To start off this post I want to first explain my experience in wildland fire, which isn't really all that much... yet. The 2020 season was my first season in wildland fire and I was on an engine crew for the state of Washington. I rode with three other firefighters in my engine. Our tank could hold 420 gallons of water and we were equipped with hand tools, chainsaws, drip torches, and enough MREs and water to be self sufficient for up to 72 hours. We fought fire in all sorts of fuels from grass, to shrub and sage, to timber and the understory (ladder fuels) that come with (poorly managed) forests. We were mainly working in eastern Washington but also spent time on incidents on the Idaho border as well as the White River Fire in Oregon where, tragically, a pilot lost his life when his K-Max helicopter went down while performing bucket drops. While I don't yet have the experience of the firefighters that are Hotshots, Smokejumpers, Type 2 IA crews, or other hand crews, I do have some experience to speak to in fire. And I'm here to share how it has impacted me and my outlook on life; how I view forests, fire, and management of those two things, and other little lessons I've learned along the way. There's a lot to unpack in this post and I don't really want to miss anything. I'll cover things like the daily life, friendships, connectivity to the "outside" world, meals, sleeping arrangements, hard work, readjusting to being back home, crew dynamics, interaction with the public, and other feelings that firefighters might have or might experience.
The Day-to-Day, and a long shift
I s'pose to begin I can start off with a quick little story about crew dynamics and what it looked like to be on an engine crew during the "Covid Season." For context, I worked for an agency that was strictly dedicated to wildland fire, meaning I didn't deal with any structural fires. In my unit there were four engines, 16 firefighters (four per engine), and a few overhead staff which included a forester, our AFMO, and our FMO. I started working in mid-May and my contract was set to expire on September 30th. Each day I woke up at 0800 and was at work by 0900 til about 1800. Sometimes when there was increased fire danger or Red Flag Warnings we would get extended and stay with the engine til 2000. In that case, our agency gave us a per diem to go and buy dinner, which was always a nice little luxury that most agencies and firefighters do not have. We spent the first couple weeks of work training for different scenarios and going over everything we needed to in order to be familiar with how the engine was laid out.
In the early season when we didn't have a lot of fires we spent most of our days training or working on forest thinning projects. During training we would have competitions on who could complete a hike the fastest, who could dig the most line, which engine could do a certain hose lay the fastest, and other little competitions to keep morale up. These were fun, but physically challenging. During our forest thinning projects we would work as a lone engine module. We would work in teams of two and the four of us would go tank for tank on our two chainsaws, switching off as sawyer/swamper. This was monotonous and exhausting work. Sometimes we would swing saw all day in temperatures reaching 100 degrees.
I recall one of our first fires, and to this day it is the longest shift I have ever worked. I began work at the normal 0900 time and we left the station pretty early to get a head start on our thinning project. We Started cutting around 1030 or so and received a fire call around 1330 if I remember correctly. So we packed up our saws and hit the road. After driving across town and through a spaghetti string map of green dot roads winding through the mountains we were the first ones on scene, along with another engine that we were following. Upon arrival we geared up and got to work. We anchored in at the heel of the fire and laid a progressive hose lay on the climbers left side flank of the fire while the other engine took the right flank. All the while helitack was performing bucket drops on the hottest spots of the fire which happened to be quite a few of interior trees that were torching up. I proceeded to lay hose up the left flank until I reached a hazard tree that was hollowed out and spitting flames out the top of it nearly 50-60ft up. At that point I backed off the line and let helitack try to cool it down with bucket drops while my partner and I tried to dig line along the edge. Once we tied our line up top in with the other two firefighters below us, we began to burn off little sections of light fuels using our fusees in our packs. Eventually we ended up digging line around the entire fire, which came out to be a roughly estimated 10 acres, by the time the sun set. We night shifted this fire and began the mop up process as soon as it was fully contained. At 2300 I was taking a quick rest with my partner when I looked up the mountain and saw 20 headlamps bobbing down towards us. This was a huge relief, a handcrew was called and showed up to assist with mop up. We continued to work well into the night and I finally went up to the engine to rest at around 0300 the next day and began working again shortly after. Finally at around 1000 we were released from the fire and left to get meals and go home to rest. I finally was off the clock at around 1400. I was exhausted. We all were. We had been up for far too long, ate far too little, and worked hard for an extended period of time. I went home, ate, and fell asleep before my head could hit the pillow. Later in the summer, we had more shifts almost exactly like this one.
