Fire Water Canyon & Wild Horse Canyon Fires

Fire Water Canyon & Wild Horse Canyon Fires

Location: Ute Reservation, UT

Duration: 6/4/12 – 6/11/12

Tactics: Suppression

Size: Small (a bit more than 150 acres)

Fuels: Pinyon-juniper scrublands

Highs: Watching a Great North American Bison—tatanka—as it gamboled across a butte; making a lively attempt with Lee and Mason to corral some wild and roamin’ mustangs.

Lows: Gravely misunderstanding my Kings Peak-issued ground pad; much to certain crew member’s amusement, it took me four nights to figure out how to properly inflate the thing.

Also: gravely misunderstanding the (unspoken) breakfast rule, which required every member to be ready before the rest of the crew could eat or gain access to coffee—we dined together, always. My second morning of slowness (unbeknownst to me, I was being timed), a caffeine-deprived Lynn made things strikingly clear. First morning: 30 minutes between waking up, getting dressed, stowing everything in my gray bag and getting my gray bag in Fatty; second morning: 28 minutes; third morning: eleven. (Even with a six minute personal best—the trick was to lay everything out the night before, perfect the “breakfast tie” and rise in a semi-panic—I could never compete with Denny, a former shot who still held to the hotshot motto, “If you're not first, you're last.”)

...

I.

It was now 1400. Our fifth day on the Ute Reservation. At 1000 that morning, the sun had shifted dramatically, and Lee had promptly snapped a branch, dragged out a log, and sculpted a small sheltered nest for us in the boughs of a pinyon. He now lay fully stretched beside me, arms crossed meditatively over his chest, while on his other side, Denny flicked twigs down Jack’s shirt, Jack too busy—searching for ants to feed his ant lion—to notice. We’d spent the better part of the day sport eating from our white sack lunches and trading around packages of Twizzlers, which I was just now becoming desperate enough to consider eating. Occasionally one of us, maddened by the need to do something—anything—would crawl out from under the tree, walk ten paces across the baked rock, and peer down into Wild Horse Canyon. The sides of it were steep, all scrub brush and shale, and a few hours ago we’d caught sight of two bright colored flecks as they’d rafted the Green River far below.

Smoke drifted up from the near face of the canyon although the fire, irritatingly, remained hidden from view. There’d been a flurry of excitement earlier when a helicopter had dipped by with its full bucket, but, even from his vantage, the pilot couldn’t see anything either, and a few pointless bucket drops later, he had gone back to the Fire Water Canyon Fire just a few miles away. And here we were: unable—despite a lot of shifty scrambling—to get good eyes on the fire and unable—the canyon dropped off in short little cliffs—to descend. And so we waited.

Fire, I was beginning to realize, was a funny, unpredictable sort of thing. 

II.

We’d worked seventeen hours—0800 to 0100—on the Fire Water Canyon Fire that first day: the morning in the cache at Stockmore, then the phone call and Lee driving the dust roads into the Ute Rez, me sitting shotgun, nerves eating up my stomach; our trucks parking on a high butte as the sky purpled; the call going out to gear up and then the miles-long hike as twilight settled. I resurfaced on a hillside in the dark, eyes breaking from the ground for the first time, and saw the fire like a cityscape: a series of delicate glowing shapes, red and amber and white. There was the motion of headlights being stretched over hardhats: we were going to try and catch it. Tonight.

I was paired off with an engine captain, a great blond He-Man if I ever saw one, to cast about for spot fires in the green. And then we were called back, we were digging line, we were looking up at the fire as it waved magnificently. We chinked line in the dark, looping around a flank of the fire. I followed dumbly, all eyes, tool falling in an uneven rhythm, glad the ground was soft. Hours passed like that, and then at 0100 we fell into one line again, hiked out.

Someone read the flagging wrong, and we got lost, a line of bobbing headlamps twisting on itself in the night. I remember that the moon hung fat and lazy in the sky and that the nervous adrenalin buzzing in my arms and my legs told me that I could keep doing this forever, which even then I knew as a lie.

When at long last we arrived, I choked down an MRE in the truck, long-awaited dinner. I don’t know which one it was, although I can detail the taste quite accurately, unheated MREs all falling into more or less the same texture and flavor category: wet cat food. We made camp on a windy bluff and I threw down my gray bag near Lee: he’d agreed to wake me up at 0700 if my watch didn’t do the trick. I took off my boots, left on my socks and pulled a sweatshirt over my shoulders. The Kings Peak sleeping bag was unfamiliar, warm.

III.

Mason, our born-and-bred Utah boy, was enthralled: “We could be the first white people to have seen this land in years—maybe ever.” He waxed poetic for a while, excitement enlivening his face. We were on the second-largest Native American reservation in the States: over 4.5 million acres of cliffs, canyons and rivers; lonely tracts dotted with the bobbing heads of popping johnnies as they slurped oil from the ground. Utah was named for the Utes; in their language, ute stood for “land of the sun.”

Our second day—Utah living up to its Native American name—was blistering. We were working on a truly nasty slope, digging cup trenches and lining an apparently endless number of spots. I was exhausted, sun-beaten and, thanks to daylong extreme winds, perpetually losing my hardhat in a mad tumble that forced me to strap it tightly to my head (dignity, I reminded myself, has nothing to do with it). Sitting next to Lee in Fatty some fourteen hours later, I asked him, half-panicked, if it was always like this. He grinned at my complaints, his teeth sharply white against his ash-blackened face. He had run the saw all day, cleaning up snags and limbing on-fire trees. “It wasn’t hard for just you,” he said. He was right.

