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Show 82 out" crevis were allowed to return to Boise for a r e s t ; everyone else was desperately needed to fight the inferno which then covered 50,000 acres. " I t ' s a monster," the f i r e boss said about Mortar Creek. Crews set backfires to stop the advancing flames; just the backfires set to control this one huge conflagration were bigger than most of the forty other fires then burning throughout the West. But the backfires didn't help. Winds fanned the flames so fast that official s were afraid to send firefighters dovinwind of the blaze. "The canyons are so steep and the smoke...so dense that we couldn't even see what was happening on the north side of the f i r e , " explained Dale Dufour, a spokesman for the National Forest Service. "We couldn't plan escape routes. The whole canyon would go up in flames before vie could get any of our people out." Then, on Sunday, August 12, unexpected rain began to f a l l on a ll the Western f i r e s , raising the morale of 7,000 f i r e f i g h t e r s , half the nation's total force, viho had been working 18-hour days. "Our forecasts just didn't call for this much rain or this heavy ground c o v e r . . . t h is steady drip, drip is wonderful!" exulted Dufour. "The rain is light but steady, the best kind to have in this situation. It doesn't put out the f i r e , but it keeps i t from spreading." The rain cooled or stopped a l l the other forest f i r e s , but not Mortar Creek. There i t grounded aircraft and helicopters vihich had been moving supplies and f i r e f i g h t e r s to the burn. Fire crevis had to lead pack mules up the steep canyons as they continued to build fire |
