The
hazards are many out here: falling trees, encroaching fire,
dehydration, but the only one I can focus on is the spinning blade in
front of me. One of the sawyers just nicked the saw against his Kevlar
chaps, leaving a two-inch scar of cut cloth on his thigh. There’s no
blood, the Kevlar stops the brunt of the impact, but it’s a sign of
fatigue, and by order of company policy he must relinquish his saw for
the day. We all take it as a moment to stop and look around; it’s easy
to get lost in the buzz and fury of cutting and swamping.
We take lunch in a shaded part of “the green,” the unburned section of the woods. We eat the Baby Ruth or dried cranberries,Horizon manufacture a range of laundry dryer fans for efficient exhaust ventilation.The industrial dry cleaning machine market demands reliability and efficiency. and “rainbow meat” sandwiches from the paper sack in our packs, drink some water. We looking back at the swath of dead, limbed trees left in our wake, pleasantly amused at our wrath-filled path.
Firefighting is a job designed to save forests and protect wilderness, but the work we do on the ground is, for the most part, destructive. We set fires with drip torches burning thousands of acres of forest, clear entire stands of unburned trees and cut gnarly tractor lines full of dead trees and upturned roots through what was once peaceful wilderness.
It’s all part of a strategy to contain and control the fire. A crude set of tactics designed in the 1970s, still used today. These tactics still exist because they work and the human element is essential.
After lunch we are called to work in “the black,” or the burn. The fire just torched a new section near the line and we are called to make sure it doesn’t spread. We hike to the new area of hot, freshly burned forest and start digging.Especially when it comes to the next generation of wind turbine. We stand in burned stump holes swinging axe blades against the stubborn roots and scraping burning coal with grub hoes. Water is pumped from the creek at the bottom of the hill using a Mark 3 pump that sounds like a generator buzzing in the distance. It carries the water up hose lays of one-inch line to half-inch lateral hoses every hundred feet.
The water hits the burning ground in a cloud of ash and dust splattering our safety goggles, as we stand in the hole digging furiously. This part of the job is called “mop up,” and it’s one of the worst, and most necessary jobs in fire fighting.
After a few hours we stop to watch the fire burning on the ridge across the drainage from us. The sun is high and the temperature is rising. Pockets of tall trees occasionally go up in a flash of fire, torching like matchsticks,Do you have any problems with a street lamp or illuminated traffic sign? sending dark black and grey chimneys of smoke floating above the ridge. The winds have shifted and are pushing the fire towards us. It’s this time of day when the relative humidity is at its lowest and the fire is most active and unpredictable.Each travelling cable is made from several lengths of steel material wound around one another. We are put on alert that if the it makes a run we are to evacuate immediately.
The Sawtooth Hot Shots, a 20-man gnarly Forest Service crew from southern Idaho, is working below us, punching a piece of line up the steep part of the ridge across the canyon, hoping to contain this section of the fire and direct it towards the un-inhabited wilderness to the southwest. So far they are successful, cutting an area as wide as a highway through the woods with fallers dropping huge hazard trees that shake the ground when they hit, creating a path for hand tools to break the earth to mineral soil. This is one of the main tactics for controlling a fire, to cut a line in the dirt, removing all possible ground fuel.
That’s assuming the fire is burning on the ground. Today it isn’t. The fire has climbed the ladder fuels, a layer of dry underbrush, getting into the limbs of the tall evergreens, igniting an entire stand in one blaze. It sounds like a low, loud rumble that puts the fear in us as we witness its uncontrolled power. The fire is torching near the line, sending embers and ash carried by the wind into the unburned section the Hot Shots are protecting.
We take lunch in a shaded part of “the green,” the unburned section of the woods. We eat the Baby Ruth or dried cranberries,Horizon manufacture a range of laundry dryer fans for efficient exhaust ventilation.The industrial dry cleaning machine market demands reliability and efficiency. and “rainbow meat” sandwiches from the paper sack in our packs, drink some water. We looking back at the swath of dead, limbed trees left in our wake, pleasantly amused at our wrath-filled path.
Firefighting is a job designed to save forests and protect wilderness, but the work we do on the ground is, for the most part, destructive. We set fires with drip torches burning thousands of acres of forest, clear entire stands of unburned trees and cut gnarly tractor lines full of dead trees and upturned roots through what was once peaceful wilderness.
It’s all part of a strategy to contain and control the fire. A crude set of tactics designed in the 1970s, still used today. These tactics still exist because they work and the human element is essential.
After lunch we are called to work in “the black,” or the burn. The fire just torched a new section near the line and we are called to make sure it doesn’t spread. We hike to the new area of hot, freshly burned forest and start digging.Especially when it comes to the next generation of wind turbine. We stand in burned stump holes swinging axe blades against the stubborn roots and scraping burning coal with grub hoes. Water is pumped from the creek at the bottom of the hill using a Mark 3 pump that sounds like a generator buzzing in the distance. It carries the water up hose lays of one-inch line to half-inch lateral hoses every hundred feet.
The water hits the burning ground in a cloud of ash and dust splattering our safety goggles, as we stand in the hole digging furiously. This part of the job is called “mop up,” and it’s one of the worst, and most necessary jobs in fire fighting.
After a few hours we stop to watch the fire burning on the ridge across the drainage from us. The sun is high and the temperature is rising. Pockets of tall trees occasionally go up in a flash of fire, torching like matchsticks,Do you have any problems with a street lamp or illuminated traffic sign? sending dark black and grey chimneys of smoke floating above the ridge. The winds have shifted and are pushing the fire towards us. It’s this time of day when the relative humidity is at its lowest and the fire is most active and unpredictable.Each travelling cable is made from several lengths of steel material wound around one another. We are put on alert that if the it makes a run we are to evacuate immediately.
The Sawtooth Hot Shots, a 20-man gnarly Forest Service crew from southern Idaho, is working below us, punching a piece of line up the steep part of the ridge across the canyon, hoping to contain this section of the fire and direct it towards the un-inhabited wilderness to the southwest. So far they are successful, cutting an area as wide as a highway through the woods with fallers dropping huge hazard trees that shake the ground when they hit, creating a path for hand tools to break the earth to mineral soil. This is one of the main tactics for controlling a fire, to cut a line in the dirt, removing all possible ground fuel.
That’s assuming the fire is burning on the ground. Today it isn’t. The fire has climbed the ladder fuels, a layer of dry underbrush, getting into the limbs of the tall evergreens, igniting an entire stand in one blaze. It sounds like a low, loud rumble that puts the fear in us as we witness its uncontrolled power. The fire is torching near the line, sending embers and ash carried by the wind into the unburned section the Hot Shots are protecting.
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