Jennifer: This little start, the Fly Fire, with substantial wind went from an acre or whatever to 1000 acres just like, boom, instantly. It was the worst timing possible and there was nothing available. Everything was already fighting the Dixie Fire. Everybody was already strapped, everybody was already fried, everybody's already doing the best they can with what they've got. I'm dragging 150 feet line with the bucket making sure I don't touch power lines. It’s like playing like jellyfish frogger. Watching for cars, and watching over people too, because that's when the fire crossed the road and there's this freaking wall of tunnel fire and there's all these people like 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5, 6, okay, six cars are gone. And like, you're watching them go through fire. I don't remember this, but there's a video on YouTube or on Facebook somewhere and I dropped on a truck as they're going through. I don't remember. I remember watching cars and trying to time drops because if we dropped too low we can smash a window. Joanne: He said that there were embers coming into his truck, and if that hadn’t happened, his truck might have caught fire. If you hadn’t been dropping buckets of water, their vehicles might have caught on fire as they were driving through. Jennifer: Any time you’re fighting fire, it doesn't not suck and it doesn't not bother you. But being in your own backyard… kind of changes it. It's your job and you know it’s going to burn. I don't know why that day… I was playing several different roles as well. I kind of overstepped my boundaries on what I was what I'm technically allowed to do. Sorry if I stepped on any toes, playing incident commander of this new start, but like if someone didn’t relay the importance and imminent need, it was gonna get pushed aside and everything would have stayed on the Dixie Fire.

I'm Jennifer Bartley. I am a contract helicopter pilot for Aerotech LLC out of Clovis, New Mexico. We're contracted to the Plumas Helitack with the Forest Service. Typically June through September or October, sometimes November depending on the fire season. This is my ninth season on the Plumas. And my husband's local, born and raised in Quincy, California. We're hoping we get to come back here next year, but we'll see for our fire contract.

I first moved here in 2014. Originally born and raised in New Mexico, and got started in fire through my family. Both my parents are volunteer firefighters and were contracted engine operators in their own type six fire engines in New Mexico for a long time. So I kind of got started there. Originally I wanted to be a tanker pilot until I went to Helo Base for the first time and saw helicopters. The pilot of a sky crane let me sit in it, and I was like yeah, airplanes are cool, but they're not this cool. I didn't know any better. I was 17. So I went to flight school in Salt Lake and I lived and worked in Salt Lake for five years getting all my hours and obtaining everything I needed to become a fire pilot. It took about five years and I've been working for Areotech for 12 years fighting fire for them. In anything from an MD 530, which is really small little helicopter to the bell 212 which what we have here on the Plumas.

July 22nd, we were working the Dixie Fire. We were working up above Meadow Valley, up around Silver Lake and helping them support that upper ridge. I came into the airport here in town to get fuel, it’s a hot fuel which means we don't shut down, so it's pretty quick. I flew to the north a little bit to skirt around and then start to head back out to Meadow Valley. And as I turn north I saw a little puff of smoke straight north from the airport , kind of by our forest ranger station. I was like “yeah, pretty sure that's not supposed to be there… that's new.”

At that time, we had like 12 or 14 helicopters here and everything was out working on the Dixie Fire trying to do the best they can to get everything stopped before it got any worse. They knew that it was gonna be pretty bad. So there was nothing available, just me. I went straight there, it took me like four minutes to get from the airport to Butterfly Valley, and it had already grown probably 1/10th of an acre and was right behind a couple of structures.

I let air attack know “Hey, we got a new start. You guys aware of this?”

They’re like, “no I didn't know that was there.” So I give them their size up and I kind of went out of my normal scope and was like “okay, you can divert all of your VLATs, everything you got going on the Dixie, to this right now, because there's two structures threatened. I’m by myself with a 150 long line and bucket, 240 gallons of water. That's not really going to save the structure when it's already pretty much committed to being engulfed.” So I asked dispatch to send whatever they could send, divert any large aircraft, VLATS, other aircraft, off Dixie to come and help.

It was probably only 10 minutes that I was working by myself. But it felt like the longest 10 minutes of my life. Every time I turned around to go to Spanish Creek to get water in the bucket and come back, it had just chunked another piece and it started one structure on fire and then chunked into the yard.

