This summer was my first year for wildland fire deployments. When I started working for Logan Fire, I wanted to find somewhere I could contribute to the department. I started talking to some of the guys and I thought I'd give wildland firefighting a shot.
For our first deployment we went out to Box Elder County to Promontory Point. There was a bad lightning storm the night before and it started some fire on the ground. Off we went. The couple of days we were there was full of making sure the fire was out and driving around to make sure there were no new starts. I learned a lot in this week. There is a lot to fighting wildland fires. It was crazy when I heard from the guys say that the fire will lay low until about two in the afternoon and then off it will go. They were right.
There was another fire about 6 miles out and we got called to it to help. This was the fun part of the fire. Grass fires take off so fast and quick and it is hot. It was fun driving off road and in the brush where normal trucks won't go. It is also crazy to see how fast a juniper trees can go up in flames. Some of the views of the fire was awesome. I went out with Aaron and Jason and I learned a ton from them. It was a good time.
When we were moved to a new fire, we were with a group of people who were staging. As we arrived to where command wanted us, we all looked around and felt the wind shift right towards us and command told all of us we needed to move quick and get to a new staging area. It was crazy to see how the fire shifted and was moving towards us. The big column of smoke was crazy to see. We were with a few tenders who needed to stage for filling stations. Ken Mathys had what was called pumpkins, or a big plastic pool that held over 6,000 gallons of water.
This is where the helicopter came to fill. Once this was done, I went out with Ken Mathys and protected a grader as it worked. I was amazed to see how much earth it could move to make a fire line. They had a plan once a big enough fire line was made to burn off about around 3,000 or so acres to stop the fire from spreading faster. I was amazed how Mathys was driving his truck and how the dirt was so soft. There was a lot to take in during this week. We did a lot of staging during this fire and it was getting me antsy.
During this time someone made a comment to Mathys about scorpions. He said there were no scorpions around here. As we were staging, Mathys got tired of standing and he scraped the ground to sit. Just as he sat down, I saw something move by his foot and it was a scorpion!
I looked at Mathys and told him to hold still and not move. I grabbed a tool and picked it up just as Mathys was about to come out of his skin. We all laughed and said, "I thought you said there were no scorpions here!" After the funny show of him being freaked out, someone cut off his stinger and he became a pet for the day. It was crazy to see people hold it and have it on there shirts. It was a fun time.
I also had an opportunity to go to a controlled burn in Logan Canyon. I had fun doing my first burn off to help hold the line when the other fire came in. While we were there, we saw this tree go up in flames. It was so cool to watch because it started out slow but then boom! It was engulfed. The tree actually did make a boom sound as it caught fire. It was so loud!
I can't wait to go out next summer. Hopefully we have more fires, though, because this summer was a bust on fires all over the state.
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