Mountain Travis

Milli fire

2017-08-17T21:47:00.001-07:00

We made it to Sisters. Believe it or not the traffic was pretty good.

The fire looked like it blew up. Yesterday it was 250 acres. Last i heard it was 3500.

In the morning we will finish checking in and find out what our assignment is.

Milli 0843 cs

2017-08-16T18:27:00.000-07:00

We now have our next dispatch. To the Milli fire out of Sisters.

I wasn't able to post on the last fire because I couldn't log in. But I am in now and I will post as I can. You know signal issues. However we will be in the Sisters rodeo grounds so we should have good signal.

See you soon!

Bear Butte Fire

2017-08-04T22:32:00.000-07:00

Our fire season has started. We received our dispatch tonight and we will be checking in in Baker City at 10am. Here is some limited information:
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5464/

So I guess you know the Indian Pow Wow will have to wait. Our fire season has started. As always I will post updates as I can.Stay tuned

The wind down

2017-07-29T09:16:00.003-07:00

After the burn and the mop up comes the back haul. And the aftermath.

narrow road.

There was miles of hose spread out that needed to be picked up and hauled back to camp to be rehabbed and then put back into the fire cache.

Our job, along with a few other fire crews was to roll up the hose and haul it back to camp. So we took a number of miles worth of hose back to the supply cache at camp.

Loaded

Ready for the back haul

Truck #2 loaded and ready

As this fire and the fire season winds down there still is good things and a little history to come. A creepy experience, a bear, and a Indian Pow Wow.

Stay tuned I will try to post more in the coming days. That could change as we wait for the 2017 fire season to begin. If it does though I will post that here.

Radioactive

2017-07-11T09:17:00.001-07:00

As the fire slowed down we had a chance to do a bit of sight seeing. Near the fire was an abandoned Uranium mine. Below are the pictures of some of what we saw.

Storage warehouse in background

Mine

Tailings

Inside the warehouse

We teased each other that we had a twitch and a glow. But it was safe. There were other nearby mines we could see in the distance.

This is one of the cool perks about fighting fire. We do get to see a lot of neat things. We see historical things. And another cool thing we were able to do on this fire was go to an Indian pow wow. I will have a post later on it.

Interesting Sight's

2017-07-06T08:28:00.003-07:00

Just a short post this time. Below is a few cool, interesting thing we saw on this fire while we were there.

Pirate Ship

Aggressive Tread

The sky is falling

On my next post have we gone Nuclear. The glow about us isn't just that we are happy. Stay tuned to find out.

Burn Support

2017-07-02T17:17:00.000-07:00

One of our assignments we occasionally get is to support a burn operation. On this day this what we did. The pictures below are some of what we saw that day

Where there is smoke there is fire

Flareup

You can see the fire bumping the road. Our job is to let it burn but keep it away from the the other side of the road.

After the burn is complete it is time to mop up and put it out. This can be a lot of work. When there is duff the fire likes to hide. You think you knock it out and then later on patrol you see smoke and sometimes open flame. So back to work we go. It sometimes takes many days of patrol and mop up to get it all out.

Other times it is good to just let it go out by itself.

The evening cool off. Smoke laying like fog

I will have more to come in the coming days. Things are slowing down.....sort of. I should be able to post more often then I have lately. If we get a dispatch I will post it as I have in the past.

Tower and Line Time

2017-05-08T18:51:00.003-07:00

After we were briefed we went out to the fire line. As we went out we could see what had burned and what hadn't. They saved a lot of the homes..

They took us through the fire up to the lookout. It was a nice view of the area. Plus it was cool going all the way up onto the deck. It was manned.

After a while we went on patrol. The goal was to keep the fire out of Welpinit. And I can say that would have been a real disaster. Welpinit is surrounded by a lot of timber. We caught a break as the winds died down.

That doesn't mean there wasn't trouble. We herd on the radio one of the contractors calling for help on a house he was doing structure protection. The shed next to the house was burning and he was needing help to keep it from burning the house down. Happy to say they saved the house.

On my next post our next assignment was to support a burn operation. That was pretty cool. Also something new I will include that I have never done is to include video. You will see what it is like to be on a fire.

