Chapter 7: Eleven Minutes

Kurt's POV

I wrote the report at five in the morning on the hood of my truck, in the parking lot of the county fire building, with a pen that kept skipping.

It took one page.

At 4:04 a.m. on the night of the Ridgeback Fire, Breckenridge Air Rescue ordered my crew to hold at the base of Cedar Grade.

I obeyed it for eleven minutes.

At 4:15 I disobeyed it.

I arrived at 4:26, and a civilian was already dead.

I signed it, dated it, and read it again.

I had spent two weeks writing and deleting a different version in my head.

In that one, a helicopter was in the air, and the rule on a hotshot crew is that nobody enters a road while aircraft is working it.

In that one, I was running my first fire as superintendent, and a man on the radio sounded sure.

All of it was true.

None of it was why I had waited.

I had waited because I wanted it to be somebody else's job.

The chief's door was open at 7:30.

He was a big, tired man who had pinned my first badge on me, and he did not stand when I came in.

"You've seen the video," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"Forty seconds of a clinic waiting room. The governor's office has called me twice."

"Here's my statement."

I set it on his desk.

He read it with his lips pressed together.

"You didn't have to do this," he said.

"Yes, sir. I did."

"Corbin. You understand I have to put you on administrative leave."

"I do."

"Pending review. No pay. No engine. Your crew goes under the assistant."

"Yes, sir."

"For eleven minutes," the chief said quietly, and took off his glasses. "I wish to God you'd driven up that road and told me about it afterward."

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