Descriptions of the job., Life and Family

Long/Fast Winter

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This off-season has been intense. I managed to find myself a front desk gig again to avoid layoff. The agreement was that I would be available to help out with prescribed fires, but there weren’t many opportunities. So I spent my Fall and Winter selling firewood permits, xmas tree permits, and America the Beautiful park passes. I also answered hundreds of phone calls about popular attractions on our forest and road closure questions. Overall, it was a decent way to spend my time.

The other guy working the front desk was cool. He has two kids and enjoys skiing and mountain biking, so we always had plenty to talk about when we weren’t busy. I also took some classes this Winter, which kept me busy studying during down times in my office job. It was almost like a work study position.

I’m taking an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) course and Fire 1&2, which is a class required for structure firefighting. Between the two classes, I’ve got roughly a 24 credit course load going on, so the time allowed for studying at work was a huge help. I’m laid off for two weeks now, taking care of the kids and house, and my study time has taken a big hit already. It will be ok though.

It’s been nice hanging out with Mica more. He’ll be 2 years old in July, and he’s a pretty cool little turd. We’re developing a routine. I drop off his big sister at school and then we run errands til 1000 or so. We get home, he gets a snack and maybe a wrestling session and then it’s nap time at 1100. After only three days he knows the deal. Then I wake him up at 1400 if he’s not awake already and we go get his other sister from preschool. Sitter shows up at 1630 or so and then I go to class til 2130.

Big days, but we’re all getting by.

Fire season is going to feel like vacation.

I’m looking forward to going back to the crew, classes over, just drive a day or two, check in to whatever incident, and go to work.

Simple.

That is all.

Descriptions of the job., Fires

Phillips Creek Fire

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Today is our fourth shift on the Phillips Creek Fire, in Oregon, on the Umatilla national forest and private land. Things are going well on our division, using a combination of dozer line and hand line to bring fire down to roads on both sides of a major ridge via sub ridges.

Putting in the line was a big day for the crew. Everyone worked hard for most of the shift after a slower morning. I got assigned to dozer boss and got to take one of the guys from my squad as trainee. We walked the proposed ridge, talked with the scouts and leadership on my crew who were walking the fire’s edge on the next ridge to the northwest, and started pushing line.

The dozer operation went well, and we pushed a contingency line on the next ridge as well. My trainee did a great job. It was good that his first shift with heavy equipment involved some extensive scouting and let him see the capabilities and limitations of dozers and the operators. An experienced operator can do things with his machine that make me nervous, but they seem to always know when quit. The line reached a point were it dropped off too steeply to go any farther and still be able to track back out. Since there was no way out the bottom, we had to pull the plug on dozer line there.

After the heavy equipment tracked out, the crew was able to fully engage, having been relegated to cutting out ladder fuels and snags behind the dozers during the line-push. While my trainee and I were pushing the contingency line, the sawyersa started cutting out the ridge down to the road. They cut all the small trees for about sixty feet of the hand line location and the swampers dragged the cut material across, into the “green”. Black and green are the terms we use to orient ourselves to which sides of the line will be burned and unburned. The saw teams also cut the lower limbs off of larger trees, and cut down dead ones to aid in keeping the fire on the ground when we burn off the line.

Once the saw teams made some progress, the remaining crew members started digging, extending off the end of the dozer line. Sometimes the dig gets lucky, able to utilize natural features or just knock a layer of leaves off with a few swings to create a good fire line. This time they were not lucky at all. There was a thick layer of bear grass all the way to the road that had to be chopped out about eighteen inches wide, and under the grass was a lot of organic material and rocks. As my supervisor said to the guys after the shift, they did a great job; it doesn’t get much worse than that.

The dig had been working for two hours by the time I got back to the crew. I dug with them for about two hours and then got sent to get the vehicles. That way the guys would have a ride to camp when they finished the line instead of having to hike back out. It was only an eight hundred foot elevation gain, but after a hard day, that can be rough. Just those two hours of digging, on top of the hiking I did working the heavy equipment, had my biceps cramping up. Some of the other guys in the dig were cramping up even worse. But they drank some water, took some ibuprofin, and got the line in before dark.

Big day.

Tomorrow we will finish burning it down to the road.

That is all.