Stay tuned.

Our first Dispatch, Cayuse Mtn. Fire

2017-04-30T10:39:00.001-07:00

I was beginning to get nervous about not getting a fire dispatch. Being so far down the list, we had many close calls. Just not the call we wanted. We were close several times. But still no call.

The news continued to report of fires but still no dispatch. Then we heard of a number of new fires started in Washington State. I was hopeful we would get a call.

Finally the phone rang. I looked and the caller id showed it was dispatch. I almost didn't believe it. It was in fact a dispatch. We were sent to the Cayuse Mtn. Fire in Welpinit Washington. It was on a part of the Spokane Indian reservation.

First E number 102

We arrived around ten pm and checked in. The next morning we had a briefing and we went out to the fire. At the briefing they gave us the background of where the fire started and how fast it moved. They worked through the night and they saved many homes. They did so at the risk of their lives and at the risk of their equipment. But no one lost their life.

Pre-briefing

Welpinit Ranger Station

Staging

We went out to the fire and we drove out to the lookout tower for a birds eye view.

We also got familiar with our assigned area and the people we were working with. On my next post I will show you more of what we did on this fire. Again we saw a lot of cool things and also met many good people. We also had the privilege to go to the local Indian powwow.

I will have the next post coming soon!

Rei Affiliate

2017-04-22T07:54:00.001-07:00

I know like many of you we hate all the pop ups and also the adds we see on web pages. However it does help to fund the web page. How? When you click on a link and make a purchase we get a small percentage of the purchase.

That being said I have these links on here that I think will save you money. So if you are planning to do an online order with one of these companies, I would like to ask if you could do so through the links I have on here.

Part of the reason is that REI has told me if I don't get enough hits they will terminate my avbility to use their link. So if I lose it I won't be able to save you any with that given company.

Thank you and stay tuned as I will have a continuation of last years fire (short) season in review. You won't want to miss it. It was short but sweet.

Night Shift on the Rail

2017-03-20T19:48:00.001-07:00

The first of two shifts on the Rail. For the most part we didn't see much action. Notice that we didn't SEE much action. Just before dark we we on our division. We had great views. (You can see our views below)

For us it was slow. We were on patrol. Our Job was to keep the fire from crossing into the Strawberry Wilderness area. It was easy for us cause the fire activity where we were was low. So we would do an hourly patrol until 2 am, then we slept in shifts. We staged on a high point so as to see most of our division.

Where we didn't see much action it doesn't mean there wasn't action. Oh No! There was action in a nearby division. We heard on the radio that the fire was on the move. they said it was moving fast and it was going where they had staged heavy equipment, including a low boy.

There was a bit of panic over the radio as they couldn't find the owner of the low boy and also the Caterpillar they needed to move out of harms way. They made numerous phone calls to find the owner. They finally found him and he told them where the hidden key was. Then they couldn't find it. When they did they couldn't get it started. Again there was a bit of panic over the radio. They needed to get the equipment moved and moved right away.

They did eventually did get the Cat started but they couldn't get it to move. No one seemed to know how to move it. Not to long after that the owner showed up and he moved everything out of harms way. Then the radio went quiet.

The fire continued to make a pretty good run. All we could see was the glow. The smoke was to thick to really see what was going on.The picture below shows the glow. The picture doesn't do it justice as it was a very large area.

Most of the night it was very smokey and we couldn't see the fire or the valley. But just as the sky was beginning to lighten up the smoke cleared and we saw a nice sunrise.

After two nights the original crew showed up and took over the engine and we went home. It was Aug 16th. A late season compared to what we have had the last four years.

I went home wondering if I my fire season was only two days long. It felt like it was over. I tried to stay optimistic. Surely Bigfoot Wildfire would get it first dispatch. Wouldn't it? Or was it over before it began?

I waited one,two three, and more days. I watched the weather,news, and forecasts. Would there be any new fires? At this point the Rail fire wasn't calling for any resources. It wasn't looking to good.

And then on August 23rd......................

