S'LONG 2012

2012 is just about to go out the window and 2013 is set to start.  All in all 2012 was a very good year.  We had good health and bought a new car.  I went to five different fires and had a good season   After fire season ended I was asked to inspect the rehab contracts for three different fires.  There was one for seeding and one for flying wheat straw mulch onto the worst burned areas.  It was a good part time job.  I worked on the preparation part for two weeks in October, the seeding contract for two weeks in November, and the mulching contract for two weeks in December.  That was a lot more work than I expected but it was good to do it.

We had all of our kids home for short visits for Christmas and 11 of our 20 grand kids too.  Would have been nice to see the rest but I just count my blessings that I got to see some of them.  Taking everything into account 2012 was good to us.

WHO WOULD HAVE EVER GUESSED I WOULD LIVE THIS LONG?????

RITA SMASHED MY HEART

 Down on the beach.

House in the middle of the swamp.

Holly Beach before and after.

In December of 2005 I went on a Incident Management Team assignment to Hurricane Rita Recovery and was assigned to Cameron Parish, Louisiana.  The damage and destruction that we saw was almost overwhelming.  Our Incident Command Post was at the Cameron Court House because that was the only building in the Parish that did not have extreme damage.

We were near a school that had the walls knocked out but the roof and supports were still standing.  We recovered the wrestling mat in tact over 50 miles away.  This was the hardest assignment I ever participated in.  When I think back about it I still get choked up and teary eyed.  This entire Parish (County in the west) had a total population of less than 10,000.  The destruction from Rita was unbelievable.  Politically this poor Parish suffered greatly.  They did not have a lot of pull as they were competing for assistance with places like New Orleans that had lots of people affected.  The locals called it the "FORGOTTEN PARISH."

We were assigned there almost three weeks and returned home on the 24th of December.  Our team took up a collection of money to buy some gifts for the displaced kids for Christmas.  We did pretty well and collected about $5,000 which some of the team went North to an unaffected town and purchased as many gifts as this would buy.  They were delivered to a school that had less damage than the rest of the area with Santa on a fire truck.  It was awful to see the kids faces when the truck missed the road and had to continue quite a ways to find a turn around and come back.  It was great to see their faces when the truck returned.  It brought a lot of satisfaction to us to see how happy the kids were to be getting something for Christmas even though it was not a lot.

I always go through a withdrawal when I return from an assignment but never like this one.  I sat on the couch in our lovely house, looking at our tree surrounded by lots of gifts, with our kids and grand-kids gathered for this great celebration and cried.  I have never had an assignment take as much from me as this one did.  To this day I refuse to participate in team assignments to hurricanes because I cannot face seeing the suffering of so many at one time.

TOUGH TIMES---CAN YOU SAY PTSD???

VERY CLOSE CALL

Inklings told me she was not going to write about this incident and that I needed to do it since it was part of my experience doing the fire rehabilitation. It is really hard for me to write these things down but I decided she was right SO HERE GOES.

While I was doing the rehabilitation on the fires I had one of the straw brokers grand kids come out to visit over the weekend with his dad who was operating one of the straw handlers. He was a cute little four year old that wanted to hang out in the building where I did all of my paper work and filing. I also ate my lunches in there because I had a propane heater in there to keep it a little warmer.

He sat across the table while I was eating. I usually have crackers, a lunch meat, cut some slices of cheese and maybe some potato chips. When I do this I usually take extra sharp cheese because it tastes pretty good when you are working out during cold weather. He told me he really liked cheese so I cut him a slice and gave it to him along with some sliced ham and a cracker. I told him the cheese would bite him back but he would like it if he ate enough of it.

He took a couple of bites and pulled a face each time. His dad came in and he told him it was nasty so his dad told him to throw it in the trash. Which he did. A little while later he asked for some more so I gave him another slice with some more sliced ham and crackers which he ate. I also gave him and his brother a snack pack pudding which they both ate. I really got a kick out of seeing him gobble down the sharp cheese and ham slices after he got cold. He told me he really liked both of them.

