Wild Inferno Read Online Free

That’s a pretty name.”
    I forced a polite smile. “The Lunar Standstill? What’s that?”
    â€œWe’re going to talk about that in a minute, I hope. Where are you from?”
    â€œI’m a resource protection agent with the BLM in Taos.”
    â€œWell”—he grinned—“even if a fire had to bring you, welcome to Chimney Rock. If I can help you in any way, if there’s anything I can show you or…” He happened to glance to his left and see the woman in the office. “Oh, Elaine. I see you two have already met. Good! Well, come on then.” He started down the hall.
    â€œHi, I’m Elaine Oldham,” the woman said, half-apologetically, as she ducked through the office door in front of me. “I don’t really know what I’m doing here,” she muttered, hurrying to follow Steve Morella down the hall. “I’m an anthropologist, not a fire person.”

    â€œThis isn’t going to be your ordinary C&G meeting. I sent a few people here early to tie in but we haven’t yet assumed command of this incident. We’ve just been briefed by the local agencies and the team here who’s been managing this fire. We’re expected to take over at the next operational period. I’m going to tell you a few things,” Roy said, “then let our ops chief talk while I go take a ride in a chopper.
    â€œThis was a bad one when we got here, and things have gotten worse since then. We’ve got a shot crew somewhere in the burn area, and their superintendent called for them to deploy shelters. We haven’t heard anything from them since, and that was almost three hours ago. We’ve got a hotshot from that team in the burn unit in Albuquerque in a deep coma. We’ve got a missing Ute man who is possibly somewhere in the burn as well, but we haven’t found him yet. Folks, as you know, this is an ‘incident within the incident,’ and I’m having my division sup, Kerry Reed, break off from our team and act as IC for that—we’ll call it Rescue Command. He’ll pull some folks from the main group to work on his team, and he’ll brief you after he’s had a chance to do his own size-up. Now, I know that’s not much, but we don’t know a great deal right now, so let’s move on. We’ve got a fire that is winning the fight. We lost the initial attack, and we have limited resources—I’m going to let Charlie talk to you about that.”
    Operations Section Chief Charlie Dorn stepped up to a map and took a pointer from the table. “Air support is what it’s going to take to fight this fire, and air support is going to be hard to get. The single-engine air tanker in Durango has been assigned over in Grand Junction, so we can’t use that. Colorado has fires all up and down the Front Range, and those teams are shouting ‘structures threatened’ and getting all the air resources.” He turned and pointed to a red line on the map representing the known perimeter of the fire. “We have no roads and this terrain is tough—if we try to hike people and supplies in to fight it, they got nothing left by the time they get in there. We can’t even use dozers in this country. We’re going to have to use helicopters to paracargo in all our personnel and supplies, and I don’t know when—or even if—we’re going to get those birds. We have one chopper now doing bucket drops, and I think we can hang on to it. Beyond that, I don’t have any more news about additional resources, air or otherwise. They have a helicopter at Mesa Verde they’re going to loan us so we can do some surveillance for the shot crew and to check out the size of this fire—Roy’s going up to do that in just a few minutes. But we can’t keep that bird either, so we’re going to have to make good use of her while she’s here. The fire is within