The Bushmen: A Memoir of Fighting Forest Fires for a Living

The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up as I watched the flames devour the forest faster than a man could run. The fire was outflanking us and was burning faster than we could dig a hand line. If it got behind us, our escape route would be gone. There would be no place to go. Our fire shelters would be worthless. We would be dead in a matter of minutes. An hour earlier, this fire was just your typical forest fire; in the last 20 minutes, it had transformed into a full-scale confla...