Summer Through a Wildland Firefighter’s Eyes
Music festivals.
Lazy days at the pool.
Family vacation.
Late nights on restaurant patios.
For a wildland firefighter, the long days of summer aren’t quite the same…
First, let’s start off with a few definitions about wildland fire in general. I am part of a Fuels crew, which has different responsibilities compared to hotshots, smoke jumpers, or working on an engine. Along with that, resources (crews) are categorized by type.
Type: The capability of a firefighting resource in comparison to another type. Type 1 usually means a greater capability due to power, size, or capacity.
My certification specifically states I am a “Type 2 Wildland Firefighter and Prescribed Burn Crew Member”. Hotshot crews are usually classified as a Type 1 resource due to the amount of qualifications the crew collectively holds.
As a Fuels crew, our responsibility is to reduce fuels as a part of land management.
Fuel Reduction: Manipulation, including combustion, or removal of fuels to reduce the likelihood of ignition and/or to lessen potential damage and resistance to control.
Since our main responsibility is the reduction of fuels in our forest, we do not travel as heavily as other crews, like hotshots.
Hotshot Crew: A highly trained fire crew used mainly to build fireline by hand.
Some crews are called IA (initial attack) hand crews, and their purpose is to be the first resource to report to an incident (a wildfire).
Initial Attack: The actions taken by the first resources to arrive at a wildfire to protect lives and property, and prevent further extension of the fire.
Water is typically a VERY important factor in controlling a fire. Air support can include helicopter and plane water drops, but a lot of water resources are ground support crews operating engines.
Engine: Any ground vehicle providing specified levels of pumping, water and hose capacity.
Engine Crew: Firefighters assigned to an engine. The Fireline Handbook defines the minimum crew makeup by engine type.
[For more fire terminology, refer to the mini glossary at the end of the story!]
Home for the summer (well, rest of the summer — I joined the crew late into the season and would not work the whole six months May-October) was a quaint house shared with other women that I worked with on the district. One of a handful of houses amonst the pines at seventy-five hundred feet in, what most would say, the middle of nowhere. Clints Well about ten miles away has a small convenience store for snacks, but grocery shopping was done an hour north in Flagstaff or an hour south in Payson. Honestly, I had no idea where Happy Jack was prior to applying for the position. After one summer though, Happy Jack and the Coconino Forest will always hold a special place in my heart.
The first week of work consisted of some physical training (since we were already deep into the season, I missed the extreme PT weeks of May.) This included completing the pack test (an arduous fitness test required at the beginning of every fire season, which is walking three miles with a forty-five pound vest in under forty-five minutes), a hike in full gear and carrying chainsaws, and a three and a half mile run.
Also — can we take a minute to realize that all those beautiful forested hills and mountains are in Arizona?!
“Oh, Arizona? All desert… Way too hot… Arizona is brown and flat” — WRONG. This southwest state is so much more than cacti and scorching heat.
Speaking of weather. In Arizona, heading into July means the arrival of monsoon season. With the afternoons taken over by huge down pours, it is not very likely for a fire to 1) start, or 2) keep burning. While the rain is helping the southwest keep fires at bay, the smaller regional crews are able to go available as a national resource. What does that mean? Well, “going national” means we can get assigned to a two-week fire assignment, or a “role”, outside of the national forest we work on and in another state. Aka:
New forests, new fires, new adventures!
Last summer started off with a month and a half of national roles, followed by a steady grind of prep work and prescribed burns on our home district. So, without further ado…
A SUMMER IN NORTHERN ARIZONA AS A WILDLAND FIREFIGHTER
ASSIGNMENT 1 — CALIFORNIA
The first role included driving to our original destination of Twin Falls, Idaho. From there, we traveled through Nevada and stayed put in Northern California for the remainder of our two weeks. While staging in South Lake Tahoe, California we helped the local ranger district in a thinning project, went on a beautiful PT hike, and camped out at an old Forest Service site on the shores of Fallen Leaf Lake. Then we were called further north.
Two days after arriving in Yreka, California and after our supervisors met up with other overheads from the local forest at Oak Knoll, our final destination was an ICP in Happy Camp, California, where the Klamath Forest was burning up and needing support.
And ICP is an Incident Command Post, a location at which primary command functions are executed. And in this case, where the logistics magic happened and resources were staioned for incidents in the region.
After our first day mopping up a small acreage fire, the Cade Fire, we then joined forces to help get the Clear Fire contained the remainder of our role.
