Dustan Mueller had come to expect the unexpected. The US Forest Service deputy fire chief had been deployed thousands of miles from home to battle an out-of-control blaze in the wooded bogs and swampland of Alberta, Canada.
In the dry moisture-hungry forests of northern California he was used to, a favorably-timed rainstorm would likely mean an end to the fire. But in this marshy terrain, even a late-spring storm could do little to slow the flames: two days after being doused, the conflagration roared back to life, churning through thick bands of desiccated moss and the stands of black spruce and aspen.