Kim, a bespectacled rookie on another module, had spent the day in heavily duct taped boots—the hot ash having melted the soles of her shoes the night before.

And Lynn—stony faced, relentless, always pushing for more—vomited after those sunlit hours, vomited quietly in the dark behind the fire camp’s stacked wall of Gatorade flats. She didn’t tell me until days later. She had been steps away from the caterer’s trailer when she’d caught the smell of bread. And that’d done it.

IV.

The third day—back in the sun, back to sidehilling—one of the senior firefighters on another crew gave me some advice: “Don’t complain. When it’s shitty, everyone already knows it’s shitty. Remember, you’re a GS-3,” he tilted the saw against his leg, “the best thing you can do is carry things. Always volunteer. Always ask questions. Show them that you’re not afraid to work.”

I thought about what he’d said, thought about it for a good long while. On the hike out that day, I hefted the chainsaw over my shoulder for the first time, the powerhead balanced on my pack, it's toothy bar close to my neck. Lynn’s lips twitched in a small little smile.

Lingo

Gray bag: A weather-resistant duffel assigned to each firefighter; holds firefighters’ personal gear, such as sleeping bag, tarp, extra clothes and toiletries; every firefighter must live out of this bag for up to 18 days; on suppression fires, gray bags must be re-packed and stowed in fire trucks every morning, keeping crews fully mobile.

Breakfast tie: Lacing fire boots only halfway before tying them, thus expediting the shoe-ing process

Spot fires: Spot fires refer to small fires that have jumped (or spotted) across the fire line; they are surrounded by green and have not grown back into the main fire.
MREs: Initially designed for military use, a “Meal, Ready-to-Eat” is a small brown package containing a high-calorie meal and is eaten when other food cannot be delivered to firefighters; it includes such delights as instant coffee (usually taken as a swilled-with-water-in-mouth shot), a flameless heater (which must be leaned against “a rock or something” while in use), jalapenos cheese spread, Hoo Hah! chocolate bars and such wonders as “Boneless Pork Chop,” “Beef Patty” and “Sloppy Joe Filling”; according to the inspired packaging, MREs are “Warfighter Recommended, Warfighter Tested, Warfighter Approved.” After discussing said MREs with a former-Marine-current-Smoke-Jumper, who lived on nothing but for six months, this was clearly not the case (although he did show me how to make a cookie with the creamer, sugar and matches in the condiments package).
Cup trenches: Deep trenches dug to catch on-fire material that might roll, thus preventing the spread of fire; dug below burning stumps or trees on steep slopes

Snags: Fire-weakened trees likely to fall.

Limbing: Cutting a tree’s limbs off, often to stop the spread of fire within the tree.

Fire camp: An established base where firefighters return every night (unless spiked out at a more temporary camp) to de-brief, eat and sleep; depending on the size of the fire, fire camps can become mobile cities, 

equipped with a food trailer, shower trailers, supply trailers, potable water trailers and other necessities.

Photos 1. North American Buffalo, the tatanka 2. Wild Horse Canyon 3. Lee trying to get eyes on the Wild Horse  Canyon Fire 4. Nighttime view from fire camp 5. Lee and Mason

Tabby Lane Fire

Tabby Lane Fire

Location: Tabiona, UT

Duration: 5/30/12 - 6/1/2

Tactics: Suppression

Size: Small (somewhere around 15 acres)

Fuels: Grass, brush, pinyon pine, juniper

High: Watching Jack during mop up as he crushed hot embers with his combi and chanted “die, die, die!” with increasing vehemence.

Low: Jack asking if my hardhat was comfortable. Me saying “yes, it feels much better than before.” Jack subsequently telling me that I was wearing it sideways.

…

I.

It was my fourth day. I still couldn’t quite remember everyone’s name. We got the call driving back to Duchesne from our ATV certification class outside of Vernal, where I had spent the majority of three hours in fervent prayer for both myself as I clung to the howling machine and for the instructor who—in a rather foolish overestimation of my skills—kept moving in closer and closer to our practice track. Dillon, Denny, Mason and I were getting trained in government-okay’d ATV operations in the event that we would need to go somewhere on a fire not traversable by truck. Caught between an early ingrained fear of small recreational vehicles—my dad never missed the opportunity to point out the injured-by-ATVs among us, mom never failed to show me news clippings of accidents, and then there were my cousins, both miraculously still alive despite their best efforts—and my flame of a desire to not be outpaced by my fellows, I foolhardily gunned over embankments that threatened to separate me from my seat. I’d given myself a headache by the end—too much teeth clenching—and a strange hollow feeling somewhere in my lower intestines. And then came the call telling us to hurry it up, we’d got a fire to get to.

Panic set in fairly immediately. Like PPE, line gear was required of every firefighter on the line; mine lay, slumped and half-alive, on the floor of my room in Stockmore, fusees, water bottles and First-Aid kit spread out like excavated guts on my mattress. I mumbled something to the effect of “Oops guys, I think I may have a problem.” Not to fear! We had extras, a partially assembled dummy pack in the back of Fatty. Splendid.

We turned right on Tabby Lane. Hanna was just a few miles off; we were practically knocking on Stockmore’s back door. Tabiona was a hamlet of a town—a sprawl of ranchers tending to fields of alfalfa—and pick-ups and beat down vans lined Tabby Lane, spilled out cowboy-hatted rubberneckers. Fatty rumbled to a halt on the side of the dirt road.

