So you may wonder.....

Why I am currently not on a fire.... I know that most of people who may read this have seen the news lately and all that they can talk about is a wildfire in Southern CA. So why am I not there? Well there are a couple of reasons why we may not have been dispatched to the sawtooth fire.

1. The fire is on California State land (CDF) and well to be quite honest they tend to run things differently. CA has a lot of prisioners and nothing to do with them, so they make fire crews out of them. yes there are lots of CON crews here in CA. We run into them quite a bit, but when a fire is on CDF land they tend to use all the con crews that they can get so sometimes they don't use as many other crews as a fire on forest service land would

2. We were on days off when the fire started so we didn't get dispatched. They may have more than enough crews to staff the fire but becuase of the fire behavior they may not be able to stop it no matter how many crews are there working

3. They want to keep some crews available in case any new fires start.........

Ok so those are a few reasons why you see huge fires on the news and I am not there. it is all a game of waiting and sometimes luck when it comes to getting dispatches.

In other things i am enjoying having days off. If we don't get a fire today we will have had 4 days off and it has been nice. I visited laura for 2 days and have done nothing at all the last two. well I guess I did laundry and cleaned my cabin.

So I have finally posted pictures of some of the fires that we were just on. The first picture is of the Twinsprings fire. we were positioned away from the fire while the commanders aka our bosses decided how to attack it.

Next is the same fire at night, we were trying to figure out where the best place to stop it was..but the rain did it for us.

Finally is roberto taking cover from the rain.

Mother Nature hates us.

So here is what happened on our last run. (the short version)

well we got dispatched to a fire in St. George Utah and as we drove into camp you could see the smoke column building out to the west. So we were all excited because we thought that we would get to see some fire behavior and it would be full of action. You could also tell that there were thunderstorms in the area and after a yummy dinner of salmon we all went to be with hope of having a good shift in the morning. .......but as our luck would have it I woke up arond 12:30 to rain. so I put on my bivy sack (a gortex sack that goes over your sleeping bag and keeps you dry) and hope that it quits raining soon. Well I was not in luck, it rained all night and not lightly hard...plus it was joined by high winds and lots of thunder and lightning. The worst part was that it was hot out and well the bivy sacks aren't very breathable so you sweat to death when it it hot out. so needless to say the fire was pretty much done when we got there....just mopping up and cold trailing left but it gave us work for a couple of days

Well we leave Utah and head to another complex in Nevada...get there and are told that we are staging for the day. Which means sitting in the truck and waiting. So around 4 we got a new start. New starts are the best becuase normally the fire is moving and you get a rush from going out on a new fire. Anyway we get there and us and 3 other shot crews are trying to catch the fire but not having much luck...wind has other ideas so the fire keeps getting bigger. there were lots of thunderstorms around so the wind was doing funny things. Anyway we realize we aren't going to catch it and the IC (guy in charge of the fire) decides to bed the crews down since we had all worked 18 hours. he wants us to get sleep so we can work in the morning.......but wouldn't you know it right before we start hiking back to the trucks it RAINS...and parks the fire where it was at......

while still on this complex we are coldtrailing the fire from the night before when we notice smoke not far away...turns out it is new start. So we are hoping for something to happen...either it burns over the ridge and joins the one we are on or we get called to it, but did that happen nope guess what happened....thats right it rained......but we still got to go work on this fire the next day

So then we head for a fire near death valley. on the drive we stop for lunch and when we go to start the truck up it sounds like it is about to explode and well woudn't you know it we melted the starter and of course it was sunday so no mechanics were avilable so our bosses come up with a plan to shuttle us the 100 miles to the fire. well we get to this next fire which was buring nicely and in a high risk area (it was on department of defense land where they used to test all sorts of stuff) anyway our boss leaves to shuttle the rest of the group and what do you know it downpours on us....we only had 1 truck for like 14 of us so we all couldn't fit so a group of us stood under an awning while it dumped a good 2-3inches if not more on us.

After that we staged for a day and then headed home. now we are waitng for the next one. there is a huge fire down' by LA but I don't think we will go there. I am guessing they are keeping some crews available in case something else starts.

hopefully I will get my but in gear and get some pictures posted soon

Im back in computer land

Just a quick update:

we made it back from a run to utah and nevada (Ill talk about that later). We worked a bunch of days in a row so we got yesterday and today off (paid!!). Since we aren't available for fires I came down to my sister's apartment. Laura just moved in a couple of weeks ago so I hadn't seen her apartment yet. It is a pretty nice place. it is small but nice....the kitchen has some funky countertops but oh well. she is only about 2 blocks from the beach so that is pretty cool. when you leave the apartment you can see the ocean, plus she has just about everything you would need within a couple of blocks. well I guess target it farther away than that.

I am leaving here later tonight because I have to be back within two hours of fresno tommorwo since we go back available for fires. anyway I will update with adventures from the fire shortly

Well I didn't have to wait long

We got another fire call already......yipppeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No station work( at least for a couple of days). We are leaving bright and early Sunday morning for a fire in the great state of utah. It will take us almost all day to get there so hopefully it will still be there when we arrive. We couldn't leave tonight because we were to close to hitting our 16 for the day so we leave tommorow.

I am glad that things are starting to pick up. it is sad but since we only work six months you gotta get as much work in as you can and as Danielle said you can't beat OT and Hazard pay.

oh yeah here is me and my flute I made out of licorce. I know I am a goofball.

stay tuned for more fire updates.....for anyone who is interested I think we are going to the Bull complex but I might be wrong

Newspaper picture

try this link to get to the picture that was in the newspaper....I am not sure if it will work or not but it is worth a try. the heading is wrong we are in Sequoia national forest not park...oh well what can you do

http://www.bakersfield.com/102/story/59723.html

Back from the Smith fire

Well we are back from our last fire. We were on a fire called the smith fire...it was about 4 hours away from here. It was up in a wilderness area on the Sequoia National Forest. since it was in the middle of nowhere they helicoptered us all in and on the first morning there was a bunch of photogaphers taking pictures and well I made the front page of the local paper....ok really just my backside made it in the paper....there was a picture of us loading the helicopter and I was the last in line so well you can see my bum and my pigtail braids. We basically finished putting line around the fire and mopping up. It was pretty steep where we were and it was also sandy so our legs got a workout hiking up and down the hills. we also ended up "spiking out" which is staying over night on the fire, not going back to fire camp....sometimes spiking out can be a pain other times it is just fine. this was one of the times that it was just fine...except that the crews that were on night shift decided to walk right by where we were sleeping....oh well we got to work our days off so the more OT the better

it is crazy here in the park because of the holiday weekend. the tourist are crazy and I try to stay of the roads while they are here. Anyway here is a picture of the flight helmets the park helicopter makes us where when we fly on it...otherwise we just were our normal helemetson flights