Word: geil
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...boiled 10,000 ft. into the sky; the fire raced with the wind through a deep-timbered basin towards the Boole sequoia (world's third largest) and towards the steep gorges of the Kings Canyon, as deep in places as the Grand Canyon. "If it jumps down," said Geil, "we're in trouble. That's mankiller country. If we don't catch her here, there's no stopping her. She could go for miles on both sides of the river...
...then Lou Geil was running the fight against the McGee fire ("a vicious animal," he called it) like a military operation. A veteran of some 200 fire fights during his 15 years in the Forest Service, he mapped firebreaks like trenchlines, set backfires like counterattacks to slow down the rush of the great blaze...
...twisting mountain roads to the fire area rumbled a stream of truck convoys with essential supplies: tools, pumps, stoves, snakebite kits, seeping bags of disposable paper, and hundreds of other items. One of Geil's supply men ordered 500 Ibs. of hamburger from a flabbergasted butcher in a nearby town ("take your time; take half an hour"). The men got food in their camps twice daily (at 4:30 a.m. and 8 p.m.), and box lunches on the fire line during the day. On the eighth day, with the fire almost under control, a wind sprang...
...fire stormed downhill through the basin, Geil sent in a picked crew with curt orders to dig a last-ditch firebreak. His orders: the crew must be prepared to hole up in the cliffs, to live without supplies, lay through the fire if trapped,* but "tie up" the basin. They did. Last week a ranger and three Indians with 1,200 ft. of line clambered into Kings Canyon (which drops 4,000 ft. in two miles) to keep the fire from shooting along the canyon's wall. Hemmed in, the fire came at last under control. Loss...
Last week's rain wet down much of California, but at week's end fire still crackled in the deep combustible duff of the forest floor. In the Sequoia and other blackened forests, the Forest Service was making brisk plans to replant. Said Fire Boss Geil, his face drawn and his eyes hooded with fatigue: "We'll plant seedlings, and we'll prune them, and in 70 or 80 years we'll have the timber back. It'll take a lot of work. Tomorrow we start...