Base-Rats

Jun 7 - Jun 19
Hanging out at Base: Fixing Equipment

So today I am supposed to become an official university graduate. But I am missing my convocation because it is just not worth my time. Driving 9 hours to wait for hours while people I don't really know walk across a stage, all just to get my own 2-second special moment, where I shake someone's hand that I've never actually met before. That is my opinion, which may be just slightly biased and a teensy bit bitter, because I do wish I was there to celebrate with my friends. I will celebrate for you up here in Cochrane :)

The past 10 days have been a blur of monotonous days on the base. The weather cooled down for awhile, so there weren't many red alerts. Not to mention that our crew member stopped showing up for work AGAIN, which essentially renders our crew useless. On a positive note, there was a ton to do around base for the first week, because equipment was coming back from the fires, which meant lots and lots to do in the workshop. Each and every single piece of equipment needs to be serviced (taken apart, cleaned, greased, fixed etc) and tagged as such before it can be used again. Even if it still works fine. So that kept is busy for quite some time.

On Friday and Saturday night we had some epic times at Thib's tavern, which resulted with a very hungover bunch of fire fighters on Sunday. But we take it in stride! When Monday finally came around I felt rested and ready to get back into being healthy, but alas, when I got to the gym in the morning I found a completely shut down building. Apparently they pumps had shut down and the ventilators weren't working, so the pool was closed, and pool's fumes were intoxicating, so the whole building had to be shut down. I was angry.

Tuesday morning was exciting because I got to accompany my crew leader and crew boss on a thermal scan of our fire, Hearst 20. It still hadn't been called out, because there hadn't been three clean scans. This was the third one. They were both strapped into harnesses so they could lean out the open helicopter doors and look at the burn with the scanners. It was mildly alarming to see them hanging out of the chopper like that, but I got to sit in the front seat, so I was too excited to be nervous for them. The front seat is definitely waaay better than the back and I got some sweet views of our old fire. We smelled a smoke a couple times, but we were unable to find it's exact location with the thermal scan. This resulted in us being sent out to the fire on Wednesday morning to look for the elusive smoke.

Being back at my old fire was very strange. All the familiar landmarks looked different because there were no pumps, no camps and definitely no hose lines anymore. Everything had been pulled out and it made it feel very lonely. I kept expecting to run into another crew patrolling their area. After a long day of walking through the burn we found nothing. We smelled it a few times and stopped to see if we could smell it again and get a direction, but nadda. But there was one exciting thing about Wednesday! Our MIA crew member finally came in and quit!!! It sounds weird, but that is great news for us because now we can finally move on. We are officially a three person crew, which means we can go on dispatches anywhere in the district and up north, but without special permission we would not be allowed out of province because of the four-person crew regulations. So three things can happen now:
- they leave us a three person crew
- they hire an EFF to fill our vacant crew member position
- they split us up and make three five-person crews

Either way I feel very relieved!

Thursday and Friday were my days off, which consisted of a ton of biking, four-wheeling, fishing and partying. Erik taught me how to cast and I caught three pike! The pike are getting slimy now, so we didn't keep any, but I was still super proud :)
There were obviously lots of patio drinks, horse-shoe games and Thib's evenings involved.

Saturday I was back at work, super tired and what not. BIG NEWS today! We are going up north to do "Community Profiling". This basically means we have to figure out how much hose we would need to protect certain 'values' (houses, buildings etc). And when I say up north I mean allllllll the way up north! We fly to Fort Severn first (the most northerly community in Ontario), and then over the next five days we will work our way south until we hit Moosenee. Due to the dangerous territory we don't camp out there, so we will be staying in hotels the whole time. Sweet! We got all of our food and supplies ready, because once we're up there most things won't be available, and the things that are will be super expensive. Kiiinda excited!

Fire #1

Fire Numero Uno - 10 Days on Hearst 20

My first real wildfire fighting experience has now come and gone in the form of 10 days in a dense mossy bush, accompanied by my crew and the bugs.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, the weather has been crazy and I was bound to get a fire soon. After working 8 consecutive days, our crew was flown out to a 219 hectare fire in the Hearst district: Hearst 20. It was Friday, May 28th and I was ridiculously excited and definitely nervous. I had been waiting for this for over a month and I couldn't wait to get there. Everything couldn't happen fast enough: packing the truck, driving to the airport, loading the helicopter. Everything.

At first the fire was very unpredictable, so we camped at the Staging Area a short chopper ride from the main burn. In the morning we flew in to lay hose at a problem area and got flown back out in the evening. After our second night the fire had calmed a bit, so we were moved to a line camp right next to a dead part of the burn. This meant our hose line was only a short walk away from our camp. By this time there were multiple crew on the fire, so the normally deserted bush was invaded by over ten camp sites, a ton of firefighters and hundreds of lengths of hose. In the background you heard the dull roar of the pumps, the hand-held radio communications and the rythmic chopping sound of the two helicopters' blades as they moved equipment and crews to more remote parts of the fire. We spent the remainder of the fire patrolling our hose line and other parts of the fire, looking for hot spots and putting them out.

Overall I learned a hell of a lot, realized I love this job and can't wait for my next fire!! Here's some figures, followed by some details:

219 - hectares of burnt and burning bush
10 - days in the bush
9 - days I ate bacon for breakfast
9 - helicopter rides
uncountable - number of granola bars, steaks and packages of beef jerky I consumed

Thursday, May 27th - Red Alert - Glen was made Incident Commander of a large fire that started on Tuesday as a 15 hectare fire, but had blown up to a 175 hectare fire by Thursday evening. As he was our crew leader, our crew was to join the forces already on site. We were on red alert at the airport, but we didn't get to leave today becase the fire got out of control and all crews were pulled off the fire temporarily.Tomorrow we would be out there for sure, so Glen told us to double check our bags that night. Our preparation consisted of beer and a bunch of rounds at Thib's tavern - we would probably be gone for awhile, so a good night out was in order.

