THE COMPANY

Dennis R. Ford, who is twenty years old at the time, is stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base where he serves as a United States Air Force Airman. Mid-morning on December 20, 1977, he is directed to fight the fire. He will standby at the ready until dusk before he is brought to the fire’s location. His responsibility is to put out spot-fires in the bottom of a canyon, below Honda Canyon Ridge. He remains in that location for the next 12-15 hours. He tells others in the ensuing years: If the wind changed direction, I would have died in that canyon and met my maker. You couldn’t outrun the fire. In 2015, Ford reads: Beyond Tranquillon Ridge. The book bring’s back the memories of the fire, Ford is haunted by the notion that he never was trained to fight fires and he was only given a shovel and a pair of leather gloves for protection.