I don’t think I even looked for the fire, too busy fidgeting with the dummy pack, ferreting around in Fatty’s supply compartment for glow sticks and helicopter flagging and everything else I wouldn’t need but was somehow still line-gear-required. Our permanents, Jack, Lynn and Lee, were already on the fire. Over the Bendix King Radio, Jack, our module leader, called us out on Tac 7: “Alright, just saw Fatty. Come on in.”

Dillon and Denny took off at a leggy clip, brushing past the eager citizens of Tabiona. I took two steps, dropped my Pulaski as I fumbled with my gloves, and lost my helmet in the graceful act of bending over. Muffled chuckles from two spectators, a pudgy middle-aged woman and her sweaty husband. 

And so it began.

II.

I’d missed the “fun” bits according to Lynn: billowing smoke (lovely in the lungs) and ground so lively that hot boot was epidemic. By the time the three of us arrived—now retrospectively a very, very short walk—there was little more excitement than some slightly puffing trees and ash. It was a human start, some poor guy lighting up his house by accident, and despite its coverage on the evening news, not too wild a thing. That first night I was saddled with a pencil hose (undoubtedly my blank-in-the-face look inspired pity), and I spent the evening spraying ash, the occasional on-fire tree and whomever happened to be near me.

The rest of our days on the Tabby Lane Fire were spent in mop up mode, which caused me to severely question my sudden move out West. I had once thought—blissfully—that “rub some dirt on it” was no more than a macho phrase which my dad has always rejected in favor of “suck it up.” But no, when Lynn told me to “rub some dirt on it,” she meant just exactly that. Welcome to dry mopping. Sure, the spectacular flamethrower of a fire was out, but hot spots—buried but still burning leaf litter, roots, debris, duff—abounded, threatening to creep and creep and creep until one spark hit one dry spot and puff-puff-puff: fire.

We employed a search-and-destroy stratagem. Wisps of smoke beckoned. I stirred hot dirt. I dug out burning root systems. I wacked on stumps with my Pulaski until they were pulpy bits of scattered wood scrap. And yes, when all else had failed me, I dutifully rubbed some dirt on it.

The Tabby Lane Fire wasn’t a heart-rending, mind-blowing, earth-shattering event, which was really rather good because had it been, I wouldn’t have lasted more than a week into my first fire season. I had absolutely positively zero idea as to what I was doing. My back and shoulders, softy putty muscles, forced me to mop up from my knees, my line gear balanced on the backs of legs or my heels, and after a few embers burnt through the fire resistance of my green nomex pants, I learned to sweep my palm over the ground, checking for heat. One night, I fell into step with Lynn to chat as we hiked off the fire, which prompted her to tell me in her disarmingly blunt way, that firefighters walked one behind the other, boots falling into old boot steps, at whatever pace the head of the line had determined to set. I scurried forward.

Tabby Lane was a gentle, timid thing, though I didn’t appreciate it then. We slept at Stockmore every night, ate our own food, worked less than the typical fourteen to sixteen-hour fire day. It was my first, and a darling of a fire at that.

Lingo

Combi: A combination tool with a shovel head and pick, both of which could be adjusted into several different positions; a typical scrapping tool.

PPE: Personal Protective Equipment, including green nomex pants, yellow nomex shirt, earplugs, eye protection, hard hat, fire approved boots, line gear and gloves.

Line gear: Pack with attached fire shelter containing fire fighting essentials such as water, compass, p-cord, spare MRE, signal mirror, etc. Depending on the amount of personal gear stored (in addition to mandatory items), line gear can weigh from 30 - 50lbs.

Fusees: Long red colored rods that when lit, give off a bright flame (you’re discouraged from looking directly at it); they can be used to put fire on the ground during a fuels reduction burn out.

Bendix King Radio: Big, black block of a radio with a 10-battery clam shell (if used with frequency, battery life is one or two days—radio with dead batts will continue to receive but will not transmit); can be programmed for new frequencies by hand or by being cloned from another radio; can have a range of antennae sizes and lengths (ribbed, short and stumpy, leg length). All agencies operate with different frequencies and each fire uses different tactical channels; as communication is essential, having a correctly programmed radio is to. Up to fifteen different channels can be received by a radio; everything from Command (overhead chattering) to Air-to-Ground (pilots talking to firefighters) to Squirrel Channels (crews talking privately amongst themselves) can be programmed in. Forest repeaters, a series of fixed, high-powered channels used to communicate over long distances, will carry traffic from everything in the area: Law Enforcement Officers calling in license plates, lookouts checking in with dispatch, dispatch contacting various fires about supply needs. It’s not hard to understand why some people are bashful about talking on the radio. Someone is always, always listening.

Hot boot: The uncomfortable and lasting sensation, occurring after standing in hot ash for a while, that the soles of one’s feet are on fire.

Pencil hose: ¾ ’’ hose, also called garden hose, which is the smallest of the three most frequently used hose sizes: ¾’’, 1’’, 1½’’.

Photos 1. & 2. Stockmore - Hanna - Tabiona area 3. Thistle and combi on the Ridge Top Fire 3. All decked out in line gear plus some extras on a fire-to-come, the Pinyon Fire

The Lingo

The Lingo

“Grab an extra sig for your sawyer.”

“Oh yeah, they’re dialed in, for sure.”

“Bomber!”

It was like they were trying to say something to me, but even when I watched their mouths very closely, leaned in for an acute auditory experience, I wasn’t getting it.

“Anybody catch the new freaks?”

