From West by Northwest.org Voices of Spencer Creek Norm's Notebook: A Helicopter and a Hometown By Norm Maxwell Aug 20, 2004 It's August. Hot. Dry. Fire season. It's that time of year again and I am stationed at the kilometer long airstrip above Oakridge, Oregon as part of the crew of a fire fighting helicopter. So far we are just standing by but that is likely to change in a big hurry and we could go just about anywhere in the Western U.S. including Alaska. Our helicopter, N509EH, is a twin turbine Bell 212 from Nevada that can either carry a water bucket at the end of a cable to dip in handy lakes and ponds and drop up to three hundred gallons per whack on a fire or transport fire fighters and equipment into terrain inaccessible to wheeled vehicles. A 212 is the same old basic UH-1 airframe that first flew in 1956 and was proven in Viet Nam only it has two engines instead of one. It doesn't fly very well on one engine but it can hopefully make a controlled decent in the event the other should flame out. I remember 509EH from big fire helibases in the past. There is even more emphasis on helicopters this year as a lot of the fleet of big fixed wing tankers or "borate bombers" has been grounded as a few of the ancient aircraft broke up in mid air last year. I saw Second World War B 17s filling this function forty years ago. The fleet got newer but not by much. C 130 # 130 that crashed and burned on the California/Nevada border two years ago was only a couple years younger than me. I live right at the maximum distance you'd want to commute to Oakridge International Airport each day. I drive from Lorane, east to Creswell and across Interstate 5 where I take five miles of back road to Highway 58 which ascends alongside the Middle Fork of the Willamette. I arrive at the airstrip at 0700 each morning where I start my day by walking vigorously up and down the tarmac for four laps and a total of five and a half miles. If we put in a long day, I stay at a motel in Oakridge and walk along Highway 58 in the morning. Being here is a homecoming of sorts. My parents taught at the nearby Westfir High School, five miles from Oakridge, in the late 50s. I started school in the old Hines Lumber Company school in Westfir. All the other boys were going to be loggers "just like Dad" when they grew up. I had no clue I would wind up as a government cull, incapable of getting a real job. We were country cool; We all wore blue jeans with flannel shirts and lace up boots with crepe soles and homemade "bowl" haircuts. Those were good and prosperous times. Any able bodied man who wanted a job had a new pickup with a big red or yellow chainsaw in the back and cut old growth timber ten miles or less from home. Nobody bothered to bring their saw in at night or remove the keys from the ignition of their truck. There was no limit to possibilities for the seniors graduating Westfir High. America was still high on the victory of the Second World War only fifteen years past and the veterans of that conflict circulated amongst us, approaching middle age and apparently free from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. If you didn't want to strain your brain after graduation, you could get a job in a lumber mill that would support a family and usually give you all the overtime you could stand. Californians scoffed at us as simple hicks and didn't yet move up here in droves, fleeing the mess they would make of their state while bringing it with them as they do now. We lived in the "teacherage," an underhanded baseball throw from the company school. I would frequently go home during recess if I felt like it. The paved playground served as our baseball diamond and once a fast pitch came through my bedroom window in a welter of shattered glass. Strike One! The community was tight. Principal Laswell, who's brother drew Snuffy Smith in the Sunday comics, didn't hesitate to render policy guidance on events like rock fights even if they took place off school grounds on a weekend. His glass eye, a souvenir from the battle of Anzio, gave him the bearing of Odin. I attended Sunday school at the little white church in Westfir, not out of any deep religious convictions--but rather so that things would be quiet around the house on Sunday mornings. On weekends, I would frequently travel to the big city of Oakridge with other boys and we would watch the latest Three Stooges movie at the little theater or skate at the Rollerdrome. There was a trail that linked Westfir to Oakridge that crossed the ridge where the airstrip is now. You can still see it from the air when arriving or departing. You could hike the trail or catch a ride in the back of the neighbor's pickup coming or going to Oakridge on nice