The next day he came in while I was eating lunch and sat down and ate with me. I was having the same thing and he asked for some so I gave him crackers several slices of ham and cheese and he ate it right along with me. I'm telling you sharp cheese does taste a lot better when you are cold and hungry.

He left to go play with his brother and another boy that was visiting the project with their families. There is a small stream that runs by the property. About an hour later one of the straw handler operators told me he had heard a child yelling for help and had got off his machine to investigate. He told me he had found this little boy in the creek above his waist hanging onto a tree branch and screaming for help. They had taken him into a camp trailer and changed him into dry clothes but couldn't get him to stop shivering (which is a sign of the later stages of hypothermia). His dad started their truck and got it warmed up and took the little guy home to give him a warm bath. That worked and the kid is fine.

We were sooooooo lucky that the guy on the handler heard him screaming for help. Even if the boy hadn't drowned hypothermia would have taken him in just a little more time. This incident scares the crap outta me. It reminded me how fast tragedy can strike.

I AM VERY THANKFUL THAT THE TRAGEDY WAS AVOIDED!!!

DONE AT LAST

I have been gone for about three weeks working on a fire three fire rehab projects. It was a little tough this go round and there were some problems with the aircraft but all in all it was another great experience.

All in all we flew 2808 tons of straw mulch onto 3609 acres and 246,047 pounds of seed onto 17,155 acres on the three fires. It was a great experience again although somewhat cold. We didn't have a lot of snow to work through and everyone made it home with no problems.

Heading Home in a cloud of dust.

The view from Lost Lake.

Nice coveraqe.

3 of 4 stacking up for loads.

Tail back on.

Tail off.

Almost sunset.

Upper landing getting a load on wheels.

Great coverage.

Straw bomb.

Hittin' the ground.

Fillin' a hole.

Nice drop.

Straw train.

Bomb.

N80NH

N143SP

Ground stack.

Delivering to the ground stack.

GREAT START

Started on the mulching contract today---got 140 acres of the 3609 we are doing taken care of. I am really tired tonight but wanted to put a picture on here of the rehab I am doing this fall/winter. Seems like we ought to be a lot closer to being done than 4%.

HAD LOTS OF LOOKEY LOOS---LOVE THIS STUFF

READY T' GO

Had the pre-work meeting for the fire rehabilitation contracts yesterday---start flying Sunday. Will be good to get this going. Last contract like this I did was finished on December 28---hope this one gets done before Christmas. That was really bad for the people doing the work.

I printed the sunrise/sunset tables this morning to make sure I knew when we could start and had to stop flying. I was quite amazed that I can sleep an extra half hour before I have to start driving to this one. It is not that I didn't know the days get shorter but I was amazed at how fast that happens. For the seeding contract just last month we had to start driving at 0530 to be there for the safety briefing daily. It is an hour and a half drive to both areas we are going to rehab so starting at 0600 will work to start and by the end I can start at 0615.

The weather has been beautiful up until now and I am hoping it stays that way until we get the mulch out. After that we need to get a ton of snow for next year.

HERE IS HOPING THINGS GO WELL!!!!!

READY, SET, WHOA

I have been waiting for the last couple of weeks for the contract to mulch the fire rehab areas to be re-awarded. I got a call from the owner of the helicopter company yesterday and he said the contracting officer had contacted him and told him everything was in order and they would get the contract. He also told him that they couldn't make the final award until the NEW finance system the FS went to in October had some problems fixed.

This is disgusting to me. How on earth can you change finance systems and have glitches in them. I would think there would have been a Beta test first that tried to iron out all the glitches before it was implemented. This isn't the first time a new system has been implemented that had lots of problems identified as soon as it was put in play. JUST ONE MORE REASON THAT I AM STILL HAPPILY RETIRED!

I will happily wait until I can go to work on this contract because it is a really good part time job and I truly love doing this kind of work. This is a picture of two helicopters delivering straw to the areas. This go round we will have either four Hueys or two Hueys and one K-Max---will be good to get started.

This picture shows the straw hanging below the helicopter in the delivery net. This is an awesome process to watch.

