Cayuse Mtn. Fire

I am going to try to post this update. Sorrt there hasn't been an up fate sooner. The signal is really spotty. 

We have had a good fire and as if now it is lined but not out. Today's concern is the big wind event. It is really wind and so far no blowouts.

It has been a good fire thus far. One day we supported a burn. Our job was to support and hold the line. Which we did along with others. 

We saw some good fire. When i can i will upload photot. Otherwise we have done patrol and mop up. 

I hope to have more soon.

Bigfoot Wildfire's First Dispatch

After a longer then normal wait we finally go a dispatch.We are heading for Washington. The name of the fire is the Cayuse fire. It is NW of Spokane.

As always I will keep you up to date on what is going on. As I can.

Fog, Town, And Horse Drive?

While on a fire you see a variety of things. For instance one morning on the way to the fire line I saw Wolverine in a field looking for food. I have seen a badger, people rafting on the river near the fire who were nude, people transporting water to their marijuana farms (behind closed roads mind you), and many others.

Once again on this fire was another first. On the way back to camp we had to stop for a horse drive? Well the truth is I think they were moving the horses from one pasture to another. In fact this property was a sort of resort. They had places for people to stay and there was a variety of activities you could do on the ranch as a guest.

And then the rains came. We had some showers and then during one of our last nights there it rained. Hard. The next morning as we went up to the fire we hit fog. And boy was it thick. We could barley see the road. When we got to the drop point it was thick as pea soup. You can see in the pictures below.

Line Briefing?

The town of Republic was very small. It did have a grocery store and a hardware store, and a motel. It was in part a old looking western town. 

This was as the fire season was winding down.And we had one more assignment. Another first for me. Rehab work. On my next post I will show you the rehab work we did to finish our season.

A Little Ingenuity

When we are at a fire that has a cater there they provide our lunches for the day. We have two choices "Regular or Veggie".

There isn't much differences in them. The regular lunches always have at least one sandwich, candy, trail mix, and fruit. In the veggie lunch it is similar, however they do not have a sandwich. They have nuts and fruit among other things. But sometimes they will have a burrito. 

Do you like a cold burrito? Neither do I. Many times we wrap the burrito into the foil provided and then we will put it on the engines manifold. As you see below with a little ingenuity there are better ways to cook the burritos.

Burritos under the hot rock

Are they done?

We found a hot spot under the rock. It had some coals under it. So we dug it out and put our burritos in it and buried them.Then we continued on our patrol for a while. After a while, on one of our passes we checked and we had hot burritos.

Sadly later we drove by only to see our oven torn apart and destroyed. I am pretty sure it was the forest service engine. They were working the same stretch of line. But hey it worked just long enough to have a hot lunch.

Big Equipment and A Little Lesson

Before the burn they were going to do they brought in some heavy equipment. Below is a coupe of pictures of these large tools.

Now for a little lesson. In the fire world there is a term used, and it is called a "Dirty Burn". When fire goes through a given area sometimes it doesn't burn real clean. I burns well in some areas and not so much in others. This we call "Dirty Burn". You can see the examples below:

Dirty Burn

In these first two pictures you can see what a dirty burn looks like. The first one isn't that bad. However you can see there is about fifty percent of the surface fuels that have not burned. The second picture is much worse. As you can see.

This is a particularly bad spot. The red you see is what we call "Pre-Treated Fuels". What this means is that these fuels are cooked and very dry. The surface fuels to the tree limbs, or "Ladder Fuels", to the top of the trees are all dried up and will not only ignite quickly but burn hot and can burn very fast. This can be very dangerous situation

Visitors?

All firefighters keep a close eye on these types of environments. Often these kind of areas we have left behind to work more active or higher priority areas. "If" it restarted it could become a very dangerous situation for fire crews. So that is where patrols and lookouts come into play. They have our backs.
So as I write this several new wildfires have started and so my next post could be from one of these fires. I will keep you all posted as I can.....

A Little Work A Little Scenery On The North Star

One of the awesome things about fighting wildfire is the places it takes you. Its like a paid working vacation. I have been privileged to go to many beautiful places I wouldn't normally choose to go. But unlike a vacation there is still work to do.

