Trailblazers

A new plan to solve California’s fire problem.

- Nicola Twilley

Before Terry Lim handed me an aluminium flask filled with a blend of gasoline and diesel and asked me to set fire to the Tahoe National Forest, he gave me a hard hat, a pair of flame-resistant gloves, and a few words of instruction. “You want to dab the ground,” he said. “Just try to even out the line.”

The line was a low ridge of flame, no more than a foot high, creeping toward us through the forest. In front of it, the ground was springy, carpeted with a dense layer of pine needles and studded with tufts of grass. Specks of sunlight shimmered in the deep, almost kaleidoscopic green, bouncing off lime-coloured ferns and conifer boughs. A foot-long alligator lizard skittered in front of me, pausing to pump out a couple of quick pushups before vanishing into the brush. Beyond the line, the ground was black and silent. Silhouettes of large trees loomed out of a sallow gray haze.

The lit cannister of fuel I was holding, known as a drip torch, had a long, looped neck that emitted a jaunty quiff of flame. I took a deep breath, and ducked my way through the scrub to the far end of the line. Then I walked back, dotting the tip of the torch’s neck to the forest floor a few feet in front of the flames, as if I were tapping out a message in Morse code. The dots and dashes ignited small fires, which joined up so rapidly that at one point I set fire to my boots. A swift, panicky battering with my gloved hands smothered the flames before any damage was done.