José Bertín Cruz-Estrada was responding to a wildfire in Washington state on 27 August when four unmarked vehicles drove up to his crew’s remote location in a national forest.
Cruz-Estrada, part of a team of 20 Oregon-based firefighters, had spent a week hiking through dense terrain, battling smoke and clearing fallen trees and other debris to prevent the Bear Gulch fire, a 9,000-acre blaze, from growing. That morning, they were waiting for a taskforce leader to provide instructions, but Cruz-Estrada quickly realized the men arriving in trucks were not emergency responders.
