Its all over( well almost)

Yes that is right my fire season is over. We laid the crew off yesterday!!!!! That means that I only have a week or two left. I have lots I could say about this season but I don't think that I want to do that here......cuz you never know who could be reading this.

Anyway I have been gone for a while and yes I was down on the fires in Southern Cali. I was not on the ones in San Diego... We were assigned to the Santiago fire near Orange, CA. I am sure that you saw it on the news. it was a pretty big news maker mostly because it was an arson fire. Dont worry Ill blog about it later and post some pictures.... I just don't feel like doing it right now. It was nice to go on one last fire it helped out our total overtime for the season. Can you guess how many hours of overtime we ended up with this season. If you think you have any idea post a comment and later I will let you all know how many we did get. Laura (sis) and maura you guys can not guess that wouldn't be fair.

Anyway I have a four day weekend I am gonna pack and get some things done for when I am done, although I still dont know when that will be. I am hoping to be done the 16th but might not be done until the 21st so that would mean I would be driving home over thanksgiving and that would pretty much suck. So we will see how lucky I get.

lets see what else might I do this weekend. Oh maura, ben and I may go see into the wild tonight and then afterwards I may go hang out with one of the guys who was on the crew with me in 2004....he is in town on his way back to Colorado after his season was done, and then on Sunday I might run a half marathon. I am not sure about running it since we haven't run to much lately. I know that I could finish it no problem but I don't know how fast I would be. I still have the cross-country and track runner in me and I would be disappointed in myself if I ran it slower than the last time I ran one. Oh well we will see. Yes I know I am crazy running 13.1 miles without training.

oh yeah I got poison oak the worst that I have ever gotten it on this last fire it was crazy maybe Ill put up a picture but you wont recognize me. This week I spent forever on our crew slides how. I am happy with how it turned out......but it would have been better if I didn't have to do most of it in 2 days...I seriously worked on it for 20hrs straight one day.....maybe if I get good ill put a little clip of it on youtube but I dont know if I am that talented.

Thats all I got for now...but I will post about the fire soon.

two in one day

For those of you who want to know more about my job or at least what wikpedia say about my job. Most of it is true but some of their definition just cracks me up

To see more go Here

A Hotshot Crew, or Hotshots as they are more colloquially known, is an elite group of highly trained wildland firefighters . They respond to the largest, highest-priority fires. Hotshots are organized not in "teams" but in "crews."

A Hotshot crew is a shared national resource that can respond to any fire emergency. As such, they are organized and funded by different government agencies including the USDA Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service, various Native American tribes, and the states of Alaska and Utah; the National Interagency Fire Center in Idaho co-ordinates on the national level. Hotshot Crews began in Southern California in the late 1940s on the Cleveland and Angeles National Forest. The name was in reference to being in the hottest part of fires.

IHC's are often catagorized as arrogant, too often the impression is from a misunderstanding or an isolated incident. As a rule IHC's are some of our nations leading wildfire professionals and the work they perform is often the turning point on a fire.

Their specialty is wildfire suppression, but they are sometimes assigned other jobs, including search and rescue - like the Sacramento Hotshots - and disaster response assistance. Hotshots not busy fighting fire will also work to meet resource goals on their home units through thinning, prescribed fire implementation, habitat improvement or trail construction projects

Slacker

So yes I have been a blogging slacker lately. So here is a little Q& A for you all

1. So amy what have you been up to?
well not a whole lot, just trying to make it till the end of the season, without going insane

2. Well, when is the end of the season, and are you still fighting fires?
right now our tentative lay off date for the seasonals is Nov 8th. My lay off date will probably be 2 weeks after that, hopefully less. We are still available for fires but there aren't really any burning right now, so we have been sitting in station

3. What do you do while sitting in station?
we try to keep ourselves busy...sometimes we have lots of project work to do, but that isn't the case right now....most of the crew including myself are hoping for a big snowstorm our some crazy weather to hit us so we can get laid off sooner

4. Do you think you will go to another fire this year?
I am hoping that we will get an assignment back east...there are rumors that some crews got sent back east since there is still fairly high fire danger there.

5. what else have you been doing besides working?
well not a whole lot. I have found that I don't really enjoy drinking with the guys all that much anymore...its probably because it is the same thing every time...stand around a bonfire and tell the same stories over and over.... I think I have heard them all hundreds of times.

OK that's all I have for now. I am trying to decide if I want to go to fresno today. I am thinking of buying an external hard drive for my lap-top but haven't decided yet.....Also I think some of us may go to the Fresno state football game tomorrow so I dont know if I want to drive down today as well.

hmm such big decisions I have to make

End of the year video

Every year at the end of fire season the crew puts together a slideshow of the best photos of the season and a video with the best footage that has been taken. For the past few years I have been in charge of the slideshow, which I am doing again this year. One of the guys "Chuck" is in charge of the video and he went above and beyond and made a trailer for the video.....he posted it on you tube so I am going to try and put the link to it here on my blog we will see if it works.

it is just the beginnings of it. I have seen more and I think it is gonna be pretty good Enjoy!!!

ok so the link he had to youtube wouldn't work so try this instead.

Snow Day

Well as you can tell from the pictures we got snow up here in the park!! The second photo is one of us having a massive shoveling party so we could back our trucks up into there parking spots.
Yep Dee you and Vicki left at the right time. We got about three inches today.

We were working on some perscribed burn prep....pretty much just cutting down a bunch of dead trees...that is what we have been doing most of this week. We were hoping to burn it on Sunday but well now that might not happen. ok I should say will not happen.



what else have a I been up to not a whole lot...this week was a busy week even though we were in station the whole time...we had lots of stuff going on. I have been a lazy poster these days...it is hard becuase we have been getting off work later than normal and also because it gets dark so early now.

well that all I got for now enjoy the photos some are from our last couple of fires that I hadn't posted yet. Yes we had a small keg of rootbeer in the back of one of our buggies.....it was really foamy and kind of weird tasting but we still had fun trying to pour it while the truck was moving. the things we do to stay entertained.

The last photos is of a perscribed burn we did here in the park earlier this week.