Friendships, Covid, and working with difficult people
During the Covid season it was actually extremely difficult to make friends outside of fire. Generally speaking, if you're in fire, it's hard to make friends outside of fire during fire season- if it's a busy season. Much like the tail end of the 2020 season. I'd like to consider myself a very sociable person. I'm quite extroverted and love being with people. The Covid policies implemented by my employer made it difficult to even connect with people in my own unit. We had about 19 guys working at my station and many of them I never got to know. We weren't allowed to train with each other in the field, we couldn't be close to each other when we were at the station, and we eliminated all group activities like going over the daily weather, discussing our 6 minutes For Safety topics, and casual chit-chat before or after work was frowned upon (on site). So each of us were extremely limited in talking with each other during work. I really only spent time with the same three people for 6 whole months. We got to know each other very well, but as time and work goes on, adversity comes. Working with the same three people can get exhausting. Furthermore, we did everything together. It was 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Eventually we had to develop ways to get time away from each other to avoid killing each other (obviously I'm joking, but you get it). This is where fire taught me about patience, gratitude, and knowing when to tune out. There were times where I'd become annoyed and frustrated. It's an easy place to sink to when it's towards the end of the season and it's day 28 of working 14-16 hour shifts side by side with someone that seems to know and press every button you have. Patience was important in these situations, and more or less the whole season. I knew eventually it would come to an end and would no longer be an issue. "Blowing up" on someone would serve no purpose and only cause more frustration and division in the team. Gratitude was important as well, being thankful that it wasn't worse, because it can always be worse. And being grateful for the opportunities that I had been given. Tuning out was my saving grace I think. Though this is only something that can be done off of the fire line when the work day is over. I developed a unique ability to shut down my brain and my body. I went through a ritual-like process before I got tucked into my sleeping bag and bivy. After my meal I would brush my teeth, wash my face and hands, and get into my sleeping clothes, which consisted of the same pair of shorts and the same shirt for the entire roll. After that I would grab my sleeping bag and bivy and find my desired sleeping location, which was usually in some sort of field. Next I would strip down to just my underwear, fold my clothes neatly and set them next to my water bottle. I'd take off my glasses, blow up my little pillow, and play Sturgill Simpson's "All Around You" while I did my concentrated relaxing, er that's what I like to call it anyway. I'd lay down and focus on relaxing my entire face, and then my neck, and then my shoulders, and I'd move on throughout my entire body, focusing on relaxing every muscle. Sometimes I would feel myself go limp and by the end of the process I would be in a slightly different position than when I started. Simply because I was unknowingly using muscle to support some sort of position that I was in before my magical focused relaxation. At the end of the process I would usually fall asleep almost instantly. There wasn't a single time where I remember not being able to fall asleep (okay that might also have something to do with how much work I was doing when I was awake, but still). Better yet, and odd enough, no matter where I slept or what I slept on, be it rocks, or grass, or a concrete slab, I was never sore when I woke up. That nightly process was something that I looked forward to every day. No matter how hot and miserable it got that day, no matter how much work we were doing, no matter how annoyed and frustrated I got with that one crew member, I always knew that that nightly routine would be there at the end of the day to send me off to lala land before the next shift. It sounds funny, I know, but oftentimes it really kept me going and kept me from "blowing up" on the one crew member that always found a way to piss everyone off.