“RTO! RTO!”

“So Fatty’s dolmar needs refilling…”

Yes, they were still speaking English, just the fire-variant: lots of shortcuts, lots of jargon. It was like entering a glittery new world. Fire didn’t race—it chewed. Weather was slung. Hose came in sticks. Helicopters dipped out of pumpkins. I encountered specifics I’d never needed before: the e-clip embedded in a chainsaw’s powerhead, the round file, the piss pump, the Jerry. It was confusing and it was great and it took almost five months to get the gist of it. Even then, there were still moments when an entire conversation took a turn for the technical and I become horrendously lost in the language that was my native.

Throughout “144 Days,” I’ve underscored certain words which are more fire than English; at the end of each section, I’ve included a definition. Happy lingo-ing.

Lingo

Sig: A cylindrical metal container used to store saw gas and bar oil; about the size of a water bottle, sigs can be attached to line gear so that sawyers can refuel their chainsaws on the line; on our crew, each crew member would usually carry two sigs for our two sawyers, thus providing plenty of fuel 

Dialed in: An efficient crew that works in synch 

Bomber: Awesome! Swell!

Freaks: Short for 'frequencies'; refers to radio frequencies, which had to be reprogrammed into our radios on every new fire
RTO: Stands for Reverse Tool Order; when digging line, 'RTO' means to turn around (last person in the line now leading) and move further back from the fire, usually because the fire has just kicked up and it is no longer safe to remain
Dolmar: A large two compartment container that holds saw fuel and bar oil; used to refill chainsaws; housed in fire trucks and occasionally carried onto the line (although they are much less portable than sigs)

Photo 1. Ridge Top Fire in southern Idaho

Fire Key

Fire Key

Like pimples and children, fires come in a variety of shapes and sizes. To introduce each fire—hint at the sameness, the disparity—I’ve attached some basic information to each. 

Location: WE ARE HERE

Duration: Day of Melon - Day of Dog

Tactics: Suppression vs. Fire Use

Suppression: These are fires which are actively suppressed by fire personnel (lots of line digging, helicopters dropping water, excess fuels being burned), usually because they pose some threat to people or property. They tend to employ a range of different firefighters (engines, handcrews, hotshots, helitack), who all usually return at night to a main fire camp. However, suppression resources are expected to remain fully mobile, which means that, while crews throw down at fire camp for the night, all gear is packed and stowed come morning. These fires are generally larger and receive more attention than fire use fires.

Fire Use: These are fires where the objective is not to actively stop the fire, but rather to manage it. Fire is a natural phenomenon which burns excess dead and downed fuels and helps forests to regenerate. Large and uncontrollable fires often occur in areas where fires have, over the years, been heavily suppressed; because these lands where never permitted to burn, they are greatly overgrown and offer a lot of burnable materials. The idea behind fire use fires is to allow fires to clean up an area and thereby prevent later, more catastrophic fires. Of course, the fire use method is not employed in heavily populated areas where people’s property could be impacted; for this reason, most of the fires that are managed are in wilderness areas, and crews commonly working on them are wildland fire modules (formerly fire use modules) and occasionally smokejumpers.

Size: Large, medium, small

Fires, or “incidents,” are classified as Type I through Type V, with a Type I being the largest and Type V the smallest. A single tree torching, for instance, is a Type V incident. Thousands and thousands of acres burned, houses threatened, people evacuated: Type I incident. The bigger the incident, the more hierarchal the set up. Type I and II incidents are overseen by Wildland Fire Management Teams—a unit of firefighters who fill the rolls of Incident Commander, Operations, Logistics, etc. Teams are specifically trained to step into a large fire, bringing with them qualified personnel and an organized infrastructure. On these bigger incidents, fire camps become like mobile cities with the same needs and problems; camp crud can take out whole crews and you should never, NEVER touch the railing up to the food trailer. Teams (which some firefighters like and others decidedly do not) are supposed to make sure that everything from getting crews their supplies to disseminating tactical information to getting everyone fed gets done quickly and efficiently. Which yes, sometimes happens.

Fuels: Brief description of environment—desert, sub-alpine, pinyon-juniper, etc.

Highs: Queuing up in the dark for the food trailer with little anticipation for the convict-prepared dinner, only to be startled by the change of caterers. And the steak-with-mushrooms they’re serving. And the sudden appearance of chocolate milk in the food tent. Small wonders. (Ridge Top Fire)

Lows: Our thirteenth day and they’re straight up telling us it’s going to be shitty: brushing bushes with chainsaws in 80 degree heat to create a seven foot wide line in an area too steep for dozers. Two hours in, and my sawyer almost cuts my hand off. Oh, happy days. (Pinyon Fire)

Photos 1. Pinyon Fire (suppression tactics) on the Salt Lake City National Guard Base 2. Moose Creek Fire (fire use tactics) in the Nez Perce National Forest Wilderness 3. Small fire camp on the Ute Rez

Wildland Fire Chainsaws, or The Classes

Wildland Fire Chainsaws, or The Classes

Tactics: Survival

I.

Oddly enough, the U.S. Government doesn’t just release its citizens onto fires wily nily. Far from it: they make you take a week long class first. Pass the class, pass the pack test (officially known as the “arduous fitness test”), complete two online tutorials about the Incident Command System, and you’re golden: you’re holding your own bit of slightly heavier stock paper—you’re holding a red card.

