FIRE FRIENDS

This week I went to Reno to our annual fire team meeting. While I was there I ran into the Air Tactical Group Supervisor from my old team---we had been together about 15 years before I left that team for a new one. During the visit we talked about a lot of things and a lot of old times but we talked about something that I feel like anyone that reads this needs to know about me.

I trained his wife, who is now retired, as a Supply Unit leader many years ago---she became the head of the Great Basin Cache in Boise, Idaho that services all of the fire caches in the Nation before she retired. She was great at that job. The three of us were great friends and had lots of fun just being friends and visiting when we were together and stuff. We never did anything of consequence together but I for sure love both of them a lot.

A few years ago I was heading for a fire in Boise, ID when his wife called me and said---"I have a daughter that needs to go to work for you on this fire." I asked her what she was qualified to do and she told me ANYTHING I was willing to train her to do. I asked her what she meant by that and she told me her daughter was smart and a hard worker but had never been on a fire and in fact had just had her 18th birthday so she was old enough to go out just the day before. I kind of laughed and said OK get her to dispatch and get her signed up---I want her as a camp person and I'll figure out where to use her when I get there. Then I called the dispatch center and ordered her and told them what I was going to do with her. They said OK go for it.

I arrived at the fire camp and was introduced, by the wife, to her young daughter. She was a hard worker and very smart so I trained her up in the Supply Unit area and she did a remarkable job---must run in the family. During the fire we had a major windstorm that blew the roof off the cook trailer and scattered everything in the camp all over he_ _ . During the blow a propane tank became airborn and hit the daughter on the ankle breaking it. We worked on stabilizing her and getting her to the hospital and getting her put back together. She came back to camp in a cast and finished the assignment. She has since gone on in fire and is an engine foreman for one of the Idaho Forests and is doing an excellent job for them.

All of that is just past history so you kind of understand the rest of this blog.

While we were visiting he told me that at Thanksgiving they were talking about the past fire season and some of their fire friends. During that discussion they all talked about some of the things that occurred while they were working with or for me. The daughter told them that they couldn't count me as their fire friend 'cause I was hers and that she would never forget the break I gave her by bringing her on for that fire.

Just goes to show you that you never know what a single incident may buy you in your life. Although she is wrong about them not being able to count me as their fire friend I am thankful that I can count this entire family as my fire friends.