Escalante and Peterson Fire

So I completed my first 14 day tour. It was pretty fun and at time exciting but at time really hard. When it wasn't mentally tough from doing really boring work it was physically tough assignments. I am going to go in pretty good detail on these fires because they are my first but mostly because I want to have a written account of my trip. So parts might be a little boring but hopefully not.

So we started the tour off on a project. We were cutting trees down again up in some really rich community. About half way through the day we broke for lunch were our crew boss got a fire call. We were super excited and jumped into the crummies that we drive and took off for Southern Utah. This was our first fire call. We arrived in Escalante that same day and reported to the Incident Command and stayed in the base camp. This was one of Utahs first major fires so they went all out and had an enormous amount of resources. They had a total of 8 crews there 3 being hotshot crews. We didn't get any really exciting assignments this fire because the fire had already been in progress for a couple of day and also there were hotshot crews that were a larger priority than us. Anyways it was a good starting fire because I was able to get used to the fire environment and atmosphere of being on an actual fire. I was able to learn about staying the nights in a base camp, how our crew ran things and such. As for the assignments we got cold trailing assignments. Pretty much we would wake up early each morning and then hike to our starting location. Once there we would usually line out in a straight line and then grid through the perimeter of the fire that we were assigned with one glove off feeling through the dirt and ash looking for hotspots. Hotspots are material that would still be burning. Usually it was a burning log, tree stump, or sometimes tree root. These things are usually buried underground burning. Fire is pretty weird. A fire might climb a tree and burn it and then climb down to the root system and start burning the roots out. Once underground the burning process slows but keeps going. The roots of a tree or buried log can burn for days even months to then resurface to only spark another fire at a later time. Our job to find these hotspots is pretty important but extremely boring. It is a lot of walking bending over and feeling the back of your hand into the dirt searching for abnormally warm spots of ground. Once you find one you yell "hotspot" and then everyone in the line holds while you start digging out the stump of whatever may be burning. Well we did that for about 16 hours a day for about 4 days. We only saw the head of the fire once when it was going over a hill.

Then at the end of day 4 we were about to be demobilized and sent home when we got another fire call. We found out that we were going to be sent to Redding, California. So we loaded back into our buggies for a 15 hour (paid) drive. This fire was very different. In the area there were so many fires going on that they didn't have as many crews per fire. So once we arrived at the fire we checked in and got our first assignment to go and contain a portion of the fire that had "sloped over" the control line. So we hiked up this little mountain and began digging 'hotline' on the active part of a fire. This was by far the most intense time of my entire tour. Right when we got there we broke the crew into half, one on each corner of the slopover. The chain saws started up and then went ahead to cut down the trees and the rest of the crew started digging line around the perimeter of the fire. It was so intense because we were right next to the fire. Not only is digging line hard work but the heat from the fire was soo hot. Plus the smoke from the fire made it really hard to breath. I remember while I was digging line having thoughts like, "Man this is really hot" and then I started thinking about this video we watched in class back when I was taking the Wildland course at the academy. In this video their was a "firesheltler deployment survivor" In this video he talked about while he was in the shelter and the fire was blazing around him he remembered having thoughts of just wanting end his life by taking a deep breath of the hot air or throwing of his shelter off him but then said that the only thing that could keep him going was the thought of his loved ones. Well, I while I was digging that hotline I could see why he would say that. Even though the heat I was feeling was super hot but nothing compared to the heat this man felt while in his shelter I felt like I understood his feelings because being that close to a fire is pretty miserable. With the combination of hard work, fire heat, and smoke you lose most of your energy and motivation real quick. Like, I remember thinking, "if this fire somehow jumped our line and was racing towards us I don't know if my adrenaline would kick in enough to get my out of here." Anyways, we are a very safe crew and have very wise leadership because when the winds picked up we pulled off the hill into our safety zones. Which was wise because only a couple minutes later the fire jumped our line and ripped through the entire valley. We hung out in our safety zones for a while which was nice because we were able to get our energy back. Later that night we did a burn out. Which is pretty fun. The idea is for burn out is that you burn out the full between you and a control line to put a buffer between you and the fire. So you start your own fire that is burning all the full but at a lower level of activity. So that when the fire reaches that spot it needs to stop because the full it needs has already been burnt out. This was cool because it was at night and so a little cooler day temperatures plus it made for some pretty cool pictures. We pulled a 29 hour shift that day and night so we were given a 24 hour break. Which was nice.

So the next morning after our break we hiked to a different part of the fire were we were had the assignment to help work with a bull dozer team. This was a lot of fun because the dozers to most of the hard work and we just sit there and look for places across the line were the fire could jump. But we were able to watch the dozers tare up a path and nock down trees and stuff. The fire started picking up anyways and so we went to our safety zones as a precaution and spent a lunch there. From that point on the fire was pretty much under control so we started our mop of phase again which is mostly just coldtrailing. Then we hit our 14 active days on fire and went home to enjoy our two (paid) days off!

I really like my job. It is a lot of fun and pays good. There are a lot more aspects to wildland firefighting that I haven't covered but hopefully will in later blogs. You can check out more pictures of facebook.