I guess I’m officially a wildland firefighter, eh? Seven days dispatched in the Bitterroot National Forest and two fires, lots of overtime and hazard pay and living in Nomex pants for a week. I didn’t know what to expect, but I think I’m hooked on this fire thing!
After we were called and told we would be leaving on Wednesday, Gator and I finished getting the engine ready and tried to get a few hours of sleep for our 3 am departure. Gator, Jeff and I had our coffee mugs filled and drove the 4 1⁄2 hours to Hamilton, which is Northwest of Red Rock, and checked in with dispatch.
Dispatch sent us back the way we came, south a few miles to Darby.
This is how being “initial attack” (the first resources to respond to a fire) works. You bounce around and never know where you will be! I love it!
At Darby, there wasn’t much going on so they sent us out with a ranger to Como Lake for… a boat ride. J He needed to fix some buoys, so Jeff was nice enough to stay on shore while Gator and I went out. As you can expect from a man from the bayou , he was awesome at handling the boat. I just sat and enjoyed the scenery. Rough day, huh?
Later, we were just on our way to dinner when Ray from Dispatch tells us that we were going to a fire at West Fork, a little bit south of us. Time for action!
We got to that ranger station and talked to their dispatcher, Stu, who told us there were at least 3 small lightning fires in our area and gave us one. I think this is the point that we realized that we probably should have eaten dinner before we left. Woops. MREs for dinner later, oh boy!
We drove the engine to the point that we were told was directly downslope of the fire. What fun, a steep slope of loose rock! We put our fire line packs (45 lbs), helmets, and yellow shirts on, grabbed our tools and started uphill. It was tiring but exciting! A little bit of smoke drifted around the peaks. We still hadn’t reached the source and had more elevation to climb, it was hard work, keep hiking up…
Jeff calls out from above. “Found a road!”
Good news, but we were annoyed that the person who scouted the fire hadn’t told us about this road, which could potentially make life a heck of a lot easier. Still hadn’t reached the fire though, so we went up another 30 yards and reached our fire.
80 foot ponderosa pine struck by lightening, flames at its base, surrounded by a few burning logs and shrubs. Maybe 30-40 sq. feet?
It wasn’t huge, it wasn’t spectacular, but it still was a fire and you still need to be careful. A good beginner’s fire. Jeff was in training for crew boss and incident commander, so it was good for both him and I to start small. The biggest challenge was how steep the terrain was, and it was hard just standing in one place. At this point, we decided it would probably be a good idea to have a backpack pump with water; Jeff volunteered to go back to the engine and get it, as well as scout out the road.
While he was gone, Gator and I dug line around the fire. That means that we had hand tools and cut away all the unburned trees and bushes around the fire, then dug a trench to stop it from spreading. We got a call from Jeff on the radio - that old logging road was just up the road from where we climbed the slope, and was a much better hike to the fire. We couldn’t drive the engine up because of some trenches in the road, but just that easier hike made a big difference!
At one point, dispatch asked Jeff what the name of the fire was. He paused a second, then responded “Novi”. And so the Novi Fire was born, in memory of the place I can’t seem to escape. J
At this point, it was late afternoon and we ended up working on the fire until 10:30 or 11, working to the light of our headlamps and the flames. We scraped away the burning area of the tree as best we could, expecting it to settle down overnight and maybe be out overnight. Somehow we made it off the side of that mountain and set up camp around our engine. There was a 20-person crew also hanging out near us who had been dispatched to a fire even smaller than ours on more level ground. Go figure. J
And so it came that I ate my first MRE (Meals Read to Eat). Nothing screams gourmet like that pukish-beige colored bag that contains even more little bags, filled with all sorts of delicious goodies. Mine? Pork. I opened it up and a square hunk of fleshy Spam-like “meat” greeting me with the aroma of Alpo dog food. Eeeechhh. But I was starved and figured that putting it on a giant cracker with the “cheese product” might make it more bearable. Mental note: knead the cheese product more thoroughly next time. Lumpy cheese sauce doesn’t add much to the experience. It actually wasn’t awful, but I could only stand so much of that salty pork-stuff. I also had a pound cake and something like rice. I think the highlight of that meal were the chicklets for dessert.
