August 25th. Lonesome Complex. Rogue River N.F. The fires are out here for the most part. We mopped up and kept busy while waiting for a re-assignment.
"Nevada Bob" getting mustached

August 22-24. Today we left Negrito for Oregon. It took us three solid days of travel and an O ring off one of the carriers diesel turbo. But we made it. This shot is the sun setting in Nevada from our mobile home.

Brian up graded his goatee

Brian, Squad 1 minus Ian and Jeff

You have to let Jeff throw some too!

Cleaning up a green pocket of fuel with some incendiary grenades.

Graham caught a scorpian. Mean little guys.

July 8-13. We got into a routine for the rest of the dispatch. Prep the road in the mornings. Rush into burning as the main fire makes a push. Then grid for spot fires. One thing note worthy was the steepness of the area. When we needed to get to the road from griding up on the mountain side all you had to do was sit down and slide 200 ft to the road. It was like a water slide without the water. weeeeee!

Using fuses to burn off some indirect line on one of the spot fires.

July 7. Iron Complex - Eagle fire. Today we got dispatched to the Iron Complex where the H-44 crash was. When we arrived we started preparing the road to burn off of. As the day progressed we had to start burning to stop a run coming up the hill at us. The wind was not in our favor. As we held up the main fire with our burn we got spot fires over the road. Well into the night, I think 1 am, we chased spot fires.

This picture is from our escape route which was Olie and I driving the buggies along with the burnout.

July 6. A-2 Fire. Today we got demobbed and headed to a new fire. The Lassen N.F. a few hours away got hit by a lighting storm and Gila IHC is going to catch new starts. The fire they put us on was 6 acres with dozer line around most of it. Mostly brush cutting and mop-up. Today we found out about a helicopter crash on the Iron Complex that killed 9 people on the 4th.

This tree was to dangerous to cut so we helped it burn down.

July 3-5. We found a creek to stick our heads into on our hike to one of the spot fires we needed to mop. Felt a little guilty about it because the rest of the crew was working else where. They would have done the same thing...

July 3-5. Mop-up and fall hazard trees. For the next several days we used a hose lay to mop-up the fire 300ft into the black. Us sawyers got a chance to fall hazard trees with Dave who is our saw boss. He just got back from a detail with the Reserve Helitack crew.

July 2. View once the spots got caught and the smoke settled.

July 2. Susan giving out gummy bears while we fill our empty canteens.

July 2. Picture of a spot 1/4 mile off the line. The farthest of the long range spotting we got.

July 2. View of the spot fire from the fire line. The crew holding with us some how didn't spot this or maybe thought someone was on it, we never found out. At any rate it was moving up at them fairly fast. A heavy helicopter knocked the fire down so the 4 of us could get around it with line. It took us the rest of the day. While that was going on for me the crew found several more spot fires. Long day for all of us. I was surprised we didn't lose the ridge we were on.

July 2. The spot fires begin! The first spots started up the line and growing fast. Another crew was on them and several of us went up the hill to help. On our way we spotted another spot ripping up the side of a drainage in some brush. We diverted to this new spot while the rest of the crew started a grid in the green looking for more fires.

July 2. Rich Fire. We continued the burnout today. Due to much thicker fuels the burn started getting hot. Small dime size spots started showing up in the green side of the burn. Around noon a burning snag tree fell over the line narrowly missing 5 gallans of burn fuel (a mix of gas and diesel). As soon as it fell the green side exploded in fire. After the fire set down we went in and caught the slop over at about a 1/4 acre. Almost as soon as we finished another small slop over started. Which we caught quickly. At this time the burn has been passed to the next crew. As soon as I thought things would calm down and I could catch my breath a column of smoke from the other side of the burn set down over our line sending long range embers deep into the green.

Formen Jeff and Superintendent Dewey waiting for the crew to meet up where we stopped the burn for the day.

Some pictures of the line getting burned. You can see the smoke is blowing in. Which is a really good thing.