days. Log trucks with one log loads were a common sight. There were only two television stations available from Eugene and kids weren't riveted to the tube. The railroad tracks passed not fifty meters from the teacherage and I would run outside and wave at my Uncle Harrison who was a conductor and he would wave back from the little open porch behind a car. My friends got involved in this game and we all knew instinctively when his train was due. None of us wore a watch but we could sense the iron horse when it was five minutes out and we would stop playing and wave at Uncle Harrison. When I was six years old, I had a near death experience from hepatitis. I missed a lot of school but was already reading Doctor Dolittle on my own. I can still remember drinking nothing but skim milk and eating baked potatoes and sleeping most of the time. And now I walk five miles for my exercise along Highway 58 through Oakridge in the morning. I am amazed at the change and lack of change at the same time that I see. There is an old shop front filled with the big red and yellow saws that rode proudly in the back of new pickups when I was a child. Now they are curios from a bygone era with no intrinsic value. If there are any loggers left in Oakridge, they are few and far between. There are many old four wheel drive pickups with big tires for sale along the main drag. You can buy one for a thousand dollars or two as they have little practical value and get poor gas mileage. There doesn't seem to be much of a market for these "Bubba trucks" and they gather rust and dust. I brought along the 1961 Westfir High School Log and looked at the photos of the sponsors in the back page. I was able to locate many of the buildings still standing although vacant and boarded up or at the very least with changed logo facades. Gillespie's Market in Westfir stands long vacant. I remember when I would walk down the hill from the teacherage for a gallon of milk and the butcher would give my dog Fred a huge beef bone to carry home. The winds of time have blown hard on Oakridge and Westfir. Oakridge is now a tourist gateway between the Willamette Valley and the Cascade Mountains. You see many big expensive motorcycles and motorhomes stopping for lunch but usually just passing through. I suspect that the town is a recruiter's paradise with a McDonald job being the only competition with the Armed Forces. Westfir is just dead. Strictly retirement. There is no economy. I hike up the hill to the airport and our 509 helicopter's mechanic is "pre-flighting" the 212 for possible missions today. The new little trailer, the "tower" of Oakridge International sits on a hillside overlooking the two concrete helipads and the east end of the blacktop runway. We used to hang out in the old leaky hanger below between missions until the owner raised the rent and the Forest Service decided it was time to install its own facility. The "tower" is one of those boxy mobile offices like you see at construction sites. It is rented for the summer and will be hauled away when the snow flies. Perhaps somebody will pour a ce-ment slab before next fire season so the thing won't bounce and shimmy when you walk in it. The rest of the crew works out at the weight room down at the Middlefork Ranger District and drives to the airstrip. The sun rises higher and it is getting hot. The air conditioning in the new trailer is welcome. Ted, the helicopter manager, gives crew and pilot the morning briefing. We have two crew member trainees so things are not as smooth during operations as they could be. The bat phone rings and 509 is requested to fly over a smoke reported by a private pilot in the Fall Creek drainage, near last year's Clark Fire. We haul our line gear to the pad and button it up behind the net in the cargo hole on the starboard side of the aircraft. We don our flight helmets, white or OD (Oregon Dept. of Forerstry) green and load up in the back of the bus and belt in. I leave the starboard rear sliding door open until we take off as the cabin is hot from the sun. We plug in our helmet jacks and check the intercom. Ted rides in the front with the pilot and I ride in the back with a manager trainee and a brand new crew member trainee. There is always the slight stink of kerosene fuel throughout the machine. Whine, whoosh, roar. Whine, whoosh, roar. Warren fires up the twin turbine engines that make 509 go. The big main rotor turns and the tail rotor spins two and a half times as fast to keep the machine from rotating with the main rotor in flight. The rotor disc spins faster and is making the Wop Wop Wop sound that is characteristic of all UH-1 type machines. The airframe vibrates and wobbles as the rpms build and and Warren checks the