Fire 2007

Fire season started for me this year on the 22nd of July, by far the latest start I've ever had. In my tardieness I missed out on our two week traing schedule, a lot of project work around the district, and the Easy Street Fire the burned about 700 acres of grass north of Wenatchee. My own first fire of the season was the Antilon Lake fire, about a week and a half after I started. By the time we rolled to the fire the first forces there had hit it hard with helicopter water drops, effectively killing it.

Not much fire on this particular fire. But we still had to line it anyhow. Here is one of our saw teams tying into a rock face as we started to hook around.

Sarah Jeglum, awesome gal and a damn good firefighter.

This fire was hit and put out quick. We were lucky, it could have gotten up and ran on us had we not gotten on it so fast. I think we kept it around 3.5 acres. You can see part of a hose lay coming up on the right side.

Here is some of the crew along with reinforcements from the Wenatchee Rappeller crew.

We found this rattlesnake inside the burn area. The hot gases killed and froze him into place. Kinda creepy.

On the way back from a typical PT hike.

Here's one of our squads after building a rock wall up at Steliko work center. When were not on fires the crew does a variety of different projects around our home district. We do forest thinning, campground maintenance, and lots of training and PT, all the while staying ready for initial attack.

More goofing off at the workcenter. From left to right are Cam Walter, Erin Drake, Sarah Jeglum, and Emily Fike.

I took this shot on our way down to Asotin, WA. This initial attack on the Cottonwood fire turned into a 14 day dispatch. After several days of working the puny little grass fire we were re-directed to the Jocko Lakes Fire in Montana.

We spent our first night on the fire holding the road below, watching the flames slowly back down throughout the evening. Pictured is a WA State DNR fire engine.

Some of the crew got more sleep than others. Thankfully I had brought a little tripod along that enabled me to get some interesting shots like this one. Eventually I pulled out my sleeping bag and crashed along the side of the road.

The next morning we did some direct attack along the flank of the fire. Overall it was some pretty easy work. Matt Haapapuro, our crew boss, is seen here pulling the black back in on itself. The light fuels enabled us to get after it without too much trouble.

Since we spent all night watching the fire we had to go off the line early to catch up on our work to rest ratio. They put us down in the local high school gym. The next day we got up early and spent all day mopping up in the rain on the now dead grassfire.

Matt's wife Kathy later told me this is a common garden spider. Pretty big if you ask me.

Another example of the sort of wildlife we see. This little rattler was luckier than the previous one shown.

Here we are on the summit of a long all-day hike. The rain the the absurdity of the assignment had dampened out moods slightly, but of course that was before we found out that we were heading to Montana...

Tired and hungry at the end of the day.

I took this shot as we entered Montana, driving Highway 12 along the Clearwater River. We drove it's entire length, all the way from Lewiston Idaho to Lolo Pass in Montana.

Our twenty person fire crew travels in five of these six-passenger trucks. They hold all our personal and fire gear, as well as saws, tools, and other essentials.

One of our rookies, Fredy Quezada, on our first day at the Jocko Lakes Fire.

I spent the majority of my first day helping one of my squad leader trainees, Ryan Bullock, call in helicopter support to help suppress spot fires along the fire's perimeter.

The Jocko Lakes Fire was holding at about 36,000 acres when we arrived. We were assigned to the northern most division in a pretty rugged and remote area of the Lolo National Forest. The fire was burning through a sub-alpine fir fuel type that burns primarily by torching individual trees, sending embers out in front creating what we call a dirty, spotty burn. The result is a fire that is hard to contain due to all the green fuel mixed in.

During the course of the tour we worked with several different types of helicopters. This is a Chinook, capable of dropping 3000 gallons at a time.

Another one of my trainees, Sam Redman, calls in a Type 2 chopper. This one is a Bell 205. Unlike the "heavy," his bucket only holds 300 gallons.

These are some shots I got of one of the small lakes that the fire engines were filling out of. There were a lot of lakes in the area so this one wasn't even given a name.

The Columbia River Division IA crew in its entirety. The crazy looking vehicle we are perched on is a logging forder. This fire had by far the most mechanized equipment gathered in one area that I have ever been around. They helped us by plowing wide dirt paths through the forest to help contain the fire, as well as supplying us with water support.

Taking a needed break before the next mission.

One of the cool things about this assignment was that we had a variety of different missions. On our third day we put in a in-direct handline up onto a ridge. The saw teams worked ahead of the diggers, creating a wide swath through the heavy brush. The idea is that when the fire approaches in loses intensity as it hits the saw line. Typically the area next to the line will be 'burned out,' creating a solid line of black that will prevent the main fire from spreading further.

