In the 27 years Tom Hatley has worked as a structural and wildland firefighter, he says he has lost count of the number of fatalities he’s seen.
“I’ve lost track — I’m sure hundreds,” he says. “I remember one year, I was called Dr. Death because every time I was on call — I had like six fatalities in six months. It just seemed like every time I turned around, somebody was dying.”
He worked the Tubbs Fire in California in 2017, the most destructive wildfire in California at the time. There were 22 fatalities. In his division, there were six missing people. That was the first time he saw cadaver dogs, whose job was finding bodies in piles of rubble.
He was at the 2014 Carlton Complex Fire in the Methow Valley, which killed two. He remembers the pungent smell of burnt cows from a farm that had lost 250 cattle.