IT'S TOUGH JUST WAITING TO GET STARTED---HAPPY WE ARE GOING TO GET STARTED!

WHERE I HAVE BEEN

For the past 12 days I have been working as a contract inspector for a contract to seed 17,155 acres of land burned in 2012 by wildfires. I struggle a little with uploading photos onto blogger so these are exactly backwards from how I wanted them. I am very happy that the Forest Service still calls me to do these kinds of jobs. I love doing them and really like to see the recovery after a year or two.

In my experience all fires recover. In three to five years most of them are fully recovered and the worst (those that burned the hottest) of them recover in ten years. I am not saying the same type of vegetation will be growing there. What I am saying is that the area will be fully occupied by the roots of the vegetation that is there and the soil erosion will have ended. Where the areas are seeded the recovery is complete in three years and the managers have some choice in what vegetation is growing there.

These projects are very effective and save thousands of tons of sediment from getting into our stream courses.

Photos of the helicopter picking up a load and heading out for the area where it will be spread.

Camera phone shots where you can see the helicopters returning for another load. There are two helicopters in one of the photos but you can't see the second one unless you know exactly where it is. It looked a lot better on the phone.

This is the building where I spent most of my time monitoring the helicopters seeding the areas from flying seeders.

The seeders are like the little hand held seeders you use on your yard to spot plant grass or to fertilize but they hold 400 or 900 pounds (or more) of seed at one time. This will seed from 10-20 acres for the little bucket and 45 to 90 acres with the big bucket. The acres seeded depends on pounds per acre of seed that is to be put on the sites. The buckets are calibrated to spread the desired pounds per acre at a fixed rate of speed. My Grandpa used to tell me all the time that "Nothing is as easy as it appears at first glance." These prop jocks know what they are doing or they would never be successful with these types of projects.

IT IS FUN FOR ME TO PARTICIPATE IN THESE PROJECTS AND I LOVE TO SEE THE RECOVERY A COUPLE OF YEARS DOWN THE ROAD!!! I WOULD PROBABLY DO THIS FOR NOTHING IF THEY ASKED ME TO.

GETTIN' AFTER IT---FINALLY

I read in the local paper that a road project that was approved in 2006 while I was the District Ranger has been under construction since May. The Forest Engineer says they are about 40% complete and most of the work on the National Forest is done. This is a pretty amazing project. It saves 100 miles round trip for the coal trucks hauling coal from the mine. The road will cost about $29.9 million. The road is being paid for by the coal company and they expect to recoup their costs through fuel and operational savings on the trucks. When I did the math during the planning stages their cost savings are staggering and the project is well worth doing.

We rode up today to see what it looks like.

I WASN'T SURE I WAS EVER GOING TO SEE THIS PROJECT COMPLETED!!!

BUSY, BUSY, BUSY

I have signed on to do the administration of another rehabilitation contract. This one is for three separate fires on two National Forests. There are five different seed mixes that will be flown onto the fires and a lot of straw mulch will be flown onto parts of two of them. These types of projects are done to slow down erosion on the burned area and to speed up the recovery of the vegetation. When these treatments are done the recovery is cut back from five to seven years to two or three years.

134.11 TONS OF STRAW---JUST A BIT LESS THAN HALF OF WHAT IS NEEDED FOR THIS PARTICULAR SITE.

THE VIEW FROM MY OFFICE TODAY.

I LOVE DOING THESE PROJECTS!!!!!

43 YEARS---HOLY SMOKE WHERE DID THE TIME GO?

43 years ago I married an amazing woman. Together we made it through seven kids and a lot of rough times---as well as a lot of good ones. She survived me riding race horses and riding bucking bulls and a lot of other rather stupid things. But she hung in there even when times were tough. I look at these photos and can't believe how young we were. I am really happy that she hung in there with me.

Lately I have been telling people this was taken when I was in the seventh grade. Not true but it sure seems like the time has flown. In hindsight we probably did OK.

CAN'T THINK OF ANYONE I WOULD RATHER HAVE DONE THIS WITH!!!!