A red card gets you on the fire line but not much else. Fire operates on a qualification system: the more quals, the higher the pay grade, the higher the pay grade, the better the position, the better the position, the happier the firefighter. New firefighters (“rookies”) and firefighters moving into higher positions are given a certain amount of extra hours (seasonals cannot accede a certain number of hours; once you hit your quota, you’re fired) to attend classes. Not that book learning counts out in-the-field experience. To get most quals, you’ve got to open a trainee task book, which requires not only the corresponding class but also serving on one or more fires as a trainee.

Example: You want to be a squad boss. Swell. Act as a squaddie trainee under a qualified squad boss trainer, get all the tasks in your hand book signed off (did this with their squad, communicated that, etc.), take the class and great scott, you’ve done it!

I like it. It’s a good system. Fire can be dangerous, and if you’ve got someone telling you what to do, you’d really like that person to know their shit. 

The courses Kings Peak put me in were typical rookie classes: things like Pumps and Water, Fire Chainsaws, First Aid. Most of them took place in Vernal, or rather Urinal, the town a local gas station attendant referred to as the “Armpit of Utah.” I personally was most taken with the large “I HEART DRILLING” sign on the main street of town. Our sister module, Chepeta, was based out of Vernal, as was our Fire Dispatch Center. It was a couple hours drive from Stockmore—one of the most desolate, oil-rigged, we-have-been-forsaken-now drives. And I was lucky enough to get to do it not just once but a whole host of times.

These classes gave me a sketch of the basics; actually working on fires got me thinking a lot more clearly about how everything worked. Our permanents, Jack, Lee and Lynn, did good on the teaching: here’s how it works, let’s do it together, oh look, now you’re on your own. And then you’re running a chainsaw / standing on a lookout tower / leading the line digging / slinging, computing and reading weather over the radio / submitting the daily spot weather forecast / leading the transect / filling out the crew’s TCR time sheets / mapping the fire line with a GPS…

Frightening? Occasionally yes.

Interesting? Always.

II.

S-130/S-190/L-180: Introduction to Basic Wildland Firefighting/Introduction to Fire Behavior/Something About Leadership

Location: Ames, IA

Duration: 3/5/12 - 3/8/12

High: Not failing the pack test (3 miles with a 45lbs pack in under 45 minutes)

Low: Have you been to Ames?

Driving Test for U.S. Government Vehicle and Trailer License

Location: Duchesne, UT

Duration: 5/31/12

High: Passing

Low: Requiring vigorous hand gesturing from Mason to back up the trailer in an altogether straight-back direction

U.S. Government All-Terrain-Vehicle Operator License

Location: BLM wasteland outside of Vernal, UT

Duration: 5/30/12

High: Not separating the instructor from any of his limbs

Low: Immense difficulties with ATV helmet (and subsequent sore ears)

First Aid and CPR Certification

Location: Vernal, UT

Duration: 6/12/12

High: Remaining mostly cognizant throughout

Low: Multiple failed attempts to adequately depress the chest of the brand-spanking-new CPR dummy

S-211: Portable Pumps and Water Use

Location: Vernal, UT / Duchesne, UT

Duration: 6/18/12 - 6/19/12

High: Learning the earplugs-as-on-the-spot-water-tank-patch-job trick (used no less than three times on honest to goodness fires)

Low: Opening a gated wye to accidentally spray a pile of cow feces, the water then rebounding with stunning accuracy into the crotch of our instructor

S-212: Wildland Fire Chainsaws

Location: Vernal, UT

Duration: 6/13/12 - 6/16/12

High: Taking the chain off the bar. Taking the bar off the saw. Taking the plate off the powerhead. Seeing how it all fit together, then putting it all back together again. Pure magic.

Low: The slight feeling of regret that sport felling is now seriously frowned upon 

Lingo

Permanents: Firefighters hired to work beyond the immediate fire season; they are officially absorbed into the government apparatus, which means a 20-year retirement package, paper work and job security.
Line digging: Creating a fuel break (using chainsaws and tools) by removing standing fuels and scrapping down to pure mineral soil; when the fire reaches the line, it cannot move beyond it because there is nothing left to burn.

Slinging weather: Holding onto the chain attached to the sling psychrometer (what look like two thermometers attached to a small plate; one has a metal nub—to determine the dry bulb—the other a cloth nub which can be wetted—to determine the wet bulb), you flail it around in the air in a shaded spot, determining from the reading the wet and dry bulb. These numbers are then used to determine the temperature, relative humidity (RH) and dew point (DP), which are useful in telling how dry fuels are and how wet the air is. The person slinging weather also reports on cloud coverage, fire activity and general weather behavior; weather is typically read over the radio every hour while firefighters are on the line.

Spot weather forecast: While on a fire, the National Weather Service (NWS) will provide daily spot weather forecasts for fire crews; these are weather predictions for the specific fire area. To gauge accuracy and adjust further forecasts accordingly, the weather recorded during the day (actual temperatures, winds, etc.) by firefighters is reported back to the NWS and compared to their forecast for the day; everyday someone is responsible for reporting these numbers back to the NWS.

Transect: Spacing individuals at a set distance (50 feet, 100 feet, etc.) from one another and moving across an area in a grid pattern; the person at the end of the transect controls the speed and orientation of the transect (“holding for heat,” “pivoting off the inside,” “stay behind the person on your left”). Instructions are communicated down the line, one person to the next (which, at 10 feet spacing, is fairly obnoxious). Frequently used to double-check a mopped up section for any lingering heat.

TCRs: A daily record of hours worked on a fire; includes incident’s fire code, hazard pay / travel pay designation, crew name; means everyone gets paid!

