01.14.08
The Blazes of 1990
Armen sat on his cabin doorstep, chatting with his neighbor about trail crew women, watching thunderheads gather over the canyon. After awhile, it seemed that some smoke was mingling with the clouds. Armen stood up, excused himself, and walked up the road to get a better look. He stopped, turned a frown downward, and returned his gaze up the canyon, where the smoke was rising into the clouds. His eyes began to glow, and his eyebrows relaxed as the frown broke. He sighed with relief, and whispered, “hey old friend.”
On Aug. 7, intense thunderstorms lashed Yosemite’s western edge, sparking more than a dozen blazes. Despite intensive firefighting efforts, several of the blazes grew uncontrollably, destroying the community of Foresta near the park boundary.
Science News, October 27 1990
The bombers appeared soon after the smoke, but not soon enough. In what seemed like no time at all, the canyon was choked with orange smoke, temperatures at canyon bottom had dropped for lack of daylight, and Foresta was no more.
Van Wagtendonk, like many other fire specialists, had expected the prescribed burns to prevent such a blowup. “We had all thought that when the crown fire got to an area that had been prescribed-burned, it would drop to the ground,” he recalls. “I had thought that without the large amounts of surface fuels there, there would not have been enough heat to sustain a crown fire.
“But it didn’t care what was on the ground.”
Science News, October 27 1990
There was a call for volunteers to fight the A-Rock fire, the blaze that had devoured Foresta and was now bearing down on El Portal. Armen chose not to join the resistance. El Portal was evacuated, but then residents were allowed back in after the winds turned against the fire. Later that night, the winds turned back on the town. Armen watched the fire descend the slope. He watched a transformer explode, and then turned in for the night. He lay in bed, listening to the faint crackling and the occasional explosion, remembering Cindy and Zad.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
