Goodbye Route Complex

After three weeks we were demobed from the Route Complex. That was my first 21 day run, and whew, I hope we don't do that anytime soon. We did fine but we were mentally tired and we were ready for a break.

It took two days to get home. We had our own layover in Bend and hit the hot tub and the Beer and Pizza! 

Neighboring fire making a run.

 These next two pictures are....well how can I say this....We came back to camp and weren't allowed to park where we had been for almost three weeks. We were moved to another parking lot......A half mile away. As you see the cars in the lot are overhead. Need I say any more? I'll Shut up now.

off into the sunset

After we made it home we had two days rest, and then..................

Green on Fire?

As we move around with a new Division supervisor and also some new ground we get the opportunity  to see something new. And remember we are in northern California. On this day they wanted us to check a few homes that had fire around them. What we saw is self explanatory. And for those of you who guessed it was Mary-J-U-Wanna, you were right.

Greenhouse full of plants

Empty greenhouses

Large water tanks

Harvested crop

Harvested

Solar power.

We were noticing how there was a number of civilian trucks that had water tanks in the back. We  wondered how they were blowing past the road closed signs. As you see we found out. They needed to water the plants.The danger level isn't as high for us as it used to be.Now many of the farmers were legal. So different from just a few years ago. Also not something we see every day on a wildfire.

Mop up show

Steep and Tall order

After the burn we were sent down the line on patrol. We started at 25' the to 50'. 

There's always a bigger truck

Litter patrol?

While we were doing patrol we were also doubling as a litter patrol crew. Of course we found garbage, and broken hose and a variety of other garbage.We put it in the attached box. At the end of the day we left it at the drop point to have the transport truck take it to it's proper burial place.

mop up panorama 

Can you guess what my next post will be? Here is some clues. It is green,was illegal in some states and has nothing to do with fire. What is it?

Misc Route Fire

Below is some misc. pictures from the fire.

We use a lot of batteries

Don't drop the ice Gunner

After briefing breakouts.

These breakouts are after the main morning briefing. We separate into our respective divisions. Then we get out assignment from the division/Strike team leader. Then we head to the fire line to wok.

Rebar and rubber don't mix very well.

One of the water tenders backed up to fill the pumpkin and he had a piece of rebar sticking out the back of his truck...and it was to low. He found a fix for it.

Dirty burn

This Is called a dirty burn. You can see that not all of the fuels have burned up. This creates a potential problem. We call it reburn. If there was fire to go through an area that is a dirty burn it could be really bad. Why? Because the fuels are now dead and pretreated. Ready to burn. This spot isn't much treat but on a hillside it could be really bad.

Neighboring fire starting to make it's daily run.

Check back I will have more to come..

The Aftermath: Mop Up

After the burn it became time to finish the job. The securing of the line. So we mop up, or we look for any heat or burning stump holes, or logs, etc. and we use the water to put it out and make it cold and secure. On this day we started mopping up 25 feet in from the edge.

Baptize it

The last two photos are not the way you mop up. As you can see there is a lot of wasted water. What happened here is we had to empty our tank before we had to meet with the rest of our division for an AAR, or after action review. We were running late and they were waiting on us. So we soaked down the hot log.

The day after

The next morning we went back up on the fire line. We did some patrol and we gave support when needed. The burn crew started to burn where they left off the night before. This day they wanted to burn a line of some 14 or miles long. The Management team said they couldn't do it. However they did do it. It took all night but they did it.
We ended the day seeing some pretty good fire and even had to go grid the other side of the line. These large Sugar Pine trees along with a few firs were torching out. The ember cast was going across the line. So our engine crew along with two others went across the line and gridded the forest for spot fires. We found several but they were no larger then a dime. However if we had done nothing we would have had big problems.

You can see the scale of the flames and how high it is by noticing the trucks parked near the fire.

Black ember still hot to the touch

More to come. Check back often I will post as I have time. It has been really busy getting ready for the season. 

Burn Time

After all the pre-planning the burn started. And it was a beautiful controlled burn. The end result is that it further secured the line. The pictures don't do the terrain justice. It is fairly steep, and what you don't see is the steep canyon on the other side of the ridge.That is where the main fire is. That being said, that was the purpose for this burn. To provide a bit of a buffer in case the fire below made a run. This would give some space for falling embers to fall harmless.

Preparing another drip torch

The goal is for the fire to consume all ground fuels buy not to run up the trees.It doesn't always work out that way.

On this night things mostly as expected. The Willamette engine crew stayed out and did the double shift. They patrolled to make sure there wasn't any spot fires. They did catch one that crossed the line. The next morning the rest of us who went to camp the night before patrolled and checked to see that the spot fire was out. It was. The night crews did a good job. 

But the fire continued to move and in my next post I will show that you do still have to have your heads up. Things change fast as you will see.