St. Regis man fights California wildfires

Curtis Cochran laughs now when he talks about the more than a month he spent in July fighting fires in California, but when he was there things were much more serious.

“Almost every day we had to bail out of an area because of the danger,” Cochran said.

Cochran, a candidate for Mineral County Commissioner, said that he left his St. Regis home on June 28 when he and his private fire crew were dispatched out of Missoula with their Type 6 Fire Engine to Redding California.

He said that the fires that have ravaged much of Northern California started during a freak lightning storm that started more than 1,200 different fires.

That, combined with the less than one one-hundreth of an inch of rain and brutally high temperatures, made for one of the biggest and most dangerous fires Cochran has been involved with since he started his work as a wilderness fire fighter in 2008.

Cochran said that not only were there record highs of 115 degrees that helped fuel the blaze, the usual low temperature evenings were virtually non-existent with evening lows around 90 degrees.

“That was what was unusual to us, it wouldn’t even cool off at night. So at eight o’clock in the morning the fire behavior was as bad as we would see on a hot afternoon here,” Cochran said.

By the August 1, Cochran said there were over 20,000 fire fighters in California working to extinguish the blazes working their way through the country side.

Cochran, along with fellow fire fighters Rachel Brockway, a Superior native, and Roger Brockway worked for an astounding 36 days with only two days off.

Cochran said on a normal fire call they would work around 14 days, and even their longer assignments only lasted 21 days.

“They were so strapped for resources that the kept all of us there,” Cochran said.

Cochran and his team were stationed at Whiskeytown Lake with a large group of other firefighters.

One of the bigger challenges in dealing with the California fires was the abundance of Manzanita brush, which Cochran said was quick to light and burned with incredible intensity.

Each day they worked at least 16 hours in the brutal heat. Cochran said that some days they worked for 24 hours straight to take advantage of the slightly cooler evening temperatures.

In order to stop the fires, bulldozers would blaze lines through the forest ahead of the path of the fire and the fire fighters would light smaller blazes on the opposite side of the bulldozer line. By burning up all of the excess fuel in front of the fire they could stop the fire from spreading.

Cochran and his team worked by pumping water out of creeks and streams and watching the man-made blazes to prevent them from getting out of control and becoming dangerous fires in their own right.

“There’s no way you could just jump right in front of a fire and stop it, you have to plans days ahead,” said Cochran

Cochran said that another danger while fighting fires in the California backcountry was the possibility of stumbling across a marijuana farm. He said that there are many farms scattered throughout the backcountry staffed with illegal immigrants who work for drug cartels for very little money. He added that some of them had guns and it could be dangerous to stumble across them.

Cochran said for the most part however, when they would stumble across a marijuana plant it would belong to a local who had a medical marijuana license. He said that while protecting houses he and his team stumbled across several private marijuana farms.

“There was a pot plant behind every tree,” Cochran said.

Another point of excitement for Cochran was when President George Bush and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger flew over the fire they were fighting to survey the area while being escorted by four Blackhawk helicopters.

Cochran said that Bush is the first president to visit Redding California since John F. Kennedy.

“Out of 200 fires in the Redding area and they flew right over us,” Cochran laughs while pointing at a picture of the president’s helicopter.

For now, Cochran is safe and sound back in St. Regis but he said that he is ready for next year’s fire season.

“It’s dangerous but it’s also a lot of fun,” Cochran said.