While we were in Happy Camp, the area was having a record heat wave. Up on the exposed ridge lines where we were working, the temperature was in the low ninety’s. Down at camp, tempertures were in the hundred’s during the day. So hot, so much humidity… And frequent water breaks were definitely needed, especially for the sawyers using the chainsaws all day.
After a long eight days of prep work and burn operations in the steep Klamath mountains, we got a group photo with Happy Camp’s mascot before returning to Arizona for some much needed R&R.
A FEW DAYS AT HOME
R&R seems to fly by so quickly, and before ya know it we were right back to work. A few days of prep work were able to get completed before we were called again for a national resource assignment.
ASSIGNMENT 2 — MONTANA
For this roll, we joined forces with two IA crews out of the Apaches-Sitegreaves National Forest (neighbors to us on the Coconino) to form a twenty-man handcrew. After two days of driving to reach Montana, the morning of the third day we were sent to an ICP near Superior.
With just a few days left on this assignment, as we were mopping up the fire along the dozer line — I got burned.
Yes, I was wearing Lowa’s, which have a low shaft compared to the typical fire boots like White’s and Drew’s. I thought I was giving the stump-hole enough space to walk around, but they can be sneaky bastards. Not only is the rootball of a tree smouldering underneath the ground — so are the roots extending from it.
One false step, and my foot sunk into the soupy dirt (if the dirt has a “soupy” consistency when stirring it with your tool, that means it is HOTTER than HELL itself. Literally lava dirt. A tiny bit managed to slip into my boot and was wedged between my sock and the tongue.
The medics said it was a second-degree burn, and probably could have been categorized as third-degree. It was about the size of two quarters next to each other. As the burn healed, it decreased in size a bit, but still left a very prominate scar on my lower leg.
The last two days was a bitch because of the burn, but we made it to the end of our roll. After back and forth between our supervisors, our forest, and people at ICP — we got the news that we were coming back to Montana after R&R.
ASSIGNMENT 3 — MONTANA (again)
After turning my two days of rest into an exquisite spa experience filled with delicious food, a massage, and waking up to no alarms, it was time to fly back to Montana for another two weeks.
This time around we were in the same region as the previous fire, but stationed at an ICP near Thompson Falls for the Highway 200 Complex.
The above photos were on the Cub Fire, one of the incidents of the Highway 200 Complex. Our crew was put in charge of mopping up and confirming that it was contained and controlled.
The burn on my leg made this role a lot of fun. More sarcasm.
Every morning after breakfast I cleaned and wrapped my leg, and in the evening after dinner another cleaning and then let it air out and scab while I slept. This also meant visits to the medic trailer to get more second-skin, self-adhesive wrap, gauze, and neosporin.
By now we are entering the first few weeks of September.
After taking care of the Cub Fire, our crew was sent to the Reader Fire (another incident within the complex) and took on a spot fire that started that morning before it climbed up the trees and spread through the forest any further. The day of the spot fire was also my birthday — what an adrenaline rush of a birthday present! Mopping up the spot fire was followed by gridding the green for more heat to catch and extinguish any other spots that may have started. Thank goodness there were none.
Holding on the Reader fire during the many burn out operations we did…
Holy smokes. Pun intended.
Hose Lay: Arrangement of connected lengths of fire hose and accessories on the ground, beginning at the first pumping unit and ending at the point of water delivery.
Laying hose is one of my favorite job requirements. I get to challenge myself by carrying as many rolls as I can on my tool handle, and further hone the craft of throwing the perfect hose roll.
The second-to-last day of our roll consisted of chipping all the fuel that we had cleared in the days prior between two DP’s. For a firefighter… chipping tends to be one of the least favorite things to do.
And with a gloomy morning filled with rain that turned everything to muddy ash as a start to day fourteen (the last day!), we packed up and demobilized, soon to be on our way back to Happy Jack.
RX SEASON
As mentioned earlier, the responsbilities of our fuels crew include reducing fuel as a part of land management. That management includes prescribed burns (Rx burns). The preparation that goes into completing a prescribed burn includes reducing heavy fuels along dozer lines/roads, falling hazard trees that could harm holding resources along the perimeter of a burn block, creating handline around the area we want to burn using hand tools and drags, and catfacing (removing fuel from the base of a tree that has substantial bark loss and could make that tree a hazard — example of a catface soon).