Slow Start

2017-03-13T21:09:00.000-07:00

The start of the 2017 wildfire season started slow. And in fact it almost didn't happen. June was exceptionally dry. Up in the local woods it looked like late September early October. The soil was powdery dry. There was several inches of dust. Then we had a storm came through and dropped over an inch of rain. That really delayed the fire season by a considerable margin.

The rain and also a change in the weather pattern really kept a major fire season from happening. As for the weather change, it was really subtle. What happened is the pattern shifted from a SW flow to a NW flow. Yes it was still warm but the major difference is no thunderstorms. That would have been a big trigger for fire starts. That never materialized, hence few fires.

Then a few fires started to pop up. First was the Weigh Station fire. It was wind driven across interstate 84, closing it for a while.Then was the Rail fire in Malhuer County.

We weren't dispatched to the first fire and so we were hoping to go on the Rail. It seemed like everyone was going but us. In the mean time my crew was getting hungry and had to leave and go back home to work.

So now I was scrambling to find a crew. In the mean time still no dispatch.

Then after a ten to twelve days one of the local contractors called me and asked if I could run one of his engines to relieve his crew for their R&R. So since I had no dispatch I went. Thanks to Fireworks for a couple nights of work.

The above pictures is from the Rail fire, while it was calm.

So myself along with two crew members were off to the Rail fire. We headed to Unity Oregon. After we arrived at camp we checked in and prepared for our first shift. Night Shift. Stay tuned

The Silence Ends

2017-03-08T21:46:00.000-08:00

I have been so busy I haven't been able to keep posting. Well that's part of the truth. The fact is it (as you know) has been a really tough winter. I have had some bad flu's and now I am trying to heal up from torn cartilage in my ribs. Also we have been remodeling my home. Yay! no more camping. There has been weather delays and it goes on and on.

It has been really busy this winter. I wasn't able to get enough wood to sell and live off of for the winter so I had to get a job. Next winter I hope to have a full supply of wood to sell to get through the winter.

The good news is we are starting to get caught up. At this time we are doing our preseason stuff for this years wildfire season. I was able to put a bigger tank on and the pluming is almost done. At the end of the month we will have our refresher and inspection on the truck. Then we will be ready for what the fire season brings us. I'll keep you posted.

I am going to start the "2016 fire season in review" soon. It was short but sweet. Lots of good work and a special treat for us as we were invited to the Welpinit Indian pow wow. It was the highlight of our season. you will enjoy it.

So check back and you will see how the inaugural fire season went for Bigfoot Wildfire......

Here is a teaser:

Cayuse Mtn. Fire

2016-08-27T14:53:00.001-07:00

I am going to try to post this update. Sorrt there hasn't been an up fate sooner. The signal is really spotty.

We have had a good fire and as if now it is lined but not out. Today's concern is the big wind event. It is really wind and so far no blowouts.

It has been a good fire thus far. One day we supported a burn. Our job was to support and hold the line. Which we did along with others.

We saw some good fire. When i can i will upload photot. Otherwise we have done patrol and mop up.

I hope to have more soon.

Bigfoot Wildfire's First Dispatch

2016-08-22T14:03:00.002-07:00

After a longer then normal wait we finally go a dispatch.We are heading for Washington. The name of the fire is the Cayuse fire. It is NW of Spokane.

As always I will keep you up to date on what is going on. As I can.

Fog, Town, And Horse Drive?

2016-08-10T21:54:00.001-07:00

While on a fire you see a variety of things. For instance one morning on the way to the fire line I saw Wolverine in a field looking for food. I have seen a badger, people rafting on the river near the fire who were nude, people transporting water to their marijuana farms (behind closed roads mind you), and many others.

Once again on this fire was another first. On the way back to camp we had to stop for a horse drive? Well the truth is I think they were moving the horses from one pasture to another. In fact this property was a sort of resort. They had places for people to stay and there was a variety of activities you could do on the ranch as a guest.

And then the rains came. We had some showers and then during one of our last nights there it rained. Hard. The next morning as we went up to the fire we hit fog. And boy was it thick. We could barley see the road. When we got to the drop point it was thick as pea soup. You can see in the pictures below.

Line Briefing?

The town of Republic was very small. It did have a grocery store and a hardware store, and a motel. It was in part a old looking western town.