By the time I got back with next bucket, it was already in the deck of the other house, and then back from the next one, the house is on fire and it jumped across Butterfly Valley Road. The engines got there pretty quick. And they were trying to make access, but Butterfly Valley Road is one lane in and out and it had already been compromised, the fire had already jumped over the road. People were exiting out that way and having to come through the wall of fire. At that point, I knew I wasn't going to save any structures. The one thing I can do is hang out and hover with buckets, as vehicles would come through the wall of fire, I’d make drops to help people get through, or in case somebody got trapped. And then I just flew around Butterfly Valley with the sirens trying to warn anybody else to evacuate before it spread any further and got anybody was trapped.

Only those two structures were lost from the Fly Fire at that time. But it was pretty wild. There's no way you could get an engine off the road, there's nowhere to turn around with an engine. All the driveways where they could have turned around had railroad ties going across the creek and they'd already burned. So it was not possible for them to come up the one lane facing all this oncoming traffic hauling ass out of Butterfly Valley. I would be too. I was like, we're definitely going to have a head on so I was just telling the crews on the ground, all the engines and division chief, “no one can go in there. I’m still watching cars coming out and counting cars. Okay, that's your last car. One small pickup can finally go in there.” And finally the Division Chief got on, “absolutely no engines can come in here because we'll have an entrapment of our own and burn up our own stuff.”

But then luckily, they diverted the VLAT from the Dixie Fire and it came over and dropped retardant from the top of the hill off of 70, right in front of this little cabin. And it's crazy cuz if you drive a road, you can see exactly where that line of retardant hit, and where I made one drop on a little tiny, I think it might have been like a woodshed or something. And it stopped the fire from going into all those cabins and houses.

If you're going up Butterfly Valley Road, House One, that's gone, and then House Two and then House Three is like little cabins. That fire started behind House Two, right back there. And that wall of flame went from House Two to House One, but also across to that big house on the hill that looks a big barn or something. It crossed right there. It was as like, “Oh god. It’s spotting easily for several hundred yards, you know because it's tight in the Canyon so it wasn't like going over. But then as soon as I got on top of the hill in between Butterfly Valley road and Highway 70 it spotted across the Highway 70 to Keddie, and nobody in Keddie knew what was going on.

Everybody's sitting around waiting, you know, to get evacuated from the Dixie Fire, you're not thinking you've got another fire.

So the Highway Patrol was sitting at the bottom of Highway 70 for the road closure, didn't realize that there was a fire on… right behind them. So like I'm sitting there in front of them, hitting the siren and trying to put my hand out the window. I'm like, trying to point out, and finally they turn around and they saw the fire and like you could see they're like, “Oh shit. Oh, fire right here.” They’re like evacuating people, keeping roads closed for this other fire down canyon. Not one right here, right now.

And Keddie, there's a bunch of people like hanging out near the swimming hole and stuff and it was like, “Dude, you got to go now!” It’s spotting into the river, on both sides of the river. It's spotting across the train tracks. Union Pacific had some guys chillin in the train. And they're taking videos. And you turn around and come back and there's a spot behind them. And the hill and the train tracks. I’m hitting the siren on helicopter, and they finally look up and are like “oh, yeah, we're surrounded by fire on the train tracks now.” Like, yeah, go!

There’s a little bridge right there, Roadhouse Road that goes back to Old Highway or something back there. So, it spotted below that little white house and the bridge.

We were able to grab all those little spots. And then all these engines, I don't even know where they came from, to be honest. I think a bunch of them were volunteer.

One house, right off of 70, their barn or something it caught on fire. And their house is right next to it. We were trying to put drops on it. By this point there's 10-12 aircraft and we were stacked on top of each other. It was good because there's help, you know, but like bad because there’s nowhere to go with a pattern or spacing to keep from running into each other.

And we're dropping on their driveway trying to cool it down from hopping from their barn that’s already gone to their house, and then of course it just goes House House House House. I made a couple drops, and then all of a sudden these fire trucks are there, and the engines, and they're freaking making a stand on all these houses! You can’t even see them in the smoke and the flames. They're just calling us off, “hey, don't drop, don't drop. We're down here!”

Like…what? You're… what? There's like no way! You're in the middle of a wildfire and there's smoke everywhere and literally fire everywhere. There's fire on the hill going up Mount Hough at that point. Butterfly Valley is on fire coming down the hill outside it's in the river. Just like oh my god, these guys, you're nuts. What are you doing?!

