CAT | Firefighting
Another website of mine, MyFireCrew.com has been updated with new April and May 2009 classes that will take place in Wilsonville, Oregon. Also, information about a Entry-Level class and a Saw Class is posted as well.
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13
2008 Summer California Wildfires
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Recently, I returned from fighting wildfires in Northern California. I have been in the Mt. Shasta area and Chester, CA for the past three weeks (Peterson Complex, Cub Fire, and Onion Fire). Temperatures were hot, often above 100 degrees and the relative humidity in some areas was in the low teens.
On my bus ride back up to Oregon as we were driving through Redding, the hills were releasing smoke on the west side of I-5. I found an article about this, Blaze rushes through hills west of Redding (http://www.redding.com/news/2008/jul/12/no-headline—a1fires12/)
As the burgeoning fire swept through the hills west of Redding, Highway 299 was shut down and mandatory evacuations were issued in the French Gulch area. An advisory evacuation order was announced for some residents in the historic town of Shasta.
From an article from the International Herald Tribune (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/13/america/12wildfire.php),
Hundreds of wildfires have blackened nearly 1,200 square miles, or 3,100 square kilometers, and destroyed about 100 homes across California since a rare lightning storm ignited most of them three weeks ago.
Officials say more fires have been burning at one time this year than during any other period in recorded California history.
“This is truly a national disaster. The magnitude is incredible,” said Daniel Berlant, a state fire agency spokesman.
Jason Kirchner, a spokesman for U.S. Forest Service, said firefighters had spent hundreds of millions of dollars fighting the blazes.
About 20,000 firefighters from 41 states and Puerto Rico were fighting more than 320 active fires around the state, and more were on the way from Mexico, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has ordered 2,400 members of the National Guard to join the fire crews on the ground, the first time for the first time in more than 30 years.
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24
California Wildfires of October 2007
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October 2007 California wildfires are a series of wildfires that began burning across Southern California on October 20. At least 1,500 homes were destroyed[4] and over 500,000 acres (2,000 km²) of land burned from Santa Barbara County to the U.S.–Mexico border. As of October 24, 18 active fires were burning in the region.[5] Seven people died as a direct result of the fire; 85 others were injured, including at least 61 fire fighters[6].California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in seven California counties where fires were burning.[7] President George W. Bush declared an emergency in the State of California and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts.[8] Over 6,000 firemen worked to fight the blazes; they were aided by units of the United States Armed Forces[9], United States National Guard.[10], almost 3,000 prisoners convicted of non-violent crimes [11], and 60 firefighters from the Mexican cities of Tijuana and Tecate [12].
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We were suprised to find that we would be driving across more than one state for our next fire. We stopped in Kennewick, WA for the night and made it the rest of the way through Idaho the next day, the sky being very smoky throughout all of our entire trip through Idaho.
Missoula – Jocko Lakes Fire http://www.inciweb.org/incident/904/
Billings – Ford Fire http://www.inciweb.org/incident/953/
The Ford Fire was in the Emerald Hills subdivision on the outskirts of Billings. We arrived once the fire was secured, but this time we were in some different territory, suburban houses instead of a forest. I remember putting out a smoker right next to a man’s house and he came outside and gave us drinks. As I came to find out, Billings is home to a few oil refineries. For a few nights we slept across the highway from the Exxon Mobile refinery.
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28
Wallowa, Oregon – Cottonwood Creek Fire
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Kudos to the Model-T Casino, Hotel, and Restaurant. That is a good combination.
http://www.inciweb.org/incident/782/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlund/752225982/in/photostream/
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We drove onto a dirt road created by a dozer. There were heavy tree fuels and a Haines index category of 5 (6 being the highest possible). We worked for awhile, then walked into a large clearing. A dozer had created a very large dirt safety zone in the form of a cross (+). We waited here for awhile and walked up to the edge of the fireline not too far to our west side. Eventually the fire blew up much more than expected and started to become overwhelming. We were immediately told that we were going to create a fireline to help stop it. It became so intense that fire retardant planes were called in. We sat in the shade a little bit away to eat some lunch. The planes came in over us and …
This was the day when some lunches had bad lunch meat and people got sick from eating them. At least one person ate their sandwich before lunch and it turned out badly for them.
Anyways, the retardant plane came in over us and we ducked to try and avoid them dropping on us. The fire blew up quickly into a smoke cloud that covered most of the sky in one direction. We went back to the clearing with the safety zone.
We stayed in the safety zone for awhile and were eventually told that the road we came in on wasn’t safe to exit on because the fire actually crossed it. Due to two bad events occurring at the same time, a sick person and being surrounded, a chopper was called in to airlift us to safety.
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