Photos 1. Lee, who is a C sawyer (A=beginners, B=skilled, C=masterful), cuts a cat-faced tree with some help from Dillon on the Church Camp Fire 2. Acting as lookout-in-training on the Porcupine Complex Fires 3. Lee getting an old pump running on the Moose Creek Fire 4. Mason and me, the Kings Peak rookies, wielding the pole saws

The Crew

The Crew

I.

Dillon had a bit of ocean tattooed on his right leg and Lynn had the long angled eyelashes of a filly and Lee was missing a row of bones on the cuff of his left wrist. Olivia had the strong, thick hands and feet of her father, and Jack, who had a shiny scar patch on his right cheek, called me “Clarise,” said “you’re my tough girl.” There were eight of us: the Kings Peak 2012 crew, residents of lonely Stockmore Guard Station; eight of us with thoughts and intricacies; eight of us complicating one another.

We came from all parts—from Georgia and Montana, from Washington, California and Michigan, from Salt Lake City and small town Duchesne and little Waverly, Iowa. Our module leader, Jack, had twelve fire seasons to his name; our permanents, Lynn and Lee, eleven and seven respectively. Olivia had rung up six seasons, Denny had five, and then there was Dillon, Mason and me, rookies looking down the barrel of our first fire season.

Every member of a fire crew has a job, finds themself slotted into the hierarchy.  Jack, our GIS whiz, wrangled data in all of its mappish and other forms; Lynn often stepped in as operations, helping Jack with crew decisions and assignments; Lee and Denny ran the saws, Dillon and Mason swamped for them, chucking away cut brush and trees (occasionally giving themselves bloody noses or disappearing in theatrical acrobatics down the sides of hills); Olivia sat lookout, or ran the squad, or did what I did, which was digging line and a bit of everything else, of whatever else was needed. We all had different roles, liable to change, and it took some navigation at the beginning to get the hang of how we fit together. And then one day, not too far along, it happened: as Lynn liked to say, we got dialed.

II.

Lynn had started out on a throw-together handcrew, sampled hotshotting a few years later, and once turned down the invitation to try smoke jumping; Lee got his permanent position after switching to an engine crew; Olivia had tried engines, progressed to helitack and now found herself here, on a fire use module.

There are six types of fire crews, each with their own specialties, rivalries and reputations—some, I came to learn, more fitting than others.

Smokejumpers

Jumpers parachute into remote wilderness fires where they will receive minimal outside support. They are usually self-sufficient and able to fully oversee fire operations. Jumpers don’t work in set crews; instead, they are associated with certain jump bases—McCall in Idaho, Grand Junction in Colorado, Missoula in Montana— and will jump in sticks of two firefighters or loads of seven. The command hierarchy is also somewhat more fluid: the JIC, or Jumper In Charge, will vary depending on jump order as well as quals.

Because jumpers are working unassisted in difficult-to-reach areas, they need to be able to handle a variety of situations, not the least of which is landing without busting a femur or two. For this reason, rookie jumpers are put through boot camp to test their dedication: fitness tests with 45lbs, 90lbs and 120lbs packs; 24-hour line digs on rough terrain; marathons; an entire season of being early-morning-coffee-boy. And that’s before they’re pushed out of an airplane with nothing but a chute and some Spam shoved down their jumpsuits.

If there is a fire food-chain (which there is), smokejumpers—having beaned hotshots with a can of Spam—are at the top. Once on a fire, they generally seize all control, which might be a bigger problem if jumpers weren’t (as a general rule) very qualified. The recipe for the perfect jumper candidate goes something like this: a few years on a hotshot crew, a basic understanding of module work (smoke and weather observations, GPS missions, fire behavior), certification as a C sawyer (A=beginner, B=skilled, C=masterful) and the overwhelming ability—nay, desire—to eat shit as a rookie. (I once discussed this stereotype with a “snookie,” or second year rookie jumper, who denied it amiably: “Anyone can jump,” is what he said. A 6’5’’ former Marine, he was built like an action figure and had run the chainsaw on a hotshot crew for four years prior. Yes, clearly “anyone” can jump.)

Perhaps not entirely unsurprisingly, jumpers have earned quite a reputation for themselves in the fire world. Because they usually run the show and don’t have to fear angry overhead telling them to get their shit together, they’re known for being lax about certain things, namely PPE. Most firefighters aren’t huge fans of wearing their hardhats and yellows in areas not yet touched by fire, but jumpers are about the only ones who will actually shed gear. For example: going “jumper style” refers to not tucking in a yellow, not wearing a hardhat, not carrying line gear, etc.  Then there’s the preening bit of their reputation, eloquently put in this joke (most likely made by a hotshot):

Q: How do y’know a jumper’s at the party?

A: He tells you.

Lastly, there’s the supposed jumper motto, “sun’s out, guns out.” Initially skeptical, I realized there might be some validity to this one when I experienced it firsthand. On multiple occasions.

All that being said, I’ve got to say that I really liked working with jumpers. Yeah, they weren’t exactly militant about every little rule, but good God, sometimes not wearing full PPE on a hot day miles away from a barely smoldering fire wasn’t exactly the worst thing ever. So, there you go: affable, hardworking and probably having more fun than you way out in the woods.

