Last week there was a wildfire at my park. I think it should be worth noting here because it's a milestone in my life, my first fire and it was very physically demanding at times.
Saturday 4/24
A fire breaks out at 2 PM in a very remote section of the park. No access by vehicles and the foot trail is considered strenuous(3 miles one way to fire and not really that strenuous lol). I was at an EMT class and didn't get word til the end of the day. Management was too busy to even contact me for help. 300 acres by night
Sunday 4/25 *Security*
Fire is starting to hit the pines hard and picking up pace. I unfortunately got the job of gate keeper and had to turn people away from the park and explain the situation. 9 hours of answering the same exact questions over and over. I was itching to get out there and help. What made it worse was somebody's radio kept keying and I could here chainsaws running. Following the radio chatter it was obvious the fire was getting out of control.
Monday 4/26 *Swamping*
My first day fighting the fire. I ended up on a crew around where the fire started, a hardwood area so fire was burning but it was a medium speed crawl through the underbrush. We had to create a line and safety zone. I raked the majority of the time but also followed up the sawyers and threw their brush off the trail. We had a ton of guys working on the safety zone so I got reassigned to follow a forest ranger up as a swamper and clear out whatever he cut. We we're cutting an easier path up to the falls(observation point) so the other rangers could get out quickly if need be. Good thing we did because our look out informed us the fire which we had hope would stay on the other side of the stream/falls jumped it and was heading towards us through the mountain laurel very quickly. Everyone evacuated that zone and the area we had worked on for like 6 hours was overrun by fire. I had to call it an early night because of EMT class. This was considered the most aggressive day and I think the fire reached over 1,000 acres.
The falls. Lookout point were a few rangers were keeping on an eye on the wind and direction the fire was heading. You can see some fire on the lefthand. This was around noon, right before the fire took this entire area.
Tuesday 4/27 *digging line*
We got the rain we were hoping for. Very foggy and cold. I was back in the same area but digging a line around the black as a back up option. This was 10 hours of hard work with a Council rake. Just digging 15' behind black. Clearing brush, digging down to mineral soil. Most tiring day probably.
Wednesday 4/27 *Sawyer*
I got to run a saw all day long Wednesday which was awesome because I've really enjoyed all the chainsaw training I've got this year and I love the challenge and process of cutting. This was a great experience. I brought my own Dolmar 6100 because I know it well. I know it's maintained and won't shit out on me. Who knows what condition other saws are in. So this day, even though the fire was about 50% contained from the rainy day, we were assigned to cut back 15" from a pre existing foot trail that just so happened to border the black. I would say there were about 50 people which made up about 10 teams, each team had one saw. I got to work with a few coworkers which was cool. they swamped for me. Spent like 8 hours cutting back pitch pine, dwarf pitch pine, white pine. It was great practice. The only big tree I cut was a 30', 10" white pine which went right where I wanted it. Could've drive a stake. Mostly small 6" trees though. At one point the helicopter crew dropped hose at every 100' or so down the trail which was very dramatic. A big role of hose falling about 20' from you. The ridgline/trail there was beautiful so it was a great experience. A girl did get dehydrated and sick and needed to be helicoptered out with a medic which was the only negative part. But seeing the helicopter land on a small rock in the middle of the woods on a trail I always hike was cool. Towards the 8 hour mark I was getting sloppy. I was tired and my forearms were cramping. Started making sloppy mistakes so I called it before I cut my leg off. Just so happened to be about the time we called it a day. I would say we did about 4 miles of hiking that day. Fun stuff with a 15-lb saw, gas can, oil can, gallon of water, chaps, food etc etc strapped to your back. once we got to the end of the trail we followed the dozers back the safety zone which was cool. beautiful sunny, 60 degree day. I think we reached close to 2,000 acres burned by the end of the day.
On the drive out to the safety zone we got a chance to see the pitch pines that burned the hottest.
I'm at the bottom of the picture with the saw on my back. This was the helicopter that was expertly landed on a rock in the middle of nowhere doing the medivac
Following dozers out. I'm not in this picture
Thursday 4/28 *cold trailing, mop up*
My job was pretty simple this day. I got to help a ranger cold trail 50' inside the black in the most remote part of the burn. Very hard hiking. Out of the 4 miles we did I probably crawled 1/4 mile on hands and knee though huckleberry or laurel. We walked through the black and checked for hot spots. We found a few smoldering logs near potential fuels and put them out with combi tools, a hatchet and bottles of water. Very tedious, slow work but I learned a lot from the ranger. I'm a sponge and this guy opened the floodgates. I picked his brain for like 10 hours. It was also very interested seeing completely blackened desolate landscapes already covered in seeds that had popped from the pine cones or still viable vernal pools with frogs eggs all over. Life goes on. 2,000 acres confirmed
Making my way through whats left of the pitch pines. Seeds all over the place.
This is me on a trail I hike all the time. Surreal seeing it in this state.
Friday 4/29
Fire was dead at this point. I was running around doing odd errands for the bosses.
So all in all it was a great experience and I got to learn a lot about the different aspects of fighting wildfire, which is something I'll be doing a lot of in the future. The only thing I didn't get to do was work on a dozer line. Maybe next time.
Something else to note was the Dolmar 6100 kicked ass. I ran that thing all day without stopping and never once did it give me a problem. Better not S*&^ on Dolmar!