"Two Years With America’s Elite Firefighters"

"Hotshot fire crews work on the front lines of the biggest wildfires in the American West. We rode along with them."

"Early this summer, while many Americans were gathering for Fourth of July barbecues, the Tallac Hotshots were in triple-digit heat in Arizona, fighting a wildfire for 14 straight days and sleeping on the ground next to their trucks.

The federal firefighting crew had only three days off before darting to a fire raging in a thickly wooded evergreen forest in Oregon.

They then decamped to the Klamath National Forest across the border in California, working overnight in dense and steep terrain filled with poison oak.

After a few days of rest, they were dropped by helicopter in early September into some of the most remote wilderness in Northern California to battle a fire blazing despite near-freezing temperatures."

Max Whittaker reports with photographs and Thomas Fuller with words for the New York Times November 21, 2023.

Source: NYTimes, 11/22/2023