 Now let's go back to the Cart Creek incident and see what actually happened. At 1450, the helicopter foreman radioed to the ground that fire activity was intensifying abruptly along the entire fire perimeter. Squad 3 noted that while building a total of 63 feet of line, they had to back off twice due to fire intensity. Squad 2 had completed 167 feet of line and were preparing to drop off the ridge and tie into Squad 1's line only 150 feet away. The FMO and squad leader met near a rocky bluff below Squad 2 and felt they could successfully tie off their lines and cut off the head of the fire. Suddenly, the fire behavior changed dramatically and the leader of Squad 2, who was in voice contact but below the rest of the squad, ordered them off the ridge. He realized at this time that this was more than just a simple increase in intensity due to fuel change, but that the fire had changed behavior drastically and was moving toward them at a very rapid rate. Word was passed to drop tools. The squad did so in an orderly fashion and ran towards an opening in the fire created by Squad 1's line and into the black along with Squad 1. The last crew member in line did not come through behind the others and when they called to him, they got no response. The helicopter overhead observed the last crew member running a few yards behind the crew when a juniper suddenly flared up. The crew member stopped, paused momentarily, turned around and began to run back to the ridge. The helicopter dropped low over him and tried to get his attention to turn around and follow the crew into the black. However, as the crew member struggled uphill and upslope, he seemed disoriented and was stumbling and falling among the rocks. The fire then rolled over his location. The helicopter pilot, realizing he could no longer help the firefighter, swung to the other end of the fire to see what was happening there. He observed that the fire had erupted along the entire line almost instantaneously. Squad 3 had moved into the black and Squad 4 was just arriving to the edge of the fire. The leader yelled for his squad to move rapidly through a hole below Squad 3's line and into the black. All but the last two crew members in line made it. When the squad looked back after the fire erupted, they could not see their fellow crew members. Only a wall of flame and smoke 10 to 30 feet high. The crew members were last seen just 15 to 20 yards behind the rest of the crew. The fire blew up and I do not remember any flames or whatever, all I remember is smoke. And the smoke was such that I could not see the person in front of me. And the YCC girl behind me, I'd already previously told her because I had worked with the YCC kids before. And they didn't know quite what fires were like or anything. I said, you just stay right behind me, follow me wherever I go. And she did just that. But when it did blow up, all I could see was smoke. And we'd gone ahead and Dave and Jean were back behind us. And not a minute, maybe a little bit more than a minute. That was the only difference. And as we hiked up there and it blew up, I heard Ray Rubel yell, run for the burned area. And at that time I was contemplating whether I should run away from the fire or if I should run towards the fire and try to get around the edge where we thought there was a fire line and into the burned area. And when Ray Rubel yelled that, that turned my attention back to the fire and I looked through there and it was just like a tunnel through the smoke. And I took off and ran through that with this YCC girl right behind me. The subsequent investigation revealed that the two members of Squad 4 were cut off from their escape route and ran south about 50 yards into a stony ridge in an attempt to outrun the fire. They then turned northeast towards the helispot. The helicopter now flying over this section of line observed the two crew members running back towards the helispot. One moved about 20 yards and the other 35 yards before the helicopter foreman noticed a pine tree flaring up near where they were running. He observed both men fall at the same time. One did not move and the other struggled to get up, open his canteen and pour water over himself before the fire rolled over him. A few lessons learned from this as we brought different groups in here on staff rides. Most of the FMOs or the leaders asked the group, what would you have done different? And, you know, there's a lot of things we violated right here. The first thing in coming in, we landed, our helispot was above the fire and as we grouped right there, the only briefing that we had was, well, we're going to hike across here and across this flat and tie in with a line that Shakley's crew has already been building up there. And we were very complacent because the fuels were fine fuels and the flame lengths were a foot and a half and so we thought, well, let's just head right up there and tie in with the line. Rather than trying to find an anchor point back to the east and down where we could have anchored it off into Spruce Creek and worked our way up. And then our safety routes and safe zones, again, we were so far away from the fire edge that there was unburned fuel between us and the fire again and we didn't really have a clear escape route and again, we should have been building line direct, flanking it and keeping one foot in the black as we went, but we didn't do it. And then communication, we really didn't have good communications with the other squad on the fire, at least from the squad's perspective and so we wasn't aware of what was happening on the fire at all times but I guess the main thing that overwhelmed me was the quickness that everything happened. It didn't give us time to react. It was a complacent situation where we thought, no problem, we can build line around this and be free with it but the fuels were so dry and the wind came up so sudden that the whole hillside, rather than being a continuous burn, it was like it flashed across the hillside and there wasn't time to do anything. I feel even if we would have had fire shelters at that time there wouldn't have been time to get in them. It just happened that quick. And I guess in hindsight, I would never walk across in front of a fire uphill from it and find fuels like this. I guess one thing that's taught me when I've been on other fires and have been a crew boss or I see type three or whatever, I want to know where my people are and what they're doing at all times and make sure that they know their escape routes, know what the hazards are and know what the plan of attack is and make sure we have a good anchor point and we're working off of that and just be cognizant of what's happening with the fire at all times no matter how complacent it may be. I feel that's the one benefit that came out of this for me is down the road in my career has helped me to be very conscious of what's happening with the fire at all times and where everybody is and what the escape routes are. Setting aside the tactical aspects of the Cart Creek Fire, the dramatic change in fire behavior is worth further investigation. In your student workbook, you'll find the section from the Cart Creek Fire Investigation Report regarding fire behavior. Please read this information and then complete the next exercise in your student workbook.