chasingfire.com – A Blog…

Alrighty, I am officially relocated to Sonora, CA. Work at the new job starts on Monday, and I for one am very grateful to have a job in this economy. It was pretty rough to see some of the local (Missoula) area jobs get cut this year, especially the pulp mill at Frenchtown, which put roughly 400 people out of work when it shut down a few weeks ago. While I wish I could have stayed in western Montana for a job, I just couldn’t find anything that would give me the same wages as I could get in CA. So here I will be, until I can eventually work my way home… We’ll see how long that takes.

In the meantime, Happy New Year!

Updates… I finally buckled down and accepted a full-time perm job with the Forest Service in CA. I was offered and accepted a GS-6 Squad Leader position on the Stanislaus NF, on the Bald Mountain Helitack crew. I’ll be starting there in January, and can’t wait to get working with my new crew!

Well, the remnants of the SWLO helitack crew are still at work, although we haven’t flown a fire in nearly two weeks. Our last significant fire was roughly three weeks ago, but we’re still staffing as conditions are very dry, and can be windy at times. So, the summer continues…

88M and Mules

The website is being updated with new pictures, and I’ll post the best here on the blog in the near future. For the time being I’m back in Missoula after a great 10 days on the Umpqua NF in Oregon as a helicopter manager. Fire season is over here in western Montana, and it would appear that the DNRC’s seasonal workforce will be laid off at the end of the month. So, until next time… Keep one foot in the black, if you have any.