Jeff set up a tent while Gator and I decided to try and share the cab of the engine. I slept great… and apparently took up most of the cab while Gator froze his ass off. Woops. L I remember at one point waking up and telling him about a dream I had - my mom bought a little dog that started having seizures and I gave it CPR to save it. Ends up the dog had diabetes, but I saved his life so it thanked me. He thinks I’m a little “throwed off” now. J
In the morning, first thing first: coffee. I brought some along with my mini French-press, so we made a little fire and heated water in a tin can. 12 ounces at a time, we started our morning. Wednesday ended up being a 19 hour day! Back up the hill, this time up the road. Gator stayed at the engine in case we needed the chainsaw. We figured it would be pretty calm that early in the morning.
Jeff and I arrived to our tree and - surprise! - there were flames coming from the now-hollow base of the pine tree as well as the logs on the ground. We used the pumps and scraped away to try and put it out but that tree was definitely a problem. It made us a little nervous to see how little was holding the tree up now and it looked like it might fall soon. We needed the chainsaw and more water, so Jeff and I went back down to the engine for a refill and to get Gator.
We arrived back at the site with Gator maybe 20 minutes later, and the tree had fallen! Good thing we left when we did. Gator said we wouldn’t have been able to cut it down anyway and would have had to babysit it until it fell, so it was a good thing. We spent the day cutting the tree up, scraping it out, water, water, and more water, and finally we called it out. In the process, Jeff forged himself a nickname - “the Animal”.
That night, we went back to Darby and stayed in a motel. Showers! What a treat!
The next day (Friday), we were dispatched to the Sula district - a little bit south again - and were sent to mop-up with a few people from the Forest Service on the Saddle Mountain fire. This fire had been a bit bigger with some trees torching, but they had done a good job drowning it with a few helicopter bucket drops, a hand crew, an engine, and who knows what else. So, though this counts as a “fire”, it was sopping wet and there wasn’t much to mop up. Needless to say, we sat on that wet mess all day. In the meantime, the Capri fire had blown up so they were setting up a fire camp for that. We never were dispatched to that fire, since we were initial attack. We consider that a good thing - initial attack is the way to go!
…And once again, we were sent back to Darby. By this point, there had been a core group of crews that had also been staged there, so we knew people and went out to the bar and to dinner a few times. I met some great guys with the Flathead engine - Justin, Guy, and Jared - and they sparked my interest in working near them next year, at Swan Lake. We hung out at the station and Gator and I shared the engine cab again. But after a night of Guinness and spicy pizza… we’ll just say Gator nearly suffocated me. ;)
Saturday and Sunday, we stayed at Darby while the weather was calm and the action subsided. Lucky us, we got to do “project work” - fuels reduction, which means that Gator cut down trees and I stacked them up. It was fine to keep us busy, but seems sucky to me that the local crew who’s project it was didn’t have to work on it. But I guess that’s the way fire works, and it all evens out in the end. They even had us trimming their bushes at one point! We did have a good time at the Sawmill bar with everyone on Sunday night!
That’s the way fire works - “Hurry up and wait” is the phrase for it. Sit around and wait for something to happen… and when it does happen, you gotta bust ass!
Monday, Gator got us out of more project work by teaching the portable pumps class. At this point, we knew we were going home soon; weather was calm and even the Capri fire was demobing crews.We stayed at a motel that night and on Tuesday, we headed back to Red Rock Lakes.
It was a great trip and I couldn’t have asked for better company!
Other memories: alternate lyrics to “Seven Nation Army” by the White Stripes, singing that one line from “Float on” by Modest Mouse repeatedly, ordering two super-size pancakes on accident, hearing Gator’s life story over and over and over again, all the ladies (coffee shop, motel, waitresses) who told me they felt bad I was stuck with Jeff and Gator, "All - my - friends - live in Mon-i-da!", a guy with the nickname of Balls, and all everything that “happens in the engine, stays in the engine!”
When we returned to Red Rock, the new fire guys were already here to replace Gator, who left on Friday. We threw him a little party and him and I hung out Thursday and finally found some bull moose to photograph. I hope he can come back in a few weeks to work on the prescribed fire! It’s going to be a lot quieter and a lot more boring without him to mess with, but hopefully we’ll stay in touch!
Monday, my new partners and I are going to Bison NWR, 6 or 7 hrs from here, to do some prescribed fire prep. Not sure what that means, but it’s supposed to be very pretty up there. Fire danger starts to get high around this time of year, so hopefully I’ll get on another fire soon. I completed my Firefighter Type 2 task book and would start my Firefighter Type 1, but there is a course I need to take before I can begin.
Overall, I’m loving it! I think I just may have found myself a career I would enjoy!
The photos are of after the tree fell the next day, plus a few of Gator and Jeff.
No comments:
Post a Comment