Weird feelings and big meals
I recall one time we were traveling from fire to fire all over Oregon and Washington. We were towards the end of our second roll and had just arrived on a fire on the west side of Washington. Well, we didn't really arrive on the fire so to speak, but near it. This particular fire had met the wildland-urban interface and taken out a few homes, and caused a large evacuation. When we arrived we decided to meet up and rendezvous in a local grocery store parking lot. Bad idea. Soon enough we had locals coming up to us offering us shopping carts full of snacks and drinks thanking us for protecting their homes. Some wished they could give hugs, some were in tears, and some just asked how they could help. I think each one of us experienced an odd sort of guilt. Personally, I felt guilty because I had done absolutely nothing on this fire yet. I just showed up! And people were showering me in gifts! Gifts that other firefighters deserved and earned through their service on this fire. I felt like a total fraud... an imposter. I wasn't the one that protected these homes. I didn't save any lives. There were real heroes out there on that fire, but it wasn't us. It was just all a very strange experience.
Coming home is a weird experience as well. This isn't my first time being away from home for an extended period of time. The past three summers I have moved away. Twice to Colorado to work on a ranch and this past summer to work in Washington. Though, I will say that the move to Washington was more difficult. I moved to a place I've never been, where I knew no one, and where I only got to meet a few people, all while a pandemic was going on and the world seemed to be ending. Coming home from all that change was a big change in itself. And it's been taking me a while to get used to. I went from going a hundred miles an hour all August and September to pretty much zero starting in October. It was kind of a shock to the system and I wasn't anticipating it. More weird feelings. I didn't really want to be social right when I got back. I wanted to see my closest friends and that was about it. I didn't want to answer questions about fire, I didn't want to talk or hear anything about politics or Covid, I didn't care about peoples opinions on the news or the latest restrictions, I just didn't care. And I didn't want to be told what to do or where to go or who to see. I was pretty irritable. I don't even really understand why I was that way or why I was feeling that way. But eventually I kicked that little funk, started hunting more, started lifting more, and spent more time with family and friends. It was a relief to get out of that little funk! I think it stemmed from knowing and seeing that there are people out there with real problems. Who were experiencing real loss. And the only thing that people could direct their attention to was the fucking news? Like what? Who cares about that stuff. Our opinion on all of it is so fucking meaningless. Spend less time and energy on things that are out of your control and start focusing it on the things around you, the people around you. Instead of watching FOX or CNN for an hour every day, maybe use that time to call up a friend. Go get a gift for your significant other, or your mother, call your brother, get some donuts for the office, make art, pick up a hobby, go outside, find new music, plan a trip, read a book, put down your phone, stop being so busy, but for Christ's sake don't talk to me about the news. Sorry for the little rant, but I think we all need a little reminder sometimes... myself included. Carry on with a little more care. Spread a few more smiles. Be a little nicer, and a little more positive when everyone else isn't. Now, if you don't mind, I'll get back to talking about life in fire. Haha.
If there was one aspect of fire that I really enjoyed, it's the meals. Now, this isn't everyone's experience. I've ate countless MREs and skipped a lot of meals in order to get a task done as well. But when we were on a big fire with a good Incident Management Team, we got fed very well. The meals that we would get while on assignment were usually good. They were almost always enormous in quantity though. Many of the meals had between 3000-5000 calories... yeah, you read that right. Each meal. The kicker? I lost weight. Like a lot of it too. I went from a thick and healthy 190lbs at the beginning of the season, all the way down to about 173lbs by the end. I still felt good and healthy, and I was in the best shape of my life. I could hike faster, further, and with more weight. I was running miles in 5 minutes. What I lost in brute strength I gained in endurance. It was a unique process and transformation. I was doing things that I didn't know my body was capable of doing. A bit of a mountain goat.