Hotshots

Shot crews are twenty-person line digging machines. They work initial attack, which means they’re the first ones on a fire, thundering away at the critical moment when the fire is either corralled or blows up. They’re structured a bit differently with a crew boss overseeing two foreman, those foreman overseeing two squad bosses, and those squad bosses overseeing everybody else (“the shitbags,” as a former shot called them). Hotshot crews rely on efficiency and a certain lock-step mentality. They’ll send out saw teams (a sawyer to cut trees and a swamper to remove the debris) to clear a rough path for the line, then follow with a locomotive of digging power. Not exactly “free thinkers,” shall we say, they dig a three-foot wide line across, over and through any type of terrain, generally despite fuel type. Every shot has an assigned position in the line—third Pulaski, say, or first saw—and that is what they will do all season long. (I have been informed that being first Pulaski—lead P—is an exalted honor for which shots have labored for years to attain.) They will sit in the same seats on their special buggies and they will not complain about eating MREs day in and day out and they will, of course, get to see some truly monstrous fire.

And that’s the up and the down all in one: lots of fire and lots of work. Shots generally work 700 to 1,000 hours of overtime, which adds up to quite a few 16 hour days. They’re usually the most military-like crews (although this really varies) and they’re known for their unflinching work ethic: a shot crew in Alaska, the Midnight Suns, has a crew boss who (one might say sadistically) won’t let his firefighters sit down even during mandatory breaks. And let’s talk about hot lining: hours and hours of hefting a 35lbs chainsaw all over the woods to cut down trees that are literally on fire probably with someone screaming at you to move faster. Sounds like a peach, yes? But then again, here’s the upside: fire. And getting to put fire on the ground. Whenever there’s a call for a big burnout, shots will often get to step in and have some fun with drip torches. They sleep in a perfectly spaced line (probably in tool order), work 0600 to 2200, and dig line over some of the foulest landscapes known to man, but yes, in due time, there is fun with drip torches.

Modules

Modules are trained to collect data and approach fire from a critical and analytical standpoint. On suppression fires, in addition to digging line and laying hose, modules track the weather, record fire observations, take photo points of critical areas, perform structure assessments, map the fire perimeter and occasionally interface with the public. They are assigned tasks—such as running browns transects to determine the dryness of an area or collecting fuel samples—that are meant to assist overhead in strategic decision making. Modules also manage fire use fires in the wilderness, where they are often the only resource in the area and are in charge of monitoring fire activity and growth while providing data, maps and photos to nearby ranger districts. (Check out what I have to say about fire use fires versus suppression fires here.)

As this was my type of crew, I will avoid going into a paroxysm of information, except to say that what I especially liked about working on a module was the flexibility of the crew: sometimes we dug like a handcrew, sometimes we rolled hose with engines, sometimes we burned with hotshots, sometimes we set up sprinklers with smokejumpers, sometimes we manifested sling loads with helitack, and sometimes we did those module-specific things, like wandering down the treads of a wayward bulldozer with a GPS or hauling propane tanks away from houses during structure assessments or hiking miles and miles through the wilderness to run a portable pump at a decades-old bridge.

Our reputation as modules—mostly due to fire use fires, where we monitor instead of suppress—is that we don’t really do anything: “So you just like to look at fires, eh?” It’s not a totally unfair criticism, as modules do spend quite a bit of time looking at fire use fires while collecting data; that is, after all, kind of the point. (Again, check out fire use versus suppression tactics.) Of course, spending half of my season on suppression fires (when line was dug and piss pumps were carried) and logging more than a few eight to fourteen mile days on fire use fires (sometimes while towing a crosscut saw) didn’t exactly feel like nothing to me.

Handcrews

Also twenty-person line digging crews, handcrews are often brought in after hotshots and do a lot of mopping up, or post-fire cleanup. This could include (but is not limited to) checking an area for hotspots, putting in more line, putting in indirect line, or containing spots. The firefighters on handcrews truly deserve a pat on the back: they’re often doing the long, monotonous, seemingly endless work that everyone else is avoiding at all cost. With twenty people, they pack a lot of manpower and cover ground fairly quickly, which usually means their arrival is lauded by other crews eager to do something—anything—besides cold trailing through miles and miles and miles of woods.

Engines

The number of firefighters on an engine crew depends on the size of the engine. Engines come in an array, from the leviathan Type I to the more modest Type VI. For practical reasons (bad roads, switchbacks, trees), the biggest engines used to fight wildfires are Type IV engines, which are hose-laden, large-wheeled and sport a collection of nozzles. Type VI engines—big diesel trucks with fitted tanks—are also extremely useful and are wrangled by just two crew members. Apparently only California uses Type V engines (not a clue why), and Type I – III engines are only used by structure firefighters.

For obvious reasons, water is a very good thing when it comes to fighting fires. Sadly, engines aren’t always able to make it into a fire—making everyone’s day just a little bit worse—which is where hose lays come in. Hefting a coiled roll of hose, generally a few hundred feet long when extended, over a shoulder, firefighters’ delicately fling the mass and, if all goes well, a line of hose unfurls itself tangle-free. (I’m sure this does happen, quite frequently, on engine crews. Unfortunately, all of my experiences with laying hose involved either a wild swing which unrolled about three feet of hose before tangling, or the middle of the coil falling out, thus forcing me to unroll the whole mess by hand. I remain wholeheartedly convinced that rolling hose is an art form.) Hoses are connected with gated wyes and nozzles, which can lead to a spider-webbing of hose through the woods. Keep in mind that people are hauling and unrolling this hose as they go (and those rolls are not light), that all the right sized pieces are needed to connect hose (the magnitude of which cannot be understood until you’ve gotten many miles out before making this discovery), that hose has the tendency to leak, burst and get burned over, and that the engine must have adequate pumping power to produce more than a slight drizzle at the end and, well, you’ve got an idea of some of the headaches of engine life. Not to mention collecting many, many feet of hose after the fire's been dealt with. Hoo boy.

