I cannot think of two less desirable pairs, but this is what happened to us on the drive home. After countless hours and over 100 miles of total gridlock on I-5 we made it to a motel. About 2 pm in the afternoon, thinking hours ahead, but only 30 miles ahead on the freeway, I calculated we would reach the town of Roseberg, OR about 8 pm. So, I searched for motels, called a few and found one with a room available. I took it but insisted on paying for it over the phone. We made it in about 9 pm but the room was still available. At check in, the clerk said, “Boy, are you lucky you paid for this room in advance”. “We are sold out and have turned away dozens of people. The manager said we could not give away your reservation because it was paid in full.” I just thought to myself, not lucky at all.
The parking lot was smoky and the clerk said that over half of the motel was booked by the Forest Service, that just rotated crews in for some rest and sleep. I asked how far the fire was from town, he said we are under an evacuation warning, at this moment, because the active fire is about 6 miles from town. He said we have a plan to wake up every guest and get them out safely if the situation changes. With that bit of confidence, we went to bed. But the next morning the smoke was worse, you needed headlights at 7 am and the gridlock up on I-5 had increased to a 5-15 mph crawl. We ate some breakfast and slowly merged onto the freeway. We had only driven about 30 minutes, or 3-4 miles when traffic slowed to a crawl. I could see billows of smoke rising from the ridge ahead, but no flames. We crept closer and suddenly stopped. There was a red pickup truck driving toward us in the center margin announcing over his PA system that traffic on I-5 had been stopped about ¼ mile in front of us. We were in no danger and to remain in the vehicles with our engines off. Within 30 minutes we could see active flames cresting the ridge nearest us on our right. I took a walk to survey the overall situation, but I was not hopeful. There was no traffic in the north bound lanes, as they had stopped north-bound traffic on that side of the fire. I counted only 22 cars in front of us, so we were very close to the front of the pack. Suddenly a siren went off. I looked around, and saw nothing to alarm me, when I heard a low flying jet, only a few feet above the fire, flying toward me. It dropped its load of red fire retarder which landed nicely about 50 feet in front of the fire’s leading edge. I got a little closer to a group of people watching the event, as the siren sounded again and another place appeared, but this time lined up directly above the fire-dropping water, which pounded the flame down as it neared the red stained stipe laid down by the first plane. This is how it went for the next hour, planes diving in and powering out, flames shrinking then growing back to their former strength. An endless tussle to gain an upper hand was being fought by the fire fighters and the forest fire.