Descriptions of the job., Fires, Life and Family

Alaska 2 (Alaska Report 1)

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I’m currently on a flight from Fairbanks to Seattle. Next stop is San Fransisco, where I parked my Forest Service Jeep. My plan is to drive as far as Bakersfield, CA tonight and then get home the next day. It feels like I’ve been gone a long time. My wife had a busy time with the kids and her parents, and my parents were dealing with their parents’ health issues back East for much of the time. It will be good to be home so that I can help with the kids and give my wife a break for a few days at least. It will be good to see them all.

Alaska was a different experience from fires in the lower forty-eight. From what I saw, and I know this isn’t true of all fires in AK, the fires blow up and are pretty much unstoppable, then they sit down and have to be secured. Many big fires are the same way, but in Alaska, near structures anyway, the entire edge has to be opened up and dealt with extensively. Roads and heavy equipment are useful, but the majority of the edge on the fires I experience had to be cut out, cold-trailed, and mopped up by hand-crews. It’s a lot of work, and it’s not the exciting kind of work we all hope for, with big burnouts and epic handline construction along ridges and down steep slopes. It’s flat terrain, in thick black spruce stands, with problematic tundra holding heat for weeks and supposedly even years at times. It’s a grind.

It was awesome to experience some fires in Alaska, especially as a HEQB and Task Force Leader trainee (TFLD (T)). I had a truck the whole time and didn’t have to get soaked to the skin when it rained. Well, once, my division supervisor got lost and popped out in the middle of the black in a downpour and I had to go rescue his ass in a UTV. I got pretty wet, but it was worth it to see him all bedraggled, staggering down the two track in the rain. Hilarious. He had a tough shift that day.

My crew wants to go to Alaska, and I can understand the desire to fight fire somewhere you’ve never been, but I have to say, it would be a long hard roll and we’d be ready to go home after fourteen days of it. That being said, some crews take helicopters to the middle of nowhere in Alaska, where the black spruce isn’t so thick, and pretty much just walk around the fire, checking for heat and monitoring. It’s like an all expenses paid camping trip, and sometimes they end up in some beautiful places. You never know what you’ll get. But it will probably rain, a lot, and there will definitely be hordes of voracious mosquitos and horse flies.

Anyway, there’s a quick, disjointed, and probably not entirely accurate description of Alaska firefighting for you.

At this point, I’m looking forward to a couple days off, and selfishly hoping that I’m back to work with the crew before they get a fire assignment. They got to go to the north rim of the Grand Canyon for a full fourteen day roll while I was gone, so at least they got some action as well. It’ll be good to see them.

That is all.

Descriptions of the job., Fires

Alaska 1

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This morning I showed up for briefing at 0600 and, as expected, my name was on the demob list. My scheduled time for demob was 0800, but I figured I’d get a headstart with some possible vehicle issues so I stopped in for my demobilization checklist. I told them I was being let go and they asked if I’d like to go to Alaska. I said, “Yes, I would like to go to Alaska.”

So now I’m all checked out of the Saddle fire, waiting for details on a flight from either Redding, CA or Sacramento, CA to Anchorage. I’ll still be HEQB, working in a part of the country I’ve never seen before. I am very much looking forward to new experiences and having an excellent adventure.

I know I’ve mentioned this before somewhere, but… My Job is Better Than Your Vacation.

That is all.

Uncategorized

Day One: Saddle Fire

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Today was my official first day on the Saddle Fire. It may also turn out to be my last day on the fire. I got out to the line today, was assigned a dozer and operator, and got geared up to go scout the line for future rehab operations. As I was firing up my GPS, preparing to go for a hike, I heard the division trainee calling my dozer on the radio. Since he was not far from ,me I walked over to see what was up. My dozer was being demobilized…

At briefing last night I learned that the entire fire had line around it. Night shift did a small burnout with no issues, and this morning they were calling the fire 40% contained. That’s a conservative estimate. (Conservative estimates are the norm in fire containment percentages.) What I saw of the fire was pretty cold and pretty contained, with high recovery relative humidities last night and in the forecast. Suppression mode is moving toward rehabilitation mode in a hurry…

So I followed the dozer and transport back to ICP, said goodbye, and tied in with operations to see what was to be my fate. Sounds like I’ll either get demobilized too or get another piece of equipment. If an excavator comes in, I might get to run that for rehab shifts. Otherwise, I’ll probably be headed home in the morning.

So it goes.

***As I’m editing this post, I’m listening to radio traffic from air attack, discussing a possible new start not far from here.  Who knows, maybe they’ll need a dozer boss!

That is all.

