Once it's in Your Blood...

While spending a summer working at the Region 6 interagency Fire Cache, I was given the opportunity to interact with several members of the Redmond Hot Shot and Smoke Jumper crews. Hearing their enthusiasm for their job and as well their stories of their fire experiences, I found myself eager to learn more about fire in general. The following summer, through a student job posting, I was hired on as an FFT2 with Lava Beds National Monument. My crew was called out to several smaller fires in our local, and 2 large fires- to include the 2007 Zaca fire in the Santa Barbara area, where we spent several weeks.

     My first seasons work included digging miles and miles of hand line- removing fuels to prevent fire spread, laying hose lines- to combat heat near the fire line, and lighting back burns- as fire tends to draw towards itself and burning fuels ahead of the main fire removes fuel for the main fire to spread. Due to the steep terrain in southern California it was common to use helitorches for back burning; monitoring line while the torches dropped was my first experience with this practice. During off time at Lava Beds when we weren’t on fire, we spent our work days preparing several areas of the monument for fall burning. My crew worked with the park's fire ecologist sampling fuels and mapping projected Rx burns.

   I spent the next four seasons working on different hand crews throughout Oregon, to include USFS Diamond Lake, and three seasons with private contract company GFP. I as well spent 2 off seasons working on the USFS SAFAR project, thinning forested areas of the Deschutes National Forest to reduce fuels in the area, thereby lessening the chances of large, uncontrolled burning; and also worked on prescription burns in the Central Oregon area.

Zaca Fire 2007* see engine (mid-left photo) for size comparison.

Very steep terrain, Chaparral, very active fire behavior.

(oh- and yours truly, located foreground)