(PREVIOUSSPREAD)^ NOAH^ BERGER/AP/SHUTTERSTOCKdeath blew east on a savage wind,
driving flames over foothills and across
a river, spitting glowing embers and
scrubbing the earth bare. It was com-
ing for Don Andrews.
The firestorm shook the ground and
roared as loud as a passing train. The
windows on Andrews’s bulldozer shat-
tered, flinging glass into his face. The
blue-green shards were everywhere: on
the floor, inside his helmet, in his skin
and eyes. He was alone and blinded.
I’m not going to survive this, he
thought.
Andrews, 60, wasn’t supposed to be
this close to the edge. He’d been hired
that day, July 26, 2018, by the California
Department of Forestry and Fire Pro-
tection (Cal Fire) to work with two other
bulldozer drivers to carve a thick ring
of dirt around a subdivision of homes
near the city of Redding. It was a fairly
routine assignment—the containment
lines were three dozer blades wide and
designed to halt the advance of the
wildfire, which was still miles away.
What Andrews didn’t know was
that the Carr Fire—to that point a
rather ordinary California blaze—had
spawned something monstrous: a fire
tornado the likes of which the state
had never seen.
A freak of meteorology, it would anni-
hilate everything in its path, uprooting
trees and crumpling electrical towers.
It was a vortex of air wrapped around
a column of rising heat, flames licking
its unseen walls.Andrews hunkered down. He gripped
the dozer’s protective foil curtains and
pulled them closed with his left hand
to keep the wind from batting them
open. With his right hand, he pulled
his shirt over his nose and mouth. The
heat seared his throat.
Temperatures within the tornado
soared to 1,480 C. A nearby Cal Fire
truck exploded.
Andrews dialed 911. His singed hands
trembled. A dispatcher answered, on
the verge of tears. Dozens of others
had phoned in already, describing
the unfolding hell. Now here was a call
from ground zero.
“I don’t know how long I can last,”
Andrews told her. “I need to get out
of here.”
“If you can, get out safely, okay?”
“I can’t. It’s all on fire around me.
Don’t risk anybody’s life for mine.”“NOBODY IS GOING
TO BELIEVE THIS.”
The wildfire had begun in typical fash-
ion—human error colliding with a dry
landscape primed to burn. It hadn’t
rained in the area since May, and win-
ter precipitation had been 42 per cent
below normal. More than a dozen
other wildfires were already burning
across the state, so resources to fight
this one were stretched. On July 23, an
older couple driving home from a
vacation cut through Redding. A tire
on their trailer went flat, leaving the
wheel to drag on pavement. Sparksreader’s digest
40 april 2020