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.

The last fire

We were dispatched to what would be our last fire of 2015. We were sent up to Omak Washington.The main fire camp was in Omak. After we checked in and went through all of our inspections, they sent us up to Republic. It was up to the northeast. We were about 30 miles from the Canadian border.

The town of republic was small but they have some neat old style buildings.

 We didn't see much fire but we did have work. We also saw some nice country, and wildlife.

We were there for two weeks and then we went home for good. In the following posts I will show what we did while there.

It's been really busy but I will try to keep posting right up to this years fire season.See you soon.

Still here

It's been a long time since I posted here on my blog. But believe it or not I'm still here. It's been a real busy winter spring and early summer.
Last weekend's rain delayed the start of fire season in region six. But it is picking up all over the West Coast. Likely we will be working by the end of the month.

As always I will keep you updated on this blog of all the happenings.

Just to give you an update I have a crew the engine is ready and we are just waiting for dispatch. In the meantime I have been working cutting and selling firewood.

My buddy and I did some alterations to the engine. We added a cage on top of the toolboxes that will store water gatorade and handtools.

I am sorry I haven't kept up-to-date with this blog and I know many of you enjoy it, but it has been a very busy year. I will do my best to keep it a little more regular as I can. See you soon bye