Aug 1st. Burnout begins. In the a.m. we finished preping. There were not enough hours in the day to complete our part of the burn so we hung up the fire about halfway into our chunk of line.

July 30. Rich Fire. We are on the Plumas N.F. where a spark from a train set off a large fire. Today we put in a large chunk of indirect fire line along with two other crews. The plan is to finish the prep tomorrow and burn off the fire line.

July 29-30. Dispatched. Off to Northern California it took us two full days of driving to reach the Plumas N.F.

July 21. Were on our way home to Negrito for some much needed R&R. We got three days off this time. Most of us are getting over the poison oak. Only two people on the crew ended up without it. I'm still sitting here itching...

July 19-21.

July 19-21. Staging for fire. We got the opportunity to watch a ton of fire behavior from a park on the Los Padres. Great learning experience.

July 18. Ian. He got the oak pretty bad.

July 18. Inversion on our way to camp. I slept on a yellow jacket nest last night. Woke up with a sleeping bag full of bees biting me. Ended up sleeping in the buggy. At this point more then half the crew has gotten poison oak shots and were getting tired of itching. My arms swelled up pretty good.

July 17. Jesse again... Nice mustache.

July 17. I think these things are endangered.

July 17. Richie!

July 17. Burnout operations. Our chunk of line was behind a bunch of structures. Our goal while burning was to not nuke out the "nice old mans back yard". So, we took it slow and brought fire down off the ridges and meet up with the dozer lines. The burn went extremely well. I even got to burn a good part of the day. The saw teams rarely get a chance to burn so it was awesome.

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July 16. Olie.

July 16. Our chunk of line isn't to be burned until the 17th so after prepping we watched the fire behavior from the other crews that had started to burn.

July 15. Plans changed to burning off dozer line. We spent the day prepping for the burn. One could sum up the day as swimming in poison oak. By this point we've had one guy get flown off the Gap fire to get treated for oak. His legs swelled up at least twice normal. Base camp has a trailer set up just for giving shots and prescription drugs for oak.

July 13. Erin...

July 13. East Basin Complex. Watching heavy helicopters pound the brush.

July 13. East Basin Complex. Los Padres N.F. The Gap Fire was getting buttoned up so they redirected us to a higher priority fire a few hours north. Our assignment is to access a slop ever from they day before and go direct with line. The area is considered wilderness. In this picture you can see the 5 blade wide D8 dozer line right through the middle of the wilderness area. Odd sight in a wilderness area. The local wilderness oversight group didn't care about dozer line but they got up in arms that people were driving ATV's on it. Found that pretty funny.

We didn't end up going direct because the slop was to dangerous. Dewey said it resembled South Canyon in terms of preheated fuels, potential fire behavior and lack of a safety zone.

July 9-12. Breaking down spike camp and building sling loads of trash and gear.

July 9-12. Jesse again...

July 9-12. Gap Fire. Graham and Jesse.

July 9-12. Gap Fire. After hiking into spike camp Dewey put me on the spot and had me direct the long line helicopter drop of our spike gear and water. It was my first time directing in a chopper and the pilot was anything but helpful. I heard later that the crew was crowded around the radios listening to my radio traffic. It was good laugh apparently. Murphy's law was in full effect. In the end it went well.

July 9-12. The many uses of chap stick.

July 9-12. Gap Fire. The crew is going to spike out until the line is complete. The hike in would be brutal everyday otherwise. On the way to So Cal our buggies exhaust pipe broke and we causing some issues. So I got delegated into staying in camp all morning while they got parts and fixed it. I would have liked to be with the crew instead of being board out of my mind in camp. I ended up helping the mechanic fix the exhaust which speed things up a bit. Then hiked into the spike camp.

July 8. In the picture you can get an idea of the brush. It wasn't to horribly thick and steep. We ended up making good time.

July 8. Gap Fire. The assignment was direct line. I cut almost all day in the brush and got supper dehydrated. I had to give up the saw because my arms started to cramp. looooong day.