Day 1 - Friday, May 28th  - Around 1:30pm we left for the fire. The first glimpse of the large columns of smoke on the horizon made me forget any fear I had and as we flew over the burn I couldn't take my eyes off the partially burned, partially smoking forest. Once I got to the staging area I was surprised to see Jordan Pyette there - a guy I went to high school with on Manitoulin. He's on the Timmins fire crew. Six crews were already there, including Matt and Erik's crew from Cochrane and crews from Chapleau, Hearst and the visiting BC team. By now the fire was at 219 hectares, but we had to set up camp so we wouldn't get to the line till tomorrow.

Day 2 Saturday, May 29th- 7:00am wake up to heavy dew and the other two Cochrane crews packing up. After a bunch of bacon, scrambled eggs and a granola bar we got flown to the line of the Cochrane crews had started. The fire had jumped ahead of them, so we had to move some of their hose backwards and start laying it around the new fire perimeter. By this time the fire had calmed quite a bit, so we saw a few flames, but mainly everything was just smokey. Carrying the hose pack wasn't nearly as hard as I thought, even though the bush was pretty dense and the moss was super thick. Deep water-filled sink holes hid amongst the moss and under logs and threatened to not only soak you, but trip you up too. Once our hose line was laid and we had completed a return pass we started going 50 ft into the burn to put out hot spots. Stan, my crew boss let me nozzle for awhile. I got right into it and soon I was covered in mud from the backsplash, but those hot spots got killed! The pressure gets pretty hard to handle, especially when you're close to the pump. I definitely lost control of the hose at one point lol.
It rained all night, but the waterproofer I had sprayed all over my tent worked perfectly and I woke up dry and super rested. Even my feet felt fine, despite how sure

Day 3 - Sunday, May 30th - The fire was under control now, so we were all ordered to pack up camp and move to line camps (right by the burn). Moving all the crews and then setting up camp there took all day. The ground on the line was so mossy and wet that we ended up carrying all our gear 800 ft to a slightly higher, flatter piece of ground. At first it seemed like a lot of work, but it was totally worth it to be dry, especially because it looked like we would be there for awhile. I learned how to cut poles for the kitchen tent, dig a toilet hole and build a makeshift outhouse. We were lucky and had acquired an old toilet seat from a deserted outhouse near the staging area, so it really wasn't that rough at all.

Day 4 - Monday, May 31st- 6am starts now. This morning everyone was talking about the thunderstorm that raged all night, but I slept through it all lol. I woke up to one crack, but the rain pelting my tent put me right back to sleep lol. Many more crews had arrived now - another from Timmins and one from Haliburton, as well as a bunch of "Type 2" contractor crews. They are mainly hired for mop-up, so that the inital attack crews from the MNR can be freed to attack new fires. Our crew wouldn't be leaving though, because our crew leader was the inicident commander. By now I had fully adjusted to the early morning routine, followed be a briefing with Glen and hours of patrolling the burn for hot spots. I found a few on my own! We also caught some spruce beetles in coital engagement and basically walked right into a partridge. If Stan had had his throwing knives on him we would have probably had it for dinner, but alas, they were back at camp.

Days 5-8 -Tuesday, June 1st - Friday June 4th - An AGA scan (thermal scan taken via helicopter) revealed a few smokes, so Tuesday's job was to find the GPS coordinates and put them out. Our crew was flipped out to a previously untouched end of the fire to investigate some spot fires that had burned a half hour walk away from the main burn. Getting to these "bubbles" was brutal as the bush consisted of thick, springy Alders on boggy ground. We couldn't find any hot spots and eventually met up with the Haliburton crew working toward us. A thunderstorm was building and by the time it broke over us we were starting to worry that we would be stuck there, as the chopper wouldn't be able to make it to us. A couple hours later we were finally picked up, but that was enough to make me a little nervous. While I waited in the moss, I realized how much I had talked about Alex today and came to the conclusion that I was missing him more than usual. Thinking about him and wondering what he was experiencing made me forget that I was potentially stuck in a thunderstorm. It's been almost a month since I'd heard his voice!
The rest of the days were pretty similar. Essentially a long string of patrols through the bush, broken up by random duties such as cutting a new helipad. By now I am definitely super dirty...I'm starting to cringe when I put my Nomex shirt on lol. I would always cook dinner, and this quickly earned me the nickname "Martha Stewart". Stan even wrote it on the chinstrap of my hardhat!

Day 9 - Saturday, June 5th - Another AGA scan today. It didn't turn up anymore smokes, so we had to start demobilizing the fire. This basically means clean up and pack, so we spent the day rolling hose, dismanteling pump set-ups and taking an inventory of all the axes, shovels and other equipment. There is a TON of equipment on this fire and I am cringing at the thought of it all coming back to the Cochrane base to be recycled (serviced). It was decided that a few crews would be pulled out and the remainder of the fire would be watched by the main initial attack crew and a couple Type 2 crews. Last night on the fire!!

Day 10 - Sunday, June 6th -We packed up our camp today and finished pulling the rest of the gear out of the bush today. We spent basically the whole day thinking of what all to do once we got home. A shower and a cold beer are definitely on the agenda!