'78 Before Safety Nets

CDF ’78: Fighting Fire Before the Safety Net

If you’re a wildland firefighter today, your daily routine is built on safety protocols: LCEPS drilled into your head, a modern fire shelter on your hip, clear escape routes, and a tactical radio clipped to your vest.

I’m glad you have those tools. Because when I was on a CDF pumper crew in the summer of 1978, we fought the exact same wildland fires with almost none of them.

What We Had (And What We Didn't)

Back then, state training for seasonal crew members focused on basic fire behavior—fuels, weather, and topography—not tactical safety checklists or situational awareness. We were expected to follow orders, trust the officers, and work the line.

Our standard gear list was as bare-bones as it gets:

• Thin, single-layer Nomex shirts and pants

• Basic shop goggles that warped and fogged instantly in the heat

• Leather gloves and a bandana

• Hand tools and 45-lb (when filled) metal back pumps

• Basic First Aid Kit with no basic first aid knowledge or training.

• Old school water canteens

• Vietnam era C-Rations - Everything came in small cans that were opened using this tool called a P-38 that we carried in our pockets.  We only ate the cookies, cheese and crackers and canned fruit-everything else was inedible. 

What we DIDN'T have - Gear and knowledge

• Personal radios (only one fixed radio inside the engine cab)

It was common for two or three of us to be dropped off along a flank with just a metal back pump and zero communication. Once the engine drove off, you were completely isolated along a raging fire. When your five gallons of water ran out, which was in a couple of minutes, you just waited until someone came back for you, which took forever.

• Chainsaws

• Fire Shelters

• Knowledge of the 10 orders. (We were trained in fire behavior but not situational awareness, escape routes, etc. That was left to the crew boss).

• First Aid training

The Day the Margin Ran Out

When leadership made a bad call back then, there was no safety buffer.

During one response, our engineer drove us straight into a blowup, ignoring obvious warning signs and other crews abandoning their hose lays. We just drove over them and kept going in. Before we knew it, we were caught in a direct burnover.

There was no room for six of us inside the cab, and we had no fire shelters. We were stuck outside.

We strapped on our MSA air packs, soaked ourselves with whatever water we had left, hunkered down against the side of the truck, and waited. We survived, but the heat was so intense it melted the lightbar off the engine roof and blistered the paint right next to us. Our Nomex no match for the intense heat and our skin burned - badly! 

Why History Matters

Every safety protocol, tactical radio requirement, and piece of fire-resistant gear carried on the line today was bought by lessons learned the hard way. The next time you check your shelter pouch or check in over your personal radio, know that those standards exist because earlier crews had to survive with almost nothing but pure luck and grit.

But, I did have my little Instamatic camera to document it all. Looked just like this!