Technical terms and a hot situation
There are a lot of terms that I had to learn over the season and before the season that folks outside of fire don't know. It can make story telling kind of difficult. But I'll do my best. A lot of folks ask me if I had any close calls over the season and to be honest, not really. I had maybe three or so close calls that come to mind when I reflect on the season. One of these came while we were on our first roll¹. We were putting some fireline² on the left flank of a fire working from the top of the hill down. This was an extremely steep slope in loose dirt. One slip could send you falling and rolling a few hundred feet... or to wherever you ran into a tree. We were on a north-facing slope so it was covered with extremely thick undergrowth. Above me and two of my coworkers there were firefighters trying to complete a hose lay. In doing so they kicked loose an old log. It was about 9 inches in diameter and maybe 2 to 3 feet long. I heard from above me "ROCK" which is pretty much a universal sign that there is some form of rollout³ heading down the hill. So I look up and see this thing coming right for me, the sawyer⁴ and another swamper⁵. So I yell, "ROCK," and duck behind a tree as the sawyer and swamper head my way too. Luckily this log smoked a stump about 20 feet above us and stopped dead in its tracks with a "thud" that seemed to shake the ground.
The second close call that I had was part of the unknown or less thought about danger of the job. This close call happened at night while our strike team⁶ was traveling from one fire to another. I was asleep in the backseat and woke up to what felt like some sudden maneuvering and braking of the engine. Apparently we had to swerve and miss some sort of obstruction in the road. Each engine had the same encounter (I think it was around a bend on a winding highway or something). Either way, we almost had an accident and our Strike Team Leader regrouped all of us to go over what happened and checked in with everyone. Thankfully, nothing happened and everyone was safe.
The third close call came during our second roll of the season. We were on a fire and were assigned to Division Whiskey. The fire was coming through the sage hills from the east and was wind driven. Our job was to hold the line⁷ along an old dozer line. Well, we were thinking that if the wind flopped and was favorable for a backurn⁸, we would do it to tie the fire in⁹. We called the Division Supervisor and he came out to evaluate our plan and gave us the green light if the conditions were favorable. Eventually we got that wind shift and started our burn. I grabbed a drip torch¹⁰ and began to drop fire along the road. The wind helped fuel my fire and it grew in size exponentially. It carried it right across that sage. It burned hot and it burned fast. Things were going good for about 100-150 yards or so. But then the wind changed directions. Now, on this dirt road we had a sage field to my right that was on fire, and to my left there was an 8 ft tall elk fence. In front of me was one of our engines and a man on the nozzle to cool things down if it got too hot. There were 3 of us with drip torches and my supervisor was behind me. Well when the wind shifted it blew the fire ahead of us. By the time I realized the situation that we were in, it was already happening. It happened extremely fast. I mean, we were working in extremely volatile conditions with high wind speeds that changed direction often. The fire blew ahead of us about 30 yards or so. When I saw that I immediately yelled, "LET'S GO WE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE!!" to the two other burners ahead of me. I don't know if they didn't understand the urgency of the situation or if they just kinda froze, but I physically pushed them and yelled, "RUN!!" so they would pick up their feet. By this time the wind had again changed directions a full 180 degrees and was spitting flames back over the road and directly on us. We were ahead of the flaming front and running away from it, trapped by the elk fence. Not a situation that any firefighter wants to be in. I ran in a full sprint with a drip torch in one hand, a hand tool in the other, and my 45lb pack on my back as well. We ran until we couldn't feel the heat of the fire on our necks anymore, which ended up being about a hundred yards or so. The wind changed again and was blowing back to the east again. Ultimately, I may have lost a few hairs on my neck and my supervisor had very minor burns on his neck and hand that required no medical treatment. So all was good in the end. We continued our burn and got the job done, despite the little hiccup in the operation. We held that line and took down a big part of that fire, it ended up saving a few houses, a lot of livestock, and a few more farms. The picture below is the road that we burned off of. You can see the burned sage on the right and the saved vegetation on the left, along with the elk fence. If you zoom in you can see just how long that road is... and it extends farther than that as well.
