Sumner Grade Fire
An All Hands day in Pierce County
In Early September 2020. It had been a long, warm, dry summer. The west side of the Cascades does not typically see wildfires the way California does, or the way the east side of the state does — but the conditions were ripe. The county includes significant timbered land, including Mt. Rainier National Park, and that summer we had already run numerous fires that were larger and more intense than anything we were used to seeing on this side of the mountains.
Three years prior, fires had started cresting over the Cascades from the east, but the usual PNW weather had stepped in and extinguished what fire suppression couldn’t. This year there was no sign of that cavalry coming.
On September 8th, around noon, a fire started on the hills along Highway 410 above Sumner, on the slopes leading up to Bonney Lake. It became clear almost immediately this was going to be no ordinary fire. It blew up fast and they began evacuating Bonney Lake ahead of it.
Figure 1 The early stage of the fire before the winds picked up. https://blog.piercecountywa.gov/executive/2023/04/07/a-cold-wet-day/
The page went out: All Hands.
I was on duty as the fire investigator, but there was nothing to investigate while this fire raged. It was the only time I worked without K9 Hansel while on the Task Force. I called the BC and was assigned to Brush 73. I reported to Station 73 and was met by Randal and Francisco. Randal would be the officer. I had worked with him for years at Station 61 — he was C shift, I was B shift. What I didn’t know until that day was that after he ETS’ed from the Marine Corps he had worked as a wildland firefighter before coming to the department.
We were sent up Highway 167 to knock down numerous fires breaking out along the corridor, some threatening the commercial structures along the highway.
One of them was moving fast — waist-high grass burning up the slope toward a business park. We parked on the shoulder of the southbound side of 167. I started pulling hose off the reel and moved through the unburned grass and brush down the embankment toward the burning slope. Francisco fed hose behind me. The grass and brush were nearly chest high at the bottom.
Figure 2 Google Maps-where I went for a dip.
Then it happened.
Too fast to avoid. I stepped and there was no ground. A drainage ditch, completely hidden by the grass and brush— waist deep and full of water.
Francisco started laughing. I laughed, told him to stay put and keep feeding me hose. No point in both of us getting soaked. He yelled after me: “Only you would find a water-filled ditch when the entire state is dry as a bone.”
I moved up the slope and had the fire knocked down in about twenty minutes. Then walked back through the ditch again on the way out.
Randal and Francisco were cracking up as we rewound the reel. I pulled my boots off and dumped the water out. We never made it back to the station — too busy. I dried out throughout the day, mostly, except for my socks. I eventually gave up on those and went barefoot in my boots.
Figure 3 The boots keep water out and water in.
As evening settled in, we were told to relieve Brush 61 at the tip of the Sumner Grade. Multiple homes at risk. We arrived and Randal tracked down the Brush 61 officer for the handoff. While he did that, I spotted Jim. We gave each other a hug. Ironically, he had been my counterpart on Brush 61 all day — same job, different brush trucks. We had worked together for over a decade at St. 61. He gave me a full rundown of what they had done and then they cleared.
We picked up where they left off.
We still had not eaten lunch or dinner — just snacks. Word came over the radio that the community had set up a food cantina at Sumner High School for all the firefighters.
Command told us no one could go due to Covid.
Charlie Mike. Continued mission.
Figure 4 The blowing up in the evening
We were up most of the night keeping the fire away from the homes along our stretch. Early on, a BC from another county — this fire had pulled resources from across the Puget Sound — came up and gave Randal a fire condition briefing. I am not a wildland fire expert. Randal, as it turned out, absolutely is. He corrected the BC on almost everything. The BC recognized quickly who the expert in the conversation was, said carry on, and left. That was the last we saw of any command staff.
Around midnight my socks, which I’d laid out in the bed of the brush truck, had finally dried. We took turns on fire watch and grabbed what sleep we could.
Figure 5 Morning after the fires
By morning, the fire was under control. We were starving and I needed coffee badly.
Homeowners began returning later in the morning. The owner of the house where we’d been posted — right at the edge of where the fire had reached, and where we had kept it — came out and thanked us. Asked if we had eaten.
We told him we had not since breakfast the previous day.
He walked back inside. A few minutes later we smelled it.
Bacon.
He came out carrying hot cups of black coffee for all three of us and told us bacon and eggs would be ready shortly.
It was the best breakfast any of us had eaten in a long time.
As the morning stretched into afternoon more homeowners returned and kept coming to thank us. It was genuinely uncomfortable — we were doing our job. Another homeowner announced she was making lunch and organized the neighbors who had returned to cook for the crews. Units that had been posted lower on the slope came up. We ate like kings and sat with it awkwardly as the thanks kept coming.
We got cut loose in the afternoon and returned to Station 73 for equipment cleaning and tool maintenance before being released.
A lot of crews worked hard through that day and night to contain a fast-moving fire. This was just our slice of it.
I picked up K9 Hansel — who was very enthusiastic about being back at work — and returned to the investigations.
One footnote: it was later determined that several of the fires along the length of Highway 167 had been set intentionally. But that’s another story.
Figure 6 The day after. Homeowner soaking his property