The Cranston Fire: From below and above

Lori Brookes
Contributed

“There’s a dragon in the forest,” the words ushered in high-above the forest floor, by Darla Priest, who just happened to be working a shift in the Tahquitz Peak Fire Lookout, when black smoke was building from the arson-ignited fire on July 25, 2018, just around 1200 hours.

As an avid hiker and new-to-the-hill — I literally had moved in 3 1/2 weeks before the fire — I wondered who had been working the tower and who had been out there hiking on that fateful day. It could have easily been me, if it wasn’t for an out-of-town guest. Instead, I was in town shopping at the local gem shop. In part, I had moved to Idyllwild for my love of Tahquitz Peak and my favorite route up the mountain—South Ridge Trail.

From below:

As I pushed open the door to exit the store, a scene right out of a bad movie started to unreel. It was unreal. The billowing smoke that hadn’t been visible 15 minutes before entering the store was thick and towering behind town, coming from the direction of where I now reside. At that same moment, a man driving a white pickup truck was heading uptown, his left arm flailing out the window frantically shouting, “Get out! Get out!” The rest is personal history. Many of us have a story to tell from that day.

Darla, a former reporter for Idyllwild’s local newspaper The Town Crier, moved to Idyllwild in 2003 and in 2005 found her way to Tahquitz Peak Fire Lookout as a volunteer. I caught up with Darla to quench my curious questions about that day, from both in the tower and on the trail.

From above:

She humbly said, “I wasn’t special. I just showed up that day.” Listening to the tower radio, traffic-jammed with reports of smoke not yet visible from the tower, she scanned the forest as you do at your post in the wilderness and waited. Once the smoke became undeniably visible, Darla contacted the Fire Lookout Leader for further instructions. With nine ignition sites, it was difficult for anyone, above or below, to know where and how this was going to play out.

It would be another, slow-motion, 15 to 20 minutes before Darla was given the direction to evacuate the tower. She recalls being oddly calm, cool and collected — the perfect three Cs for thinking clearly during a chaotic time. Tower evacuation protocol includes gathering your personal possessions, key tower essentials, the bug-out bag, (((APPEND)))leaving the radio on and securing the tower before you leave. But what of the American flag that waves above the tower? Part of the daily duty of a fire lookout volunteer is to raise the flag in the morning and take it down before the sun sets, methodically folding it into a neat and tight triangle, stars up, before stowing it away for the night.

Before Darla evacuated, the flag’s status didn’t go without some organized thought. She weighed out the option of the unknown situation of time-at-hand versus the practicality of the fire reaching the heights of the tower, which if it did, the flag would burn regardless of being neatly folded inside or flying free on the outside. So, she left it flying. That conscious act ultimately had some unintended positive consequences.

Earlier, before the fire was evident, a Girl Scout troop had made their way to the peak, and as far as Darla knew, they were on an overnighter somewhere in the wilderness. Last seen, they were headed down the Devil’s Slide route. They were likely somewhere in the forest wilderness. As Darla evacuated to make her own way down to the Devil’s Slide route, she encountered two women backpackers. They were alerted about the fire and fled in the direction of the South Ridge Trail. I can only imagine what that must have felt like for anyone, including Darla, to be hiking without knowing where this “dragon in the forest” was heading. We do know now there was no loss of human life that day.

Thank goodness.

Once Darla was safely on the ground, so to speak, she turned off the tower radio and evacuated the mountain like many of us did that day.

In the days that followed, the heroic battling of the fire persisted. My beloved South Ridge Trail received the worst of the burn. It was the only trail to be closed after the fire. By the second afternoon, the fire had traveled up the mountain toward the peak. There was one photograph that started to move across social media. It depicted flames towering behind the historic Tahquitz Peak Fire Lookout.

Rumors and assumptions rumbled through that we had lost our tower. It wasn’t until another photo, taken by our local mountaineer Jon King, told a different story. That story revealed that the tower was completely in-tact, despite the fire that nipped at her feet, and that … our flag was still there!

The unintended positive consequence of Darla’s decision to let the flag fly, proved to be useful in fighting the dragon, in calculating wind direction, as seen through binoculars from below.

Darla’s parting words to me — I could feel her head shaking as we relived that day — together in conversation, “Good thing I showed up.”

Good thing you did, Darla, and thank you for your service!