chasingfire.com - A Blog…

Today I finished up my second stint in the Ozarks. After the fire season turned out to be a bust, I left a few weeks early to get caught up on some fun projects, and frankly to avoid some pretty un-fun work on the park. The past two weeks were supposed to be dedicated to training, but instead were filled with flood cleanup. Now, I don’t mind the cleanup too much, but after cleaning park bathrooms of stuff that looks like doo-doo but isn’t (I hope it isn’t anyway…), I was pretty well sick of it. After all, I did sign up for fire-related work, and was disappointed when that turned out to be in short supply. The prospect of another two to four weeks of cleanup with no overtime and slim hope for any burning was just too much to bear.

So, now I head home, and am rather sad in an odd way. It’s always a letdown to leave a place and not have reached the goals you had set. I had hoped (and planned) to see a lot of prescribed fire and overtime, as I did last year, and saw very little of either. Last year, by this time, we had 76 incidents with charge codes, basically meaning that parts of the fire crew had been on 76 fires or projects. This year we’ve had 6. Talk about different. Last year I was on roughly 25 prescribed and wildfires. This year I saw 1 prescribed fire and 0 wildfires.

But, despite the crazy weather, I had a good time, and don’t regret coming back down. I met some neat people, became better acquainted with Ozark culture, and discovered a few new things about myself. So overall it was a good 2 1/2 months.

So yeah, the recent deluge in Missouri (11 inches of rain in Van Buren, where I’m at) has rendered any chance of burning on park land nonexistent. The nearby river crested at a whopping 25.7 feet above normal, which is impressive considering that the official “flood” level is 5 feet. So, the past few days have been spent cleaning up the flood residue, which in my case has been the silty mud left on roads, walkways, and in buildings. The chances of seeing anything like the number of fires I saw last season has been reduced to zero.

That being said, I’ve decided to leave the Ozarks a little early, and head back west next week. While I’ve had a great time here in Missouri, I’m ready to be hitting the road again. This time my trip home will take me through a few new places, like Jackson, Wyoming, and I’m excited already to see what it looks like. I’ve wanted to visit for a while now, and am finally getting the opportunity to do so.

Tonight I’m a bit tired after 7 hours of driving. The trip from Van Buren to the St. Louis airport is long and boring. I volunteered to go and retrieve our engine module leader (ie boss) when he returned from a class in Boise, ID. Somehow I didn’t really think of the trip as being that big of a deal, but in hindsight I should have brought a second driver to spell me here and there. I am totally burnt out and jet-lagged from that much driving in a strange car on a strange road.

I am somewhat of an anomaly in the fire world. I really don’t drink, or get drunk with the crew. I really don’t like alcohol, and would rather not partake of something that I don’t enjoy just so I can feel like “part of the crew.” Tonight is “Friday” for the other module (the crew is split into two module with different days off), and they are really tying one on tonight. It doesn’t bother me, except for the fact that I have to get up and work tomorrow, and they don’t. The longer I fight fire, the less tolerance I have for the culture of alcoholism that is so prevalent among fire crews. Again, it’s not that it bothers me personally, but I get tired of explaining why I don’t participate, and I grow weary of dealing with hungover crewmembers the day after. Honestly, I hate how so many crews are accepting of crewmembers who are not 100% the next day, forcing those who aren’t hungover to pick up the slack.

Anyway, I should cease the stupid rant…

It looks like my summer is lining up nicely. My graduate school application has been preliminarily accepted, and is being circulated among the faculty at UM. Barring any random and unforeseen tragedies, I should be accepted, as I have an advisor and project lined up and ready to go. My summer job has been accepted, and will be with the Flathead NF in Montana, only a few hours from school. I’ll be working with a friend from Fort Howes, and hopefully the crew will be starting to rappel this year, making us only the third crew in Region 1 of the Forest Service to do so.

A few days ago I was sent with two other Ozarkers and one gal from the Black Hills fire use module to help the Mark Twain NF, Houston/Rolla/Cedar Creek RD with a 2700 acre prescribed burn. We took engine 861 and I was the engine boss trainee. The burn itself was uneventful, if a bit chaotic. There weren’t quite as many people on the burn as us “parkies” were used to seeing on fires of that size. As a result of that, and of some random errors by the helicopter ignition team, we had a few spots and a lot of choking smoke.

Oh yeah… I might add that the area being burned was named, in brilliantly original Ozark fashion, Kaintuck Hollow. Now, keep in mind that, the Ozarks being the Ozarks, the word hollow is pronounced “holler.” Say that out loud, and should you get the idea of how some people speak down here in the hill country of Missouri… Now I don’t hold anything against the residents of this area, and I happen to think that the vernacular of the region is pretty interesting, so don’t think I’m getting all uppity with my words here…

The fire didn’t burn too well, but it kept us busy for three days, and got us working some long hours on our two days off. In a season with little overtime, every extra hour is an accomplishment.

Upon arriving back in Van Buren, we found that the forecast was for more rain in the coming week. Our FMO was looking like he was about the call the burn season over here on the park, and possibly send us out elsewhere. For sure we are planning on burning in two little parks in the western part of Missouri at the end of the month. Who knows what will happen between now and then.

So today I went back to work (the 7-day coverage we work at Ozark NSR gives me Tuesdays and Wednesdays off), only to find out that the forecast is again predicting snow. Tonight and Friday we are supposed to get anywhere from 2 to 6 inches of snow. To top things off, more rain is forecast for next week. As of right now, the prospects for burning on the park are not looking good. We only have until April 1st to pull off our burns here at the park, and if the fuel moistures remain high our FMO would rather delay the burn until next year than burn now and not meet ecological objectives.

So, for right now we are in training mode, with our FMO putting on a few classes dealing with fire suppression and leadership. After that we’ll reevaluate, and possibly get to go to another park in the Midwest region to burn in a drier area. Even that may prove difficult though. Some of the agencies that burn in Kansas are unable to prep their units because of the saturated soil hindering access to the areas being prepped. So, if we don’t get to travel for burning too much, we might get put on the road to go someplace like Texas or the southeast for wildfire IA or support if those areas remain dry.

Anyway, the next week should prove interesting, and we should know our fate soon.