This was as the fire season was winding down.And we had one more assignment. Another first for me. Rehab work. On my next post I will show you the rehab work we did to finish our season.

A Little Ingenuity

2016-08-08T11:46:00.003-07:00

When we are at a fire that has a cater there they provide our lunches for the day. We have two choices "Regular or Veggie".

There isn't much differences in them. The regular lunches always have at least one sandwich, candy, trail mix, and fruit. In the veggie lunch it is similar, however they do not have a sandwich. They have nuts and fruit among other things. But sometimes they will have a burrito.

Do you like a cold burrito? Neither do I. Many times we wrap the burrito into the foil provided and then we will put it on the engines manifold. As you see below with a little ingenuity there are better ways to cook the burritos.

Burritos under the hot rock

Are they done?

We found a hot spot under the rock. It had some coals under it. So we dug it out and put our burritos in it and buried them.Then we continued on our patrol for a while. After a while, on one of our passes we checked and we had hot burritos.

Sadly later we drove by only to see our oven torn apart and destroyed. I am pretty sure it was the forest service engine. They were working the same stretch of line. But hey it worked just long enough to have a hot lunch.

Big Equipment and A Little Lesson

2016-07-30T19:22:00.001-07:00

Before the burn they were going to do they brought in some heavy equipment. Below is a coupe of pictures of these large tools.

Now for a little lesson. In the fire world there is a term used, and it is called a "Dirty Burn". When fire goes through a given area sometimes it doesn't burn real clean. I burns well in some areas and not so much in others. This we call "Dirty Burn". You can see the examples below:

Dirty Burn

In these first two pictures you can see what a dirty burn looks like. The first one isn't that bad. However you can see there is about fifty percent of the surface fuels that have not burned. The second picture is much worse. As you can see.

This is a particularly bad spot. The red you see is what we call "Pre-Treated Fuels". What this means is that these fuels are cooked and very dry. The surface fuels to the tree limbs, or "Ladder Fuels", to the top of the trees are all dried up and will not only ignite quickly but burn hot and can burn very fast. This can be very dangerous situation

Visitors?

All firefighters keep a close eye on these types of environments. Often these kind of areas we have left behind to work more active or higher priority areas. "If" it restarted it could become a very dangerous situation for fire crews. So that is where patrols and lookouts come into play. They have our backs.
So as I write this several new wildfires have started and so my next post could be from one of these fires. I will keep you all posted as I can.....

A Little Work A Little Scenery On The North Star

2016-07-27T19:52:00.000-07:00

One of the awesome things about fighting wildfire is the places it takes you. Its like a paid working vacation. I have been privileged to go to many beautiful places I wouldn't normally choose to go. But unlike a vacation there is still work to do.

In the pictures below you will see some of the scenery we were able to enjoy. As for the work part, well the small lake we at our disposal to tap into. Our job was to get the pump set up and running. That took some time, and in fact we needed our Strike Team Leader to help us get it going. these Mark 3 pumps are really good pumps but the are also tricky. Those of you who have worked with them know what I am talking about.

We just didn't fill the tanks for visitors.

Here is my guys and the Strike Team Leader working to get the pump going.

It was dirty and dusty. The more traffic there was the more dust. But hey what do you expect, it's summer. Tho at times, as you will later see it didn't always seem like summer.

North Star Fire

2016-07-26T11:33:00.001-07:00

Anticipation

We did a number of things on this fire as I said before. But there was a planned burn operation. It takes time and a lot of planning to successfully pull it off.

Finalizing Plans

Hand drawn game plan

I hope you can enlarge the maps. The hand drawn map is actually done pretty well.

After days planning this operation as well as waiting for weather delays, they were ready to execute their burn. So after briefing the crews and handing out various assignments. Once everyone was in position they executed the plan. It went well and they reached their objective.

We didn't have much of a share in it but what we did do some patrol to make sure there wasn't any spot fires burning across the line.

As I said we did a variety of things on this fire. Each time I post I will show you the different things we did. Not a lot of excitement but we had a good time and in at least one occasion we did something I had never done before.

