HAPPINESS IS...

I am happy that my daughter put this photo she took of the last sunset of 2013 where  I could steal it.  This was one of the prettiest sunsets I have ever seen---AND---it just happened to be out the rear view mirror as we went out to dinner last night and  proves without a doubt that---HAPPINESS IS 2013 IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR!!!!  This was a beautiful sight and was gone in less than five minutes.

2013 TRADITIONAL SHOOTING OF THE CHRISTMAS BALLS

This is a photo of me finishing off the last of the Christmas balls at our traditional visit to the rifle range.  It is always fun for me to take the kids and grand kids that want to go out and shoot the glass balls I spend much of the year looking for at yard sales and at DI since they make very few of them anymore.  If you look close at the photo you can see the parachute cord strung across the plywood.  There are a couple of pieces of balls left that I shot before we pulled out.  I also shot the screw holding the parachute cord in placed on the right side.  That made a couple of participants smile.  Me and my youngest son.

THIS HAS TURNED INTO A FUN TRADITION THAT EVERYONE LOOKS FORWARD TO.

WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE????

It has been a while since I had anything to say on here.  Not because I didn't have anything to say, but mainly because I just didn't take the time to sit down and take care of it.  A lot has happened since I was on here last. I had a very good fire season, at least for me, and ended the season with four fires.  The Black Forest in Colorado I already wrote about.  About a month after the Black Forest assignment I went to Boise, Idaho on a small fire assignment to help them prepare for and fight any smaller fires that exceeded the initial attack.   This was a fun assignment on standby and we were utilized on a small (about 1,000 acres) fire that we were able to catch on the second day.  The small team I was with thought this was a worthwhile assignment as the fire we were assigned would likely have grown to a large incident had we not been right there and ready to support the small team that was assigned.  There were six of us on this assignment and it was interesting that there was nearly 200 years of experience on the team.  All of us had served together elsewhere and we enjoyed getting back together again.

In the last two weeks of August I headed north to Ennis, Montana and the Eureka fire.  This was a relatively small fire (nearly 6500 acres) that was managed by a Type 3 (smallest organized team size) that mainly came from the local resource management agencies.  I was really the only member that came into the incident from a long distance.  I had worked with many of the team members elsewhere on fires and got reacquainted with a co-worker I had worked with on the Philipsburg District from 1980 to 1981 during my assignment on that district.  It was a great assignment and like the other fires this year, shortly after I arrived it rained and gave us the opportunity to catch it.  I spent eleven days on this fire.  I had hopes of seeing one of my previous Forest Supervisors that is stationed near this fire but we just couldn't work it out.  I felt bad about that but the times that were available really didn't fit into either of our schedules.

In the middle of September I headed to California and the Rim fire that had burned most of the summer and was finally controlled during my assignment at 256,569 acres.  Like the others we got a little bit of rain that helped us catch it and I only spent 12 days on this one.  I went out as Supply Unit Leader on this assignment and spent most of my time there sending materials and supplies back to the Supply Depot at North Zone. While I was assigned to this incident it was managed by a Type 2 team from California.  Previous to our assignment there had been four other Type 1 (the highest qualified) teams assigned.  I am looking forward to getting the notification of the fire loss on this one in the spring after everything is cleaned and put away.  Even though the management of the fire changed hands a lot of times I felt like we easily met the loss tolerance allowed.  If not the last man standing (ME) gets to take the hit for not managing the supplies properly.  I still think we will be good with what we sent back.

Between and after these assignments I worked at my new job inspecting a new 345 kV power line they are constructing through this area.  I have shared a job with a guy I worked with for many years at the Forest Service.  On this assignment I have had the privilege of working with many of the finest heavy equipment operators in the world.  It has and continues to be a good assignment and I am learning a lot of new things while working on it.  I am happy that I accepted the offer from the company I work for to go to work for them.

PONDERING

For the past few days I have been thinking about the loss of the Granite Mountain Hotshots.  These were an elite bunch of firefighters that have lots of training and experience in dealing with wildland fire.  In order to be a hotshot crew they have to have lots of leadership training in the key positions and lots of experience fighting the worst kinds of wildland fire.

Through this process I have recounted many days in my life when I was fighting fire.  I did the fire line thing for sixteen years and got qualified to be a Division Supervisor, this position is responsible for a segment of the fire and is responsible for all of the resources assigned to that part and for the safety of all of them.  I worked hard to become an Operations Chief, this positron is responsible for all of the resources and firefighters on the entire fire.  

I tried very hard to get there but was finally told that there were way too many full time fire people ahead of me for the Operations Chief job and that if I wanted to continue fighting fire I needed to find another occupation.  The Incident Commander (IC) that told me this was one of the fire people who I respected the most---then and now.  I was crushed---he knew it---so he went way out of his way to help me stay in the game.  

I was brought into a fire where he was the IC as a field observer.  This position gets out on the fire and tries to figure out what the fire is going to do and how best to attack it.  The person reports back to the Plans Chief and the Plans Chief and Operations Chief determine where the next days resources will be assigned and what their assignments will be. 

The IC met me at Check-In, which was unusual then and unheard of today.  He told me he didn't need another Field Observer on the fire but he really needed a Supply Unit Leader.  I laughed and said I don't know one thing about being a Supply Unit Leader.  He asked me how long I had fought fire.  I told him sixteen years.  He said that was long enough to know what was needed and he wanted me to go into the Supply Unit on the fire and get trained up.  I went over to Supply, where two long term Supply Unit Leaders that I was well acquainted with were working.  It didn't take me long to figure out that I had been fast tracked by these two Supply Unity Leaders, the two Logistics Chiefs and the IC to get qualified.  

