Futura.

Dear listener, before we start a quick warning, in this episode, there's a brief mention of suicide.

Take care.

And once you get there and you get the briefings, the plan, what they want you to do,

you start getting the little butterflies, right? You start driving up towards the line,

and you know what to expect because you've been on other fires, but every fire is different, right?

From Futuroniria and PRX, it's Latino USA, I'm Maria Inujosa.

Today, into the fire, with Eldorado Hachot, Armando Perez.

Massive wildfires continue to ravage California over the holiday weekend,

forcing thousands from their homes.

Wildfire danger in the state of Texas, so we're talking about 99% of the state experiencing some level of drought.

This is the view from the ground during the worst wildfire season in California's history.

Firefighters near and far coming together today to mourn the loss of one of their own killed on the line of duty.

President Biden is not considering declaring a climate emergency.

Armando Perez, or Mando, as he likes to be called, never imagined that he would be responding to some of the worst wildfires in US history,

as a member of a special firefighter team called the Hachots.

My family was very traditional old school Mexican family. It was all about working family, so when I was going up,

I thought I would be in the construction business because that's when my grandfather did, a lot of monkeys did that.

But for the past decade, Mando has worked as a wildland firefighter with the Eldorado, California, Hachot crew.

Hachots get that name because they work on the hottest part of wildfires.

There are just over a hundred of these Hachot teams in the entire United States, and Mando is part of one.

Mando's career in firefighting wasn't just unexpected. It had a pretty unusual start as well.

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