Pack Test Day

2016-07-20T17:27:00.002-07:00

As promised here is the pack test. I have to say as one of the administrators it was a real challenge to get good pictures. The pictures aren't as good as I wanted but they will give you a idea of what is involved.

Getting ready

In the picture above everyone is putting on weight vests. Remember they weigh 45 lbs

Ready.....Set

GO!

There they Go

Here they come

Almost to the finish line

So as they cross the finish line, we record their times. Then we send it in along with their certifications for inspection. Once they pass the inspection then we print off their qualification card. It's like a driver licence. When we check into a fire they need to see them to let us on the fire. That is part of the inspection/check in process.

So anyone want to do a arduous pack test? I didn't think so...

The west is going to warm up so it likely wont be long until we are dispatched to a fire. In the mean time, and as I can I will continue to post the last fire of the 2016.

I forgot to mention the name of that fire. But it was called the North Star fire. Stay tuned.....

Arduous Pack Test Day

2016-07-18T12:07:00.001-07:00

I thought that since today we have scheduled a pack test for fire personnel I would show you what it is all about. Hence this post. We will be doing the pack test today at 6 pm, or as the ICS would call it at 1800.

Every firefighter who wants to qualify to fight fires has to pass this test. So here is what is involved in taking a pack test: You have to cover three miles in 45 minutes or less. You say no problem! Well here is the catch, you have to do it with 45 lbs on your back. Also you are not allowed to run. So its not as easy as it may sound. That's why they call it an arduous test. Because it is not that easy.

We are now required to have a EMT there in case of an emergency. Two years ago one of the firefighters died during the test, and because the EMT was there the were able to revive him back to life.

Most people score around 41-43;00 minutes. The faster firefighters are done in 35-37:00 minutes. Today we have six participants. One of my crew and five from one of the other contractors.

So I will take pictures and post them for you to see some of what is done.

Dragging the line

2016-07-17T11:06:00.002-07:00

Local Support

This was a slow fire as fare as flames go. That's not to say that we weren't busy. We were doing a variety of things. We patrolled the fire line, did a few days of mop up. We did some rehab work and in the pictures below you will see the other assignment we were given.

Unfortunately these pictures don't do it justice. In places it is really steep.

Dragging out the hose

There was two engine crews assigned to do this job. We dropped off four of our crew and they walked the line down pulling the hose with them. We took the two engines down to the other end of the fire line. Down to where it tied into the main road.

Each hose is an inch and a half size around and is 100" long. We pulled out over 4000' of hose in just a couple of hours. The crew did really well.

After we had it all down we butterflied each hose and loaded it into our trucks and transported it to a pickup location. Buterflying a hose is a different way of rolling up the hose. Hard to explain what it looks like but it is a quick way of rolling it up. In the end the hose looks like a figure 8.

In my next post I will show you the preparation we did for a burn.There is maps and some planning involved.

The last fire

2016-07-16T10:41:00.003-07:00

We were dispatched to what would be our last fire of 2015. We were sent up to Omak Washington.The main fire camp was in Omak. After we checked in and went through all of our inspections, they sent us up to Republic. It was up to the northeast. We were about 30 miles from the Canadian border.

The town of republic was small but they have some neat old style buildings.

We didn't see much fire but we did have work. We also saw some nice country, and wildlife.

We were there for two weeks and then we went home for good. In the following posts I will show what we did while there.

It's been really busy but I will try to keep posting right up to this years fire season.See you soon.

Still here

2016-07-12T18:33:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time since I posted here on my blog. But believe it or not I'm still here. It's been a real busy winter spring and early summer.
Last weekend's rain delayed the start of fire season in region six. But it is picking up all over the West Coast. Likely we will be working by the end of the month.

As always I will keep you updated on this blog of all the happenings.

Just to give you an update I have a crew the engine is ready and we are just waiting for dispatch. In the meantime I have been working cutting and selling firewood.

My buddy and I did some alterations to the engine. We added a cage on top of the toolboxes that will store water gatorade and handtools.

I am sorry I haven't kept up-to-date with this blog and I know many of you enjoy it, but it has been a very busy year. I will do my best to keep it a little more regular as I can. See you soon bye