Sleep
Sleep. Man oh man is sleep a good thing. And not always something you get a lot of when working in fire. While on a roll it is common to work 16 hour shifts, and get 8 hours of rest, every day for two weeks. On initial attack it is common to work 24+ hour shifts depending on the size and complexity of a fire. There is an operating procedure that wildland firefighters are supposed to abide by, and that's called the 2:1 ratio. For every 2 parts of work that a crew performs, they must also get one part sleep. So if we work 16 hour days for days on end, we must also get 8 hours of sleep to mitigate the risk of working so much and so on.
When off of the fireline, sleep can be hard to get sometimes. Especially if a crew is assigned to night shift a fire. Depending on the size and complexity of that fire, there may not be an incident management team that supplies tools to help firefighters sleep during the day. These tools include sleeper cabins or semi trailers outfitted with beds and air conditioning. Believe me, it is extremely difficult to get sleep in the middle of the day when temperatures are reaching 100+ degrees and it's sunny. Most times when I am on a fire I set up my camp under a tree if it's available or on the softest ground that I can find. Sometimes I will pitch my little tent, But most times I don't. The setup is no different whether I am on night shift or not. I have slept in some weird places. I've slept in random farm fields, county parks, state parks, national parks, designated campgrounds, parking lots, in the middle of the woods on a mountain, in a junkyard, on private property where the fire took place, in our engine, once on a slab of concrete under a roof during a thunderstorm, in a hammock next to a waterfall, and sometimes in football fields. Sometimes we would be sleeping right off of the fireline, sometimes miles away. Sometimes we'd go to bed outside when the air quality was shit and you could still smell and see the smoke. Sometimes I would wake up and have to dust off the ashes on my sleeping bag. Sometimes I would go to bed and could still see the fire raging up on a mountain. One thing I am already missing are the sunrises and the sunsets. Man those were some of the coolest sunrises and sets I've ever seen.
Forest Management and a Little Conclusion
Over the season I learned a lot about forest management. I learned a lot about what goes into and what factors might lead to devastating wildfires. You might hear some blame it on climate change, or some blame it on arsonists or poor management or not enough funding or even that it's just the way things are. It's all kind of true, and it all plays a role. Some more or less significant than the last. What we do know is that better management of our forests does mean better fire. And better fire means less devastating fire, less wildland-urban interface fires, less loss of life and homes, less damage to the environment, and healthier forests overall. Healthy fire is a real thing and a necessary thing. What does better forest management look like? It looks like thinning projects, fuels breaks, trail management, prescribed burns, education and awareness for the public, and cooperation between the folks in the woods and the politicians making decisions. I think 2020 and recent years have woken the world up to the threat of wildfires and it will serve as a hard lesson for the future, albeit a necessary one. Fires will continue to burn, but hopefully we can move forward in a way that helps out our future.
If you have questions please feel free to comment on this post or reach out to me on social media @ZFuecker.
All those vocab words:
¹Roll: a fire assignment that can last anywhere from 3 to 21 days. Usually these last about 14 days or so.
²Fireline/line: a line dug down to mineral soil around or near a fires edge to prevent the fire from spreading. This is usually started with chainsaws clearing the way and followed by folks with hand tools to dig.
³Rollout: this can refer to any form of rolling material coming down the hill. To make folks known of this potential hazard we yell, "ROCK!"
⁸Backburn: this is a common practice to fight wildfires. Firefighters will intentionally light a fire, most times right off the line, to "tie in" the fire and prevent it from spreading.
⁹Tie in: this refers to connecting a fire to line so that there is no available fuel for the fire to burn. It can also refer to meeting up with someone, someone else's line, or a barrier. If I'm digging line from the east and another crew is coming from the west, eventually we will meet and "tie in."
¹⁰Drip Torch: this is a firing device that has a wick at one end connected to a container of 2/3 mix diesel and 1/3 mix gasoline.
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