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

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.