Manor Lands (Project 2)

As many of you already know, I was hired for the Summer by the State of Utah working for the Department of Natural Resources as Fire Technician Type I. Which pretty much means that I am working for the State of Utah as a Wildland Firefighter. I was hired by the Utah Fire and Rescue Academy (UFRA) Crew. Our office is actually located in Draper (right around the point of the mountain) on the prison property. Something pretty cool that I learned was that the first firecrew that my department had was a prison crew called the Flame-in-go's (mascot was a flamingo). In early 1990's/late 80's, prisoners ending there prison sentence and having been on good behavior where actually given jobs as wildland firefighters. They have slowly branched away from this and now the organization is full time employees. It is pretty cool to be working for an organization that has a pretty cool history. Every once in a while you can see evidence though of the flame-in-go's which is pretty cool.

Being a Wildland Firefighter working for the state instead of some other private organization definitely has its perks. First, our department is well funded. Having this means that we get brand new equipment all the time. This year all the rookies got new fireline packs and our crew got 6 new chain saws. It is pretty nice to be able to be fully stocked on supplies all the time.

Second, we get to ride around in crew vehicles. Unlike other firecrews who need to pack all their gear and their crew into SUV's, we own these buggies that we are able to ride around in. They are super nice because we get plenty of leg room and plenty of space for all our gear.

Third, we are able to get 40 hours a week even if there are no fires to fight. How it works is that when their is no fire to fight our crew is pretty much hired out to different projects. So when the fire season is slow and there aren't any fire assignments given too us we will get 40 hours a week. These are usually scheduled. We will do the projects until we get an assignment. For example for the last couple of weeks, since there has been no fires, we first got hired down to Poderosa Park which is right outside Zion's National Park. This resort assigned us to clear about 30 feet from either side of the road of all trees/brush. The resort needed the road to have better visibility. Another example of us being hired out is this week were we travelled up to Manor lands which is right on the Utah/Wyoming border. The lots up their had many large beetle infested trees that needed to be cut down. Even though the Zion project was pretty fun because we were able to visit the park on our day off I didn't have my camera and since I brought my camera to this project I was able to take pictures, which is why I decided to blog about this one.

When we do project work, our crew likes to try and get all of our 40 hours done at once. So we were scheduled to get them all done in 3 days. Tuesday morning at 6:00 we reported to work and headed for Manor lands when we showed up we were given our assigned areas and instructions on which trees to fall and which ones not too and we got to work.

Whenever we are using a chain saw there is always one sawyer (guy with the chain saw) and at least one swamper (this guy helps move everything that is cut to either burn piles or to a place were the brush can be chipped/shreaded. Swamper is also responsible for helping the sawyer by making sure the cuts are lined up right and pounding the wedge in if the cuts alone don't fall the tree.) This is a picture of one of my crew members acting as sawyer and my squad boss acting as swamper while cutting down a tree. So pretty much we do this all day. Cut down a trees, saw them into pieces, and then move the pieces to piles. Since we are only working for 14 hour days there is a lot of passing off of the saw and I was able to get a lot of saw time. This is a video of me cutting down a tree. I am the one making the cuts and then my swamper (Chad Roesher) moves in and pounds the wedge in to finally topple the tree.

For this project we worked really long days. Tuesday and Wednesday we had 14 hour days and then on Thursday we had a 12 hour work day. Which makes for some really really long days. Even though we only worked 3 days it definitely felt like a 40 hour week. So that is typical work each week except....

That it Snowed!!!! The night of the first day it began to snow hard. We kept waiting for them to tell us that we were going to cancel the project but it never came. It was freezing cold and snowed all that night. Pretty crazy When we got back that night we had to set up our tents in the snow which was miserable. When we woke up that morning and got to work again it continued to snow. But we kept working through it. It was really really cold. But luckily after lunch that afternoon on the second day the snow stopped and the sun came out and it began to warm up and the snow had melted. We had a pretty good afternoon and finished the trip strong.

You can view the rest of my pictures by visiting http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020675&l=c1acf&id=203001753