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A mix of clouds and sun. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 68F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..
Partly cloudy skies. Low 41F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph.
Pictured in 1978 at Elk City were firefighters Claire (Bergey) Wieber, Ted Onufrak and Michael Frantz.
August 1978: Michael Frantz (pictured), ready to leave in full kit after putting out the Baker Gulch fire with fellow firefighter, Kirk Naylor. “We worked most of the night on that one, but kept part of it burning to stay warm and heat up some water for meals,” Frantz said.
Pictured in 1978 at Elk City were firefighters Claire (Bergey) Wieber, Ted Onufrak and Michael Frantz.
August 1978: Michael Frantz (pictured), ready to leave in full kit after putting out the Baker Gulch fire with fellow firefighter, Kirk Naylor. “We worked most of the night on that one, but kept part of it burning to stay warm and heat up some water for meals,” Frantz said.
“About halfway across, we heard somebody above yell, ‘Rock!’” said Michael Frantz.
Working across a hillside boulder field to get to a section of wildfire, the firefighter heard the warning from above. Now the scramble was on to get to cover against this incoming stony threat.
A moment on the fire line in 1977: Just one of the dangers of firefighting that hasn’t changed since the first Forest Service crews set off on public lands to battle against this seasonal foe.
Frantz is a former instructor of mathematics from Wichita State University, retired since 2018 with a total 40 years of collegiate instruction in his background, which includes as chair of the Department of Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science at the University of La Verne in California (known as La Verne College when he obtained his bachelor’s degree in 1976). But 45 years ago, he was working on his master’s degree in math at the University of New Hampshire in Durham when that year he applied for a USFS trail crew position in Idaho. No spots were open there but instead on the fire crew, so he hired on and for that year and the following summer in 1978 he fought fire based out of Elk City.
The Free Press was contacted by Frantz this year, who was researching two past fires he worked in 1977 and 1978, and in that exchange he provided stories on what firefighting was like on the Nez Perce National Forest nearly a half-century ago. Here are some of those recollections.
“I recall that along about the end of August in both summers, usually while working on a fire in ridiculous heat and smoke,” he said, “I would be thinking, ‘Man, what am I doing out here? I could be in an air-conditioned classroom working on a chalkboard!’ Then every spring, it was, ‘Man, I can’t wait to get out into the mountains again and fight some fire!’”
Frantz described how the reality of their job was first presented.
“There’s a different kind of feeling you get at your first fire camp,” he said, “when they sit a bunch of newbies down for several hours and go over every single death — 65 or so at the time — in the history of the USFS firefighting that occurred related in some way to fighting fire, what happened, why it happened, and what could be done to prevent that in the future. You realize then this is not going to be just another camping summer.”
Frantz was on a six-person tanker crew, and they learned how to operate, fill, and fight fire with a 250-gallon pumper truck with 150 feet of one-inch hard line on the hose reel. A typical day involved some aspect of fire training, tool maintenance, organizing fire-fighting supplies and packs in the fire cache, and sometimes doing road crew work: clearing deadfall off roads or digging fire line around areas that would be burned in the fall. On days off, there would be hiking or backpacking, floating tubes down the American River back into Elk City, or a “big weekend” would be going into Grangeville or Missoula.
The pumper truck was used as a standby on prescribed burns, but mostly on only fires that were close to a road, which ranged from lightning strikes to a fire at the Elk City dump. One notable exception was a car fire during the first week of fire season in 1977 — overheated brakes touched off the vehicle and spread to a tire. The crew worked with a temperamental gas-powered pump to draft water up out of a nearby creek to fight the fire.
“Eventually our assistant fire management officer, Kent Gilmore, showed up and helped us,” Frantz said, “but the woman’s car was pretty much toast by then, front tires burned off and puddles of melted aluminum under the engine. We were all a little nervous about getting too close to it, not knowing if the gas tank was going to blow, from having seen way too many unrealistic Hollywood action movies. Keep in mind that we were on the way to receive our initial fire training, and those of us there in the pumper cab didn’t know squat about anything at that point.”
On Aug. 13, 1977, Frantz and other firefighters were helicoptered out of Dixie onto the Sheep Creek Fire: “It was a super hot day, easily in the 90s,” he said, “and they were super careful about asking everybody’s weight and weighing every piece of gear brought on board, since it’s really tough to get lift in air that hot.”
The 20-person crew worked with chain saws, Pulaskis and McLeods in cutting trees and brush, and clearing ground to bare mineral earth, and in steep terrain, adding a cup trench to catch rolling burning pine cones.
“That work went on all night, and was truly exhausting,” he said. “At one point we were moving along on a small game trail to a different part of the fire, with a steep cut bank to my right, and I was startled by the sound of a rattlesnake rattling what seemed to be at about ear level and only a few feet away on the cut bank, but I couldn’t see anything in the dark, and didn’t care to stick around to look for it.”
In the close call department, Frantz told of a lightning strike call on a dead snag burning 10 miles northwest of Elk City. They felled it to get to the inside burning portion, and during sawing, the chain saw bar was pinched in by the tree, and flames started shooting out of the crack.
“So there we were, three of us, desperately trying everything we could think of to open the split a little more to get the bar out: axes, wedges, what have you, with the saw gas tank inches away from the fire burning intensely inside the tree,” he said. “I think we all had visions of getting blown up. It was a pretty chaotic scene, and probably lasted a lot less time than it felt like, but eventually we did get the bar out of there.”
Though Frantz had this temporary job for only two summers, he said it was life changing.
“It gave me a different perspective on people who live in and work in the woods, on government service, generated in me a high regard for intense teamwork with fellow workers because you literally entrust them with your life,” he said, “and taught me much about my ability to do a lot of things that I never would have imagined, boosting my confidence in myself immensely.”
He continued, “I would do it again in a heartbeat – if I were back at that age again!”
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