That was the only house they lost. Those guys stayed there for God knows how long, and didn't want us to help them because we were just more of a threat to them, dropping on them.

We’re like, “okay, this is kind of crazy” come back and everything's still good and they're still like sucking smoke and staying in the flames and they're still standing. I did not expect that!

Those dudes were pretty rad. That was probably my biggest highlight. Those dudes actually saved all this stuff and it's pretty gnarly. It’s not like it was just a little tiny ground fire. It was pretty impressive. My biggest joy that day was seeing them accomplish something pretty phenomenal. I didn't think was going to happen actually.

I honestly didn’t think Keddie was gonna make it. When it started spotting all over the riverbed and up the train tracks and start running towards Mount Hough, it was like, don't even engage on that. We're not going to catch that the way the wind was pushing it so fast. It had gone from being like a spot that was 10 x 10 to 100 acres in literally less than minutes.

Like, we're gonna have to big box out, just take care of the little communities right now, prioritize Keddie, Butterfly Valley, it could wrap back into Chandler Road. Then it burned up Mount Hough and joined the Dixie Fire.

Not many days for me feel like I lost. And that day felt like I lost. A lot. Like every time I went to do something, I’d come back and it was a loss. Another lost structure, another lost piece of ground. Another lost, whatever. At least nobody died at all. They can rebuild. Rebuild will happen. But … that day sucked for me. It… really… sucked for me actually.

Normally when a spot happens, there's usually a crew nearby, or more help or a water source. My turnaround times from dip site to drop site is pretty quick. But that section of the river, the trees are wicked tall, like I don't know, 150 feet. And when I put the bucket in the water, I was actually below the treetops, and that's not cool. There's random telephone cables strung across from one set of houses. And the radios are going crazy. We've got six radios going at one time, and I'm in there by myself trying to switch between all six different frequencies, fly, and drop water. The stress level was pretty high. Especially feeling I didn't smash something like I normally was able to. It wouldn't matter, there was no chance that I would have been able to stop that.

But it still felt hopeless. For me. I'm not used to, turn around and the house is gone. This is home, right? So you're like, “it's gonna be like somebody I know, or somebody's friend.” And sure enough, like, we went to wind down Wednesday, and Kaline, the bartender, was like, “third house was my boyfriend's, thanks for saving it.” And I was like, cool, but I don't want to meet whoever was in House One or House Two.

No one said anything about me stepping out of my role. Jenny was working dispatch. She was like, “good job ordering the world. That's not normally your job.” I was like, “Nope.”

I was waiting for some sort of reprimand. She's like, “nah there's no reprimand for that.”

I literally said, “I want everything you got now, I want every airplane, every tanker off the Dixie Fire, I want you to reroute everything here.”

Everything was out on the Dixie Fire, way down the canyon and scattered all over and in the different divisions. It was so big already, every machine was somewhere else working. By the time they were able to grab them all up and send them back over to help, it had already been 10 minutes or so. But like I said, 10 minutes feels like an eternity when you're just watching everything grow and grow.

Unfortunately, the Dixie Fire and the Fly Fire became the Dixie Fire. It just kept going and going and going. The Fly Fire definitely added to it. We lost stuff going up Mount Hough and it blew back down Chandler Road. We had the Dixie hemmed up in Meadow Valley, staying in its footprint and pretty secure, so it really wasn't going to come any further south. For anything like that to have gone into Butterfly Valley and across 70 onto Mount Hough would have been some crazy natural disaster. The Fly Fire definitely added to that footprint and made it a whole other added footprint to the Dixie. That's just my guess.

It was another disaster within a disaster and it's very very remarkable that we didn't lose more houses or any life on the Fly Fire.

I felt pretty hopeless. You just feel like, man, what could I have done better or done differently. Ultimately, that day, there's nothing I could have done differently. It was what it was. But looking down on the ground and seeing all these people in the belly of the beast, straight making stands on a huge fire. Anybody can say what they want to say about the Fly Fire that day. The bottom line is they did a fantastic job, and we all did the best we could with what we had. There wasn't much any of us had left. Conditions sucked. It was hot and windy. And a fire starts right in the middle of houses, it’s already a bad start and every resource is strapped. I’m just thankful that there is nobody dead at the end of that day. That was what I kept telling myself for a long time.

July 22nd wasn’t the most fun day in my life…. I don't want to repeat that day.