Helitack

These fine folks work with helicopters. Helicopters are used to transport personnel and supplies, drop buckets of water on particularly ripping areas, and give overhead a better view of the fire. Helitackers facilitate all of this by communicating with the pilot in the air and firefighters on the ground, making helipads so the helicopter can land, briefing firefighters on flight policies and etiquette before they go up, and manifesting sling loads so that helicopters aren’t attempting to lift supplies that are too heavy, which could cause the craft to crash. Helitackers get to pick up on the intricacies of their aircraft (there’s a whole lot to learn about helicopters, most of which sounded like gibberish to my unknowledgeable ears) and the idiosyncrasies of their pilots; they’re also, affectionately, known as “helidonnas” and “helislack” because, a perk of traveling with a helicopter, they often spend nights in hotels while everybody else tosses out sleeping bags in the woods.

Brief (but necessary) disclaimer: I’m a GS-3. These definitions are based on the things I saw and learned during one season of fire; I am in no way an expert, nor can I claim any great, all-encompassing knowledge of fire crews. Again: I’m a GS-3. That fire food-chain I mentioned earlier? I’m at the bottom.

*Names and some details have been changed.

Lingo

Permanents: Firefighters hired to work beyond the immediate fire season; they are officially absorbed into the government apparatus, which means a 20-year retirement package, paper work and job security.

Rookies: First season fire folk.

GIS: “A geographic information system (GIS) lets us visualize, question, analyze, interpret, and understand data to reveal relationships, patterns, and trends.” Using GIS, Jack was able to display fire progression, fire perimeter, structures, key areas, and other data in map form.

Dialed: An efficient crew that works in synch.

PPE: Personal Protective Equipment, including green nomex pants, yellow nomex shirt, earplugs, eye protection, hard hat, fire approved boots, line gear and gloves.Burnout:

Line digging: Creating a fuel break (using chainsaws and tools) by removing standing fuels and scrapping down to pure mineral soil; when the fire reaches the line, it cannot move beyond it because there is nothing left to burn.

Pulaski: A tool used to dig line; good for breaking up rough ground; always positioned at the head of the line.

MREs: Initially designed for military use, a “Meal, Ready-to-Eat” is a small brown package containing a high-calorie meal and is eaten when other food cannot be delivered to firefighters; it includes such delights as instant coffee (usually taken as a swilled-with-water-in-mouth shot), a flameless heater (which must be leaned against “a rock or something” while in use), jalapenos cheese spread, Hoo Hah! chocolate bars and such wonders as “Boneless Pork Chop,” “Beef Patty” and “Sloppy Joe Filling”; according to the inspired packaging, MREs are “Warfighter Recommended, Warfighter Tested, Warfighter Approved.” After discussing said MREs with a former-Marine-current-Smoke-Jumper, who lived on nothing but for six months, this was clearly not the case (although he did show me how to make a cookie with the creamer, sugar and matches in the condiments package).
Burnout: When a lot of unburned fuel exists between the fire line and the head of the fire, firefighters will conduct a burnout wherein they light the unburned fuel on fire; this creates a backing fire which slowly burns from the line into the main fire; when the backing fire from the burnout meets the head of the wildfire, the wildfire is unable to progress because all of the fuels in the area have been burnt; this method is used to stop particularly fast moving wildfires but, for obvious reasons, must be deployed and executed with extreme caution.

Drip torches: Tubular metal canisters filled with fuel mix; a “pig-tail” snout runs out the end of the canister so that, when pointed down, a small amount of fuel will continually run out; thus, when lit, this snout remains on fire and shoots fuel, setting other materials alight; used to start a prescribed fire, backing fire or burnout.

Crosscut saw: A six-foot(ish) lumberjack-of-yore saw with large teeth and wooden handles on both ends; used by two sawyers to fell or buck a tree (instead of a chainsaw); available in a variety of sizes for a variety of different cutting projects; requires coordination between the two sawyers, sharp teeth and frequent care, as a crosscut with a pinched bar will get hung up and prevent cutting; used by fire crews that need to remove fuels in wilderness areas where mechanized equipment, such as chainsaws, are not permitted.

Hotspots: Buried heat (usually in roots or stumps) that have the potential to reignite a wildfire

Spots: Spot fires refer to small fires that have jumped (or spotted) across the fire line; they are surrounded by green and have not grown back into the main fire.

Cold trailing: Running the back of one’s hand through ash on the fire’s perimeter to check for hotspots or creeping heat; a last form of mop up before a fire is declared officially dead.

Manifesting: Weighing all items so that each sling load of supplies is within the correct weight limit. 

GS-3: The General Schedule (GS) is the government’s pay scale; a GS-3 is the lowest pay grade; more experience and qualifications equals a higher GS level (with people topping out at GS-13 or 14); by this logic, GS-3s are fairly worthless, or so the humor goes.

Photos 1. The Kings Peak 2012 crew (looking a wee bit worn after our first two-week roll) 2., 3. & 4. Receiving cargo from jumpers in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming (crew member's photos) 5. Friend wielding a drip torch on a burnout (crew member's photo) 6. Dillon with the crosscut saw (crew member's photo) 7. Squirt, a commandeered Type VI engine 8. Olivia manifesting herself