In the pictures below you will see some of the scenery we were able to enjoy. As for the work part, well the small lake we at our disposal to tap into. Our job was to get the pump set up and running. That took some time, and in fact we needed our Strike Team Leader to help us get it going. these Mark 3 pumps are really good pumps but the are also tricky. Those of you who have worked with them know what I am talking about.

We just didn't fill the tanks for visitors.

Here is my guys and the Strike Team Leader working to get the pump going.

It was dirty and dusty. The more traffic there was the more dust. But hey what do you expect, it's summer. Tho at times, as you will later see it didn't always seem like summer.

North Star Fire

Anticipation

We did a number of things on this fire as I said before. But there was a planned burn operation. It takes time and a lot of planning to successfully pull it off. 

Finalizing Plans

Hand drawn game plan

I hope you can enlarge the maps. The hand drawn map is actually done pretty well.

After days planning this operation as well as waiting for weather delays, they were ready to execute their burn. So after briefing the crews and handing out various assignments. Once everyone was in position they executed the plan. It went well and they reached their objective.

We didn't have much of a share in it but what we did do some patrol to make sure there wasn't any spot fires burning across the line.

As I said we did a variety of things on this fire. Each time I post I will show you the different things we did. Not a lot of excitement but we had a good time and in at least one occasion we did something I had never done before.

Pack Test Day

As promised here is the pack test. I have to say as one of the administrators it was a real challenge to get good pictures. The pictures aren't as good as I wanted but they will give you a idea of what is involved.

Getting ready

In the picture above everyone is putting on weight vests. Remember they weigh 45 lbs

Ready.....Set

GO!

There they Go

Here they come

Almost to the finish line

So as they cross the finish line, we record their times. Then we send it in along with their certifications for inspection. Once they pass the inspection then we print off their qualification card. It's like a driver licence. When we check into a fire they need to see them to let us on the fire. That is part of the inspection/check in process.

So anyone want to do a arduous pack test? I didn't think so...

The west is going to warm up so it likely wont be long until we are dispatched to a fire. In the mean time, and as I can I will continue to post the last fire of the 2016. 

I forgot to mention the name of that fire. But it was called the North Star fire. Stay tuned.....

Arduous Pack Test Day

I thought that since today we have scheduled a pack test for fire personnel I would show you what it is all about. Hence this post. We will be doing the pack test today at 6 pm, or as the ICS would call it at 1800.

Every firefighter who wants to qualify to fight fires has to pass this test. So here is what is involved in taking a pack test: You have to cover three miles in 45 minutes or less. You say no problem! Well here is the catch, you have to do it with 45 lbs on your back. Also you are not allowed to run. So its not as easy as it may sound. That's why they call it an arduous test. Because it is not that easy.

We are now required to have a EMT there in case of an emergency. Two years ago one of the firefighters died during the test, and because the EMT was there the were able to revive him back to life.

Most people score around 41-43;00 minutes. The faster firefighters are done in 35-37:00 minutes. Today we have six participants. One of my crew and five from one of the other contractors.

So I will take pictures and post them for you to see some of what is done.

Dragging the line

Local Support

This was a slow fire as fare as flames go. That's not to say that we weren't busy. We were doing a variety of things. We patrolled the fire line, did a few days of mop up. We did some rehab work and in the pictures below you will see the other assignment we were given.

Unfortunately these pictures don't do it justice. In places it is really steep.

Dragging out the hose

There was two engine crews assigned to do this job. We dropped off four of our crew and they walked the line down pulling the hose with them. We took the two engines down to the other end of the fire line. Down to where it tied into the main road.

Each hose is an inch and a half size around and is 100" long. We pulled out over 4000' of hose in just a couple of hours. The crew did really well.

After we had it all down we butterflied each hose and loaded it into our trucks and transported it to a pickup location. Buterflying a hose is a different way of rolling up the hose. Hard to explain what it looks like but it is a quick way of rolling it up. In the end the hose looks like a figure 8.

In my next post I will show you the preparation we did for a burn.There is maps and some planning involved.