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Fighting fires was a hot summer's work for Joriel Horracks By
Heidi Thueson "All I remember is the first rock sliding, and he said 'Rock, big rock!' and the first rock hit me in the chest and set me back flying. I grabbed hold of a tree and then the second two-ton boulder hit me and took off my thumbnail and I have the scar from it," Joriel Horracks says, showing a series of red marks on her left calf. "I don't remember any of it. I was shocked and then I just remember laying on the ground, and I thought I yelled for help, but when I talked to the other guys that were there they said I just moaned and said 'help' and that's when they knew I was alive." USU student Joriel Horracks is a U.S. Forest Service firefighter -- a petite, 19-year-old brunette who fought the raging inferno at Dutch John, Utah, that scorched more than 20,000 acres of wilderness in July of 2002. The fire was so severe it was classified as the second-priority fire in the nation at the time, meaning the firefighting manpower and resources of the nation were concentrated on Dutch John. The entire town was evacuated for fear the firefighters would be unable to control the fire in time. Jori was one of the few women who worked on the engine crew, which means she carried a hose that connects to a truck filled with tanks of water. Several times Jori was forced to drop her hose and literally run from wildfire that can travel up to 35 feet per second, faster than an Olympic sprinter. When fire moves that fast, Jori says, they can't pay fighters enough to get close. Although firefighters stopped the flames just in the nick of time -- news videos show scorch marks only 50 feet away from a church in Dutch John -- the fight was not free from accidents. After the worst of the flames were extinguished, Jori went "cold trailing" with her crew. Cold trailing is when firefighters search for hot spots and smoking material that could potentially flare up again. One of the firefighters was working on a ridge above Jori, and he leaned against a rock ledge that abruptly crumbled, sending him and massive boulders tumbling down the ridge. Some of the firefighters later told Jori that when the falling boulders struck her, they were certain she was dead. Jori says she frantically tried to remember whether or not she was wearing her hardhat as she lay stunned on the ground. She recalled that earlier that day the more experienced firefighters had teased her for fastening the chinstrap on her hardhat. Traditionally, only first-year fighters like Jori are paranoid about such safety protocols. Luckily Jori was wearing her safety equipment properly and was injured but alive. The same men who had teased Jori suddenly transformed into affectionate older brothers. They wouldn't allow her to ride a 4-wheeler to the rescue helicopter because the long bumpy ride would be too painful for her. Instead, some carried her half a mile while others went ahead and cleared a landing site for the helicopter. One, whom Jori knew nothing about other than the fact that his name was Nick, insisted on holding her head steady himself, since there was no neck brace available. Jori was life-flighted to a nearby hospital, where firefighter Alan Headward called Jori's mother to apologize for teasing Jori about her safety precautions -- the hat fastened firmly to her head had most likely saved her life. "You're so tight with your crew. The're like family. You have to be tight or you're dead. They were so protective of me," Jori says. "[The accident] scared them bad and a couple guys teared up. All the guys on my crew are not big into religion but they said there was something definitely working there. Firefighting is a serious and dangerous business. Fighters can face flames up to 30 feet high. Fire can travel underground along tree roots and burst up onto the surface unexpectedly. Fighters encounter phenomena such as firewhirls -- a roaring tornado of fire created by high wind and rapidly burning fuel. Jori has been in more than one situation where she feared for her life. Despite an inward closeness born of shared danger, firefighters frequently trade affectionate, or at least only slightly malevolent, jibes. There is a running rivalry between the engine crews that travel on land, and "heli-tack" crews that rappel down from a helicopter hovering in mid-air to fight the flames. Jori, along with the other engine crewmembers, calls the heli-tack crews "heli-slack" and "dopes on a rope." In return the heli-tack crew calls engine crews "pumper bunnies," "pumper slugs," and "pavement queens." They speak a language all their own. City firefighters are "rubber-booters," Jori says with disgust. City firemen were supposed to help them on a wildfire once, she said, and they abandoned the Forest Service firefighters. Forest Service fighters like Jori take fierce pride in their work. Perhaps this is because fighting wildfire is physically grueling, dirty work. Fighters work up to 16 hours a day, and often sleep on the ground in small tents. Jori was usually so tired at the end of the day that she didn't bother pitching her tent, instead sleeping under the stars. Sometimes there are portable showers available, and sometime there aren't. Jori says she went as long as five days without a shower. "My clothes were stiff. And they make a shell outside of your actual body," Jori says. "When you get in the vehicle we'd roll down the window because we all just smelled so bad." Jori's friend Marty Mortenson agrees. Marty fought fire in California on the heli-tack crew, and he knows what it's like to get dirty, too. "You could grow potatoes in your ears," Marty says. "Water in the shower turns black." And yet for someone who spent a summer wallowing in ash and smoke, Jori spends remarkably little time talking about actually fighting fires. She prefers to tell you about the crazy things her fellow firefighters challenged her to do. One day Jori and a group of firefighters were at base camp waiting to be called to a fire. A grasshopper hopped by, and in an effort to relieve the tedium the men dared Jori to eat the grasshopper for 10 bucks. At first Jori refused. "No, that's alive, you guys are cruel," she told them. "That's unusual punishment. How would you guys like to die having me bite your head off?" But she caved in when the guys offered her a dead bug instead. "They bring out this ugly cockroachin' beetle thing. I don't think I've even seen those bugs classified. They bring it out and it's dead and in this bottle," Jori says. "They're like, 'we'll give you five bucks if you eat it' and I'm like 'no, you've got to give me more money than that.' And between all the guys they only had 11 bucks." At this point in the conversation Marty interrupts. "You ate it for 11 bucks?" Marty asks in disbelief. "Something like that's worth at least 40!" It takes a stretch of the imagination to envision a bug leg sticking out of Jori's mouth. She is a pretty girl, with perfectly styled hair and artfully applied makeup. She has a graceful ladylike air -- but appearances can be deceiving. With a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders, Jori says, "I stuck it in my mouth and just started chomping." Marty is duly impressed. Jori certainly is brave, whether she is facing a blaze armed only with a hose or eating a bug to entertain the boys. She's a fighter, itching to attack. When Marty shows her a video of a California fire so severe that the crews couldn't get near enough to fight it, she is unfazed. "That's wimpy flame!" she says. "I could take that on!"
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