instruments. The blades move faster and the vibrations subside. The trainee on the ground by the fire extinguisher looks over the helicopter and gives two thumbs up meaning there are no aircraft approaching from the rear where the pilot cannot see and there is nothing visibly wrong from the ground with 509. Warren is free to take off. I give Ted the thumbs up from the back seat and shut the sliding rear door. The pilot pulls pitch and the Bell 212 leaps into the air. You can feel a sudden increase in power and lift as it moves forward past 15 mph and the rotor disc achieves translational lift as it moves into undisturbed air. Up and up over the west end of the airstrip. There is old Westfir High. 509 banks north and Warren trims it up so it is moving at about 90 mph. A couple ridges pass under the skids at 1500 feet and there is a substantial smoke column at 12 o'clock, dead in front of the copter. A couple minutes pass and Warren orbits the smoke which is right next to a logging road in a commercial thinning unit. It is clearly an "I.I." (Idiot Induced) fire. My guess is school kids were maximizing their summer break by drinking beer out in the woods at night and felt they needed a camp fire which they wandered away from when they left drunk/hungover the next morning. I see a rooster tail of dust and a glimpse the white of an Oregon Dept of Forestry engine a few miles away. The driver homes in on the red, white & blue helicopter circling above the smoke and is there within five minutes. Warren flies to recon Fall Creek Reservoir in anticipation of being called for bucket assist. Less than three miles away the old highway disappears into the lake, making a perfect Landing Zone. By the time 509 is back on station over the fire, the incident commander decides he wants helicopter bucket assistance and Warren turns on his heel and flies back to the LZ and settles on the pavement. Like circus clowns out of a tiny car, we pour out of the helicopter. I commence to unloading all personal gear and fire tools from the hole while the two trainees assist Ted in hooking up the collapsible bucket on the end of a 100 foot cable while Warren idles the 212 and keeps the rotor disc horizontal. We all work in a crouch in case the main rotor dips unexpectedly. I open the door to the tailboom and remove the chainsaw and saw pack. We are an airborne fire fighting squad among other things, always ready for initial attack on a small blaze in the wilderness. The helicopter stands empty with bucket connected and I move out in front and give thumbs up while holding a piece of flagging for a wind indicator. Everybody is out of the way and the bucket has been tested for release. Warren goes straight up in the lightened machine and dips the bucket in the lake and pulls up ten feet and salvoes 270 gallons to make sure everything works in real life. He dips again and heads for the fire. The rubberneckers go back to their ski boats and jet skis and inner tubes. 509 makes four load and returns from the lake to the fire. By that time there are enough ground forces to do a vibram-soled conga line around the half acre smoker and the incident commander tells Warren thanks for the help. Straight down comes the Bell. The bucket clunks on the old pavement and Warren expertly coils the cable behind it as he drifts backwards a little so the copter lands 30 feet behind the big orange vinyl bucket. The clown show reverses itself as all the junk goes back into the machine in a few minutes and we re-bag the bucket and strap it (and the spare) to the rear facing seat in back and fasten our seatbelts. I give the thumbs up to Ted and away we go over the water, climbing and turning, heading south for Oakridge International Airport. The next day, on a back page of the City/Region section in the Eugene Register-Guard, was a small column with the byline of Fall Creek. It described the small fire and the forces reacting to it. Towards the end of the report, it mentioned "and a helicopter was used." Norm Copyright © 2004 by Norm Maxwell Norm Maxwell has just received the Best of West By Northwest award for his article, The Fire of South Canyon: Remembering Storm King. Tens of thousands of readers have "voted" with their mouse by their selection of this story. Visit Norm Maxwell's other pieces about land use, firefighting and life in the country and more at West By Northwest.org. Norm's Notebook: A Different Kind of Pre-Emptive Strike Norm's Notebook: "Goodbye Dear, I'll be Home in a Year" Norm's Notebook: Dead Cars and the Six Million Dollar Manx (Editor's note–Norm's "Dead Cars" story inspired a feature story in the Register Guard, "Heaps of trouble in the woods.") 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