Creatures in flight:
With the aim of protecting tourist facilities and keeping open Highway 18 from Alishan to Tungpu, park headquarters opened firebreaks in Linchihshan and Lulinshan to keep the fire from spreading up the mountain. In four days that portion of the fire had been completely extinguished.
Early on the fifth day, the head of the park's tourism office, Lu Chih-kuang, set out with 15 workers, carrying lunch boxes and water bottles. At Tatachia Pass, they looked ahead and saw several billows of white smoke rising in the sky. The largest came from Nan Creek, where a team from the Forestry Bureau was battling the blaze. Park headquarters took over responsibility for controlling the fire in the forward mountain area.
Along the path, the forest had been burnt to ashes. A few pines and withered Chinese junipers were still standing. The hot flames had caused rocks to split and fall on the trail and had burned up the wooden footbridges, so the firefighters had to pick their way carefully.
As they went, they constantly heard the reverberation of what sounded like distant firecrackers. Lu explained that when resinous conifers burn, they crack open with an exploding sound.
Suddenly, a "caw caw" sound rent the air--a flock of crows that couldn't stand the smoke and flames were flying toward the main peak. Many more animals must also have been driven off.
After walking about three kilometers, they reached the scene of the fire and split up to fight it. There wasn't a lot of leaves and underbrush around, and the fire wasn't very big. Even so, there were a lot of flames. Sometimes they would put one flame down only to have it glow inside the embers and flare up later, forcing them to put it down all over again.
In lieu of anything better, a long-handled pruning knife and a branch became their main firefighting tools. They used the knives to cut out a firebreak and the branches to beat down flames on the ground. After hand-to-hand combat with the fire, ashes were everywhere and their bodies and faces were black with soot.
By the end of the day, the firebreak they had struggled to open proved effective. Nearby rocks and talus formed a good screen, and the spread of the fire had been stopped.
With the fire there under control, success was also reported in the Nan Creek area.
Forestry Administration personnel cut open a firebreak and then burn back the underbrush to prevent the fire from spreading to the valuable Chinese juniper afforestation area.