Here we are hiking out back to our trucks at the end of the day. Me and several others eventually summited the peak you see in the distance.

We spent our nights at a full-blown fire camp. They bring in semi trailers full of everything we need; kitchens, showers, and supply trucks. Often when we get back to camp the routine is eat, shower, and go to sleep as soon as possible. The next day starts at 0530 and wont let up until we get back to camp at 2100 that night. 14 days of this can be extremely taxing but we figure the nature of the work, along with the fire paychecks, make it worth it.

I spent one afternoon calling in one helicopter drop after another from our vantage on the ridgeline. Later into the tour we would descend into this green bowl to put out the smokes once and for all.

Not a bad view from my typical day at the office.

Adam Jones, on the left, was our crew boss trainee. My long time buddy Matt Haapapuro was his trainer.

Stupid and sexy. (Gotta be an inside joke.)

Erin Drake, one of our squad leaders, and Matt up on the summit of our division. According to the GPS we are around 8000 feet.

The view from the summit up north into Glacier National Park.

Typically the crew leadership consists of a crewboss and assistant with two or more squad leaders. My role as the lead squad leader was to train the up and coming leaders working on their own qualifications. This picture was taken from the summit featuring Matt, Erin, Chris Fezer, Adam, and myself from left to right.

Chris Fezer and I continued out past the summit along the ridge to look for suitable helicopter landing zones. We found a couple along the way although they were never utilized. Chris is hanging flagging as wind indicators for the pilots.

I tried to take more portraits on this tour. This is Cam Walter sporting his mohawk.

Adam Jones.

Ryan Bullock.

Greg Meier.

Jory Rock.

Chris Eakle.

Nicole Ballard.

Josh Robision.

Sam Redman.

Sarah Jeglum.

Chris Fezer.

Pat Chism.

Will Steady.

Cam Walter.

Something we always have to be aware of is the presence of hazard trees. They pose a greater risk to firefighters than the actual fire does at most times. These trees, called snags, are often so weakened by fire that the slightest breeze can topple them. We train our sawyers to be able to take them down in the safest possible way. This is Jake Bankson taking down a nasty one.

Cam Walter is another of our squad leaders. Him and I have been fighting fire together since 2001. Always smiling and laughing, Cam is one of our most valued crewmembers.

Every day we post someone to serve as a full-time lookout. They are responsible for keeping a bird's eye view on the area that we will be working in. They look for increases in fire activity and are often called in to call in helicopter support as well as take periodic weather readings. This picture shows the lookout's weather kit and radio.

My crew was working across the way on the burned ridge. From this vantage point I could see everything around where they were located.

Sam Redman gunning a snag down to the ground.

Our saw teams consist of a cutter and a swamper. The swamper carries the gas and falling equipment. They assist the sawyer by pulling all the cut material away. Here we got two Entiat boys, Will and Sam.

Near the end of the tour we moved into a large green bowl on the west side of the ridge we had cut line on. Instead of burning out along our line we dived into the spotty burn to go out and find the hundreds of little spotfires ourselves. Given the fire behavior we had been witnessing we decided to give it a go. Under more extreme conditions we would have done the safer thing by keeping to higher ground and lighting burnouts to corral the fire along the ridges. During our first shifts in the bowl we maintained a constant state of vigilance as we gridded out to find and extiguish all the spot fires. Behind Adam is a 'skidgen,' or skidder-engine. These behemoths supplied us with water as we moved through the area.

We spent our last days of the tour gridding through thick brush to find these tiny little smokes.

Our crew boss, Matt Haapapuro, mans one of the several lookout stations around the green bowl. If anything did pop up we were on it immediately with helicopter support.

The crew hiking out after a long day's work.

Several of the spot fires inside the green bowl had grown to several acres. All of it needed to be snagged out before we moved the crew in to begin the mop-up process.

Erin and myself take a break to snap a self-portrait.

These skidgens were monsters, capable of tearing through the nastiest terrain to access the spot fires we were finding.

Cam Walter examines the remains of one of the nastier snags we felled. Cam did a wonderful job on this fire by teaching some of the younger cutters the science and art of cutting these complex trees.

Cam and Will examine the cutting done on one of the bigger trees cut down that day.




Sam took down the last tree of the tour. Heavy rain moved in on us minutes after I took this shot. We all hiked out back to the trucks tired, but happy that all of us had a succesful and safe tour. Ironically mother nature awarded us with a splendid rainbow on our final drive out. We spent the next day driving back to central Washington, all of us looking foward to the two paid days off given to those that complete a standard 14 day tour.