The extent of my fire experience is limited to one year of fighting fire on a private contracting crew. I started on as a sawyer and had a very exciting and busy first season. The majority of my crews time was spent in California on the Rocky Fire, Rag Fire, and Gasquet Complex fires. Growing up my family lived in Napa and Sonoma County so I was very familiar with the topography and fuels present in Northern California, in fact as a kid my grandfather and I would make sling shots out of Manzanita and Chaparral. It was astonishing to see how the fire altered the terrain and how different the land looked when I was a kid. The magnitudes of the fires were to be expected due to overloaded fuels caused by fire suppression acts in the U.S. Surface fuels were abundant and overpopulated, especially in the most Northern areas of California. This type of landscape led to high intensity fires that in many instances caused crown fires.
I can remember an instance where our crew had to clear out while holding a recently constructed fire line. The conditions for burning off our fire line were nearly ideal yet the wind was slightly stronger than anticipated and caused crown fires which ultimately led to fire crossing our line.
Fighting fire in California was intriguing and great experience especially because of my history and knowledge of the area.
This is a picture from the Gasquet Complex Fires in the area my crew was assigned.
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