Lulu Miller
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
So the Forest Service started doing what we call a prescribed burn.
Basically, says Rita, they burned down a little patch of forest.
And one windy spring day in 1980 at a place called Mack Lake, the Forest Service started a fire that they probably shouldn't have.
So at 10 in the morning, Dick and his crew go out into the woods.
Start setting up perimeters, and they begin lighting a few stands of shrubs.
That's Bob Berner, best name ever for a firefighter.
The forest guys jump into their bulldozers, trying to plow trenches alongside the fire.
Within six hours, it had burned over 20,000 acres.
It's one of the fastest moving fires ever documented.
Growing houses in the area that got burnt.
Remember the guy down there in the corner?
Their houses were okay, but 41 houses were destroyed.
He told me that Jim had been a postman for a few years, but just loved birds so much that he took a huge pay cut to come and help protect the warbler.