Sunday, August 26, 2007
Friday, August 24, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Spike out. We continues the prep and snagging process. Our long term goal is to burn off the dozer line to stop the distant approaching fire. The crew mostly feels we should go direct since the grass here is green. That means burning will most likely cause a mess. Dewey (supervisor) fought long and hard to get us out of the noisy camp. So we'll be spiking out near the line for a couple days at least.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Black Cat Fire. #1 priority fire in the US. On the saw again today. We arrived to our division to prep dozer line. Since the dozer does most of the work for us we sent out snagging and moving brush. Dropped a ton of dead trees. It was so thick we hung lots of trees up. We all learned a lot today about cutting trees and about ourselves.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Friday, August 17, 2007
Mop-up time. 17th-19th. We plumed hose from water tenders at the top of the drainage. Lots of roads here going to huge summer cabins. Water moping is great makes our lives better working on the steeps. On the last day of mop-up two people from a prison crew (one being their Crew Boss) got pinned under a tree. We all went to the scene and reviewed the stupid things they did. Long story short don't stand down hill of falling trees. Also no human can stop a green tree from rolling down a hill so don't try. The guy how tried to stop the tree didn't get hurt bad. The crew boss broke his leg in several places. Preventable.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Little Goose Fire. 4800 acres. The terrain here is extremely steep. We hiked in the long way going down into a drainage from the buggies and working with a BIA crew up out the other side. I got on the saw team for the day. Spent as much time getting my footing as I did cutting. Tough day. Almost got taken out by a rock (hit my pack), as did most of us. By the end of the day no one got hurt and the line looked great.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
Gila trailer park @ base camp
We had to get new front tires on the buggies. The tow company left them on blocks most of the dispatch. The other shot crews called area where we parked the Gila trailer park.
R&R. Went to Show Low AZ for a night. Turned out to be a middle age biker town. Made it fun by going to the go cart track. I'm in Silver City right now using the free internet at a cafe. Negrito's internet has been down since we got back. So I had to drive 135 miles to use the internet. That’s dedication (I also had to go to Wal-Mart).
Mop-up. The 7th and 8th consisted of lots of mop-up with hose lines. More than half the crew has come down with "the sickness". Just a nasty cold. I was spared. I think do to all the colds I got working at the ski resort this winter. Worked out well for me since I got to cut as first saw both days.
Travel. All the other crews are flying home for R&R and flying back to Idaho. Dewey our Sup convinced SWICC to let us drive home which will give us a couple extra days to get over "the sickness". On the way home we stopped for a night in Vegas (no drinking allowed since the driving idea was to get healthy). Made 110$ out of 20$ and called it night before I spent all my winnings. Steve (1) Casino (0).
Travel. All the other crews are flying home for R&R and flying back to Idaho. Dewey our Sup convinced SWICC to let us drive home which will give us a couple extra days to get over "the sickness". On the way home we stopped for a night in Vegas (no drinking allowed since the driving idea was to get healthy). Made 110$ out of 20$ and called it night before I spent all my winnings. Steve (1) Casino (0).
Monday, August 06, 2007
Snagging. Long day for the saw team (5 saws). Our mission is to clear the line of dangerous snags. Snags are dead trees typically burning or burned out with little holding them up. Winds will knock these trees over and can hurt someone putting hand line in. Ian and I got to cut over 40 snags today. Didn't get to many pictures since we kept a fast pace. Three other hotshot crews were behind us putting in saw line, hand line and hose line. It felt like we were diffusing mines at some points since there were so many snags. You have to decide which one to take first and then keep a close eye on all the one ready to come down around you. We heard and saw about as many fall on their own as we cut down. Probably the best day I've had yet this summer! Got to cut a couple tree the size of the saw bar 26 inches. No double cuts yet…
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Horton Fire. We've been moved to another fire that’s part of the East Zone Complex. Two shot crews have been working for days on this one and the fire blew up on them the day before and they lost their line. One of the crew is Logan IHC that an Americorps NCCC buddy is on (Aaron). Aaron, Erin (who is on Gila with me) and myself are the only three Americorps to go onto hotshoting from last year in Denver. We used hose again today to mop-up the colder edge of the fire. At camp we got to hangout with Aaron and catch up a little bit.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
The big blow up. Another strong smoke inversion today. When it cleared the fire was extremely active. Ending the day around 26,000+ acres burned. We couldn't safely go into the drainage so we ended up with another much needed easy day. Great pictures today. First smoke column I've seen that big and close. All the work we've done isn't for nothing. Red Ridge didn't turn into a column and our line from yesterday held. However this fire is far from controlled. Its projected control date is now Sept.
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