he and his wife spent 30 years of their lives building. He was going to do everything he could to save it.

So, when fire roared down the hill, an 8- to 10-foot-tall inferno headed for his home overnight Friday into early Saturday morning, Tritschler was there with a garden hose in hand.

He used the hose to put out a burning tree that was too close for comfort. He doused softball-sized embers that blew in, threatening to set his home on fire. And he wetted down a neighbor’s well, trying to prevent its destruction.

Tritschler kept spraying with his garden hose until a transformer blew and the power went out, cutting off his water supply.

But he wasn’t done in. He hopped into a buggy outfitted with a weed sprayer, using that to keep things wet all around his home.

“I put out a lot of fire with that weed sprayer,” he told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday. “I can’t imagine what I could have done with an actual fire truck.”

Tritschler is one of the many self-described “guys in blue jeans” — or as others have called them, Hillbilly Hotshots — who have outfitted their own trucks with water tanks.

They are self-appointed protectors, patrolling their own ranches and neighbors’ homes, alert for embers carried far from the Elk Fire’s frontlines, doing what they can to protect their land and their homes.

“I think there’s a misconception here, too, because the volunteer firefighters and these guys in blue jeans are the ones who are actually working together,” he said. “Going against the grain of the feds. The feds are the ones who called all of the firefighters off of (Horseshoe subdivision). They were trying to get us to fall back to the IXO (Ranch). And there’s a bunch of those guys who said no, and just stayed.”

There's more at the link, including photographs and a video interview.

I was glad to read that report.  It shows yet again that by using our own resources, we can often deal with emergencies where local, regional and national authorities - hamstrung by red tape and disputes between agencies - might be stymied.

It reminded me of tales my late mother told me about the German bombing of Britain during World War II.  She spent many nights on the roofs of buildings working the fire watch.  She was "armed" with a gas mask, a bucket of water, a bucket of sand, and a stirrup pump.  Here's a World War II photograph (courtesy of Wikipedia) showing a woman doing that job.

If a German incendiary bomb (shown below - a lightweight device designed to set fire to roofs and buildings, rather than explode and cause blast damage) fell on the roof, her job was to grab it (using a pair of fireplace tongs, if necessary) and drop it into the bucket of sand, where it could burn itself out without causing further damage.

She would then use the stirrup pump and bucket of water to extinguish any flames already started on the roof itself.

She, and thousands of women like her, kept Britain's homes and shops and factories from being destroyed while their fathers, husbands and sons fought the Germans in the "shooting war".  Without such citizen involvement, Britain would have been far worse off, and might have suffered damage so crippling that it could not have sustained its war effort.  My late father and other servicemen deeply appreciated their hard work.  He told me more than once that my mother had faced just as much danger as he had during the war, albeit in different ways.

Those Wyoming citizen firefighters are acting in the same tradition.  Well done, those people!

Peter