Once we were back in Happy Jack for the remainder of the season — it was time to grind it out!
Dispatch on the radio?! That means…
A FIRE!
Once a plan was in place, we dug line straight up the hill to anchor in with the road on top of the ridge, and then burned that line out and towards the main fire that was creeping in. The fire was on the Apaches-Sitegreaves Forest, but where we were holding in the wash and waiting for the burn operation to finish was actually the border between the A-S and Coconino.
If we are not reducing fuel by burning or prepping — the crew rehabs tools, gathers more information, or fixes equipment at station.
As the season came to a close, we began to get equipment ready for a dormant winter. That included sharpening and refurbishing tools for the following season and “purging” the saws by removing the bar oil and fuel.
When the last day arrived, the day was spent cleaning our line packs (you would not believe the amount of dirt that comes out of our packs while hosing them down), returning tents and other issued gear to the conex box, and a final house check if you stayed in the Forest Service housing on district.
And just like that, the season was over. I may have started the season late, but those four months still passed by in the blink of an eye.
What came next?
It was time to wait six months until I got to wear my greens, see my crew again, go for days without a shower, sweat through my boots, laugh about exhaustion, and protect the irreplaceable wilderness I love.
Wait to be a wildland firefighter again.
GLOSSARY
There is a difference between controlled and contained.
Contain a Fire: A fuel break around the fire has been completed. This break may include natural barriers or manually and/or mechanically constructed line.
Control a Fire: The complete extinguishment of a fire, including spot fires. Fireline has been strengthened so that flare-ups from within the perimeter of the fire will not break through this line.
“Digging line”, “constructing line”, roads, and dozer lines are all:
Control Lines: All built or natural fire barriers and treated fire edge used to control a fire.
An important part of a successful control line is making sure that all fuels are removed and has been dug down to mineral soil.
Mineral Soil: Soil layers below the predominantly organic horizons; soil with little combustible material. (aka fire will not burn over mineral soil)
When we are “mopping up”:
Mop-Up: To make a fire safe or reduce residual smoke after the fire has been controlled by extinguishing or removing burning material along or near the control line, felling snags, or moving logs so they won’t roll downhill.
You can expect the following as part of the mop-up procedure.
Cold-Trailing: A method of controlling a partly dead fire edge by carefully inspecting and feeling with the hand for heat to detect any fire, digging out every live spot, and trenching any live edge.
Hotspot: A particular active part of a fire.
Hotspotting: Reducing or stopping the spread of fire at points of particularly rapid rate of spread or special threat, generally the first step in prompt control, with emphasis on first priorities.
I am also going to refer to “prepping” a lot. Prepping refers to clearing away fuels within a certain distance of the control line before a burn out or prescribed fire takes place. Depending on how many people are working, there will be a few sawyers (people working with chainsaws) and the rest will swamp.
Swamper: A worker who assists fallers and/or sawyers by clearing away brush, limbs and small trees. Carries fuel, oil and tools and watches for dangerous situations.
Pre-planned fires are a large part of what we do along with extinguishing them.
Prescribed Fires: Any fire ignited by management actions under certain, predetermined conditions to meet specific objectives related to hazardous fuels or habitat improvement. A written, approved prescribed fire plan must exist, and NEPA requirements must be met, prior to ignition.
Burn Out (or Burn Operation): Setting fire inside a control line to widen it or consume fuel between the edge of the fire and the control line.
Setting fire on the ground is done with drip-torches. Occasionally pistols that shoot out balls of fire. But that is for another time.
Drip Torch: Hand-held device for igniting fires by dripping flaming liquid fuel on the materials to be burned; consists of a fuel fount, burner arm, and igniter. Fuel used is generally a mixture of diesel and gasoline.
While some are lighting the fire, most of the others will be “holding”.
Holding Resources: Firefighting personnel and equipment assigned to do all required fire suppression work following fireline construction but generally not including extensive mop-up.
Essentially, we monitor the green (the land on the opposite side of the control line that should NOT be burning) for any embers that crossed over the line and started a spot fire, make sure ignited fuels (branches, logs, etc) haven’t rolled into the control line, and that catfaces are not burning.
Catface: a partially healed scare on a tree or a log.
Since the bark is not there to protect the inside of the tree, it will ignite much easier, and then potentially be a hazard to holding resources because the base of the tree is impaired.
[The rest of your fire terminology dreams can become a reality here.]