Fires

Back in Business

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I’m on my first real fire of the 2015 fire season. There were a few small local fires early in the Spring, but they were only type four and type five single-shift low-intensity fires. The crew did a few prescribed burns this spring too, but no “real” fires until now.

The Saddle Fire is on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest under a type two incident management team. The latest situation report listed the fire at 1,480 acres, 15% contained, with 866 personnel assigned. It grew 460 acres yesterday and threatened some structures, but hasn’t sounded too spicy today. I wouldn’t know, because I’ve just been hanging out next to the operations tent since noon, waiting for an assignment.

Ops says I should get an assignment tomorrow, but I’ll still go to the night briefing at 1800 to see if anything is going on requiring my services.

This is my first time out as a single resource, Heavy Equipment Boss (HEQB). I got signed off on my taskbook for HEQB last season, but have always taken my assignments on fires the crew was assigned to already. This time I left the crew at home, borrowed a jeep from prevention, and drove myself from my home unit to the fire like a grownup. Pretty cool.

I love being on a hotshot crew. I like the missions we get as a crew, doing epic burnouts and constructing handline. I like dropping big trees when I get the chance. My favorite part of the crew at this point in my career is running a squad. I get to work with a bunch of really good dudes every day.  The only position I’ve had on the crew that I enjoyed nearly as much as squadboss was being a primary sawyer, but my time on a sawteam is over.

Yesterday, I showed up at work at 0800 like always, and did a couple hours of PT with a few of the guys since we were doing “PT on your own,” which for us was a 13 mile or so mountain bike ride. That was fun. I was getting changed after PT, getting ready to go prep a burn block when my boss called saying there was an order for HEQB in northern California and asking if I wanted it. I did. So did one of the other squadbosses. So we had one of the seniors pick a number between 1 and 20. I won.

I was on the road about an hour later and drove as long as Forest Service policy would allow a solo driver to operate. This morning I got up and hit the road at 0600 and got to ICP around 1130. I checked in as quickly as possible, anticipating a quick briefing from operations and an assignment to a division and a piece of equipment. But that’s not always the way it goes.

Hopefully there will be something for me tomorrow, and I’ll get to get out on the line doing something useful.

That is all.

Career, Descriptions of the job., Life and Family

Extended!

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This was supposed to be my last pay period until March, 2015 or so.  I typically get laid off for four or five months in the winter because I’m a firefighter, pretty low level, and there are not many fires this time of year.  Being laid off is normally something I’ve looked forward to during some long shifts or boring shop days, but with the new house and new baby, I’ve been dreading not getting a regular paycheck.

I always save up all summer to prepare for my lay-off, and we’d have made it through, but today I managed to find some other work that will last me through the winter.  If you call the supervisor’s office on my forest, I’ll be answering the phone, fielding questions and transfering calls to “ologists” and forest overhead.  I did the same thing at the ranger station last winter, and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

I’m not an outgoing person, but in certain situations, where it’s my job and feels totally appropriate, I can be quite chatty.  I know a lot about our forest and its recreation opportunities and resource uses, having lived here and worked for the forest here for seven years.  Being able to inform people about what there is to do here is satisfying.  And I won’t be unemployed.

Win-win.

That is all.

Fires, Life and Family

Winter is Coming

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We got our first real cold spell this week.  Saturday morning I woke up to a balmy 30 degrees to go in and work some overtime, checking our prescribed fires from the week before.  It warmed up to about 60, and although it was windy and we ended up having to pick up an 8 acre slopover, it was a pretty nice day.

Sunday was bitterly cold, about 20 degrees when I left my house and spitting snow all day.  I rode a quad a few miles down a powerline to make sure the trees near it were sound, and it took five minutes after I got back before my fingers had enough feeling to remove my helmet.  Good times.  I left early and headed home to make a big batch of venison chili and light a fire in the woodstove.  Nice.

Speaking of the woodstove, it burns wood at an alarming rate.  I was too busy this summer with work and kids and other projects to get much firewood collected.  I got four or five truck loads.  A truck load is approximately half a cord.  I estimate I’ll need at least six cords to make it through the winter using the woodstove.  It’s not the end of the world if we run out of firewood and have to rely on gas heat, but I like the idea of burning with wood, and I like the process of acquiring it.

Tomorrow I’m taking off work to cut as much wood as I can.  I’m thinking I can get at least five truck loads in a day, so if I take off Thursday I might be able to get enough to make it through the winter.  Should be a decent couple of days, and I’m not missing anything at work.  The snow and rain have put an end to our precribed fire.

That is all.