This was a fairly large fire in southern Idaho and it was burning like crazy.  It ended up being 3500 acres, a large fire for the times.  I spent the first two days working as an Ordering Manager, the person that orders everything for the incident.  The next two days I was the Receiving and Distribution Manager, the person that gets all the materials and gets them to where they are supposed to go.  There was nothing in either of these jobs that was confusing to me because I had worked for my Father in a grocery store and did these two jobs there all the time when I was growing up.  The fifth day I was put in the position of a Supply Unit Leader Trainee.  This was a new experience to me because I had never supervised anyone to do these jobs.  I had a lot of line experience in crew supervision and my two trainers told me it was the same thing I just needed to make the assignments and make sure they got done.  I worked as a trainee the rest of the fire and when the team went home they left me there as the Supply Unit Leader for the team that took it over to close it out.

The next year the IC picked me as one of the two Supply Unit Leaders assigned to his team.  I look at the training I got compared to the training required today to be qualified for this position and I am amazed that I got through it so easily.  Ever since this first fire I have felt that I personally could do more for the fire suppression effort in Supply than anywhere else on the fire.  I loved the job and stayed at it for twelve years.  I worked with some of the most gifted people in the world while I was doing this job.  Everyone on every fire knew me because they depended on me to get what they needed.  I knew most of their faces but never got all of their names down.  This was a period of my life where I got to train up a grundle of new Supply Unit Leaders---I had a ball and loved them all.

This takes me through the first 28 years of fire---there are 16 more to come someday.  

LOVED THIS PERIOD OF MY FIRE CAREER.  HAD SOME CLOSE CALLS AND LEARNED A LOT---TRULY LOVE THE PEOPLE OF FIRE!!!!! 

BLACK FOREST---BURNT FOREST---'TIS THE SAME

 PACKIN' TO LEAVE

 SUPPLY AT IT'S BEST

 NEW CATERER SET UP AND READY TO SERVE

 DAY 5 BREAKFAST AT 5:00

 ALL PACKED AND READY TO GO

 STORM COMIN' IN---AGAIN

 THE IC---CUT 'N' PASTE IS ALWAYS FUN

 MUSINIA PEAK ON THE WAY HOME

 MY CARD FROM A LITTLE 3 YEAR OLD GIRL

MY FIRE TENT ON THE LAWN ALL SET UP---MY GRAND DAUGHTER AND HER MOTHER SLEPT IN IT THE FIRST NIGHT I WAS HOME!!!  ;-)

I was gone from the 12th of June until the 22nd of June on the 12,480 acre Black Forest fire right out of Colorado Springs.  They made me fly out to the fire but I rode home with a man from Tropic that was on the fire and was allowed to drive.  I was really glad he was wiling to let me ride with him because it feels better to me and it saves a lot of money for a one way ticket.

I was pretty excited to go because I thought I was going to be assisting a woman I have been fire friends with for over 25 years.  When I got there I found out she was in London and I was going to have the Logistics Section alone.  That doesn't mean all alone as I had two facilities unit leaders and a trainee, two supply unit leaders, two ground support unit leaders, one communications unit leader and a communications tech., and a security manager that worked for me.  There were also some equipment managers, base camp managers,  radio operators and an incident communications manager and two camp crews in the section.  After a couple of days an additional logistics section chief showed up to help me run the section.

This was the fire that had the heaviest law enforcement presence of any fire I have ever been on.  We had 120 National Guard M.P.'s doing the road blocks and at the height of the fire we had 100 police officers (deputy Sheriff's and City Police) that were working the fire.  The reason for such a large law enforcement group is that last year looters got into a fire area near this one and stole a lot of personal belongings of the people that were evacuated.  It is really sad to me that this is necessary but I am glad we had that kiond of support.  I am not aware of any looting that took place.

On the third day we had a logistics chief's worst nightmare occur.  The caterer we had in place had a lot of equipment fail and was unable to provide timely meals for the firefighters so he requested he be replaced.  This made it so we had to provide Dinner, Breakfast and lunches without a caterer on site.  This is a very difficult thing to do with over 850 firefighters in camp.  We got authorized to purchase the meals from a conglomerate of local restaurants but we had to serve the meals ourselves.  It turned out good when all of the Operations Section and the IC showed up and served.  That was a nice touch and the firefighters all thought that was pretty neat.  We made it through the three meals without having to serve MRE's so things turned out OK and the new caterer was able to get set up and operate well for the duration of the incident.

This fire had the greatest monetary loss of structures of any Colorado fire.  We lost a few more than 500 structures but it could have just as easily been 2,000.  We lucked out and got  a tiny bit of rain on the third and fourth days (0.03 inches each day) which was just enough so that we could safely take out the head of the fire and secure the flanks.

PUTTING THIS FIRE OUT WAS AN AWESOME WIN IN ANYBODY'S BOOK!!!

WORKIN' AWAY

 Getting set to pick up some 30 feet of culvert to put in a draw crossing.

 Moving the culvert to the site.

 Starting the drop into the draw where the culvert will be placed---D-8 Cat constructing road and the pad.

Water truck and D-6 Cat constructing road in the opposite direction.

Here are a few photos of what is going on with the power line construction.  Right now they are building roads to access the structures and pads for them to be built on.  These photos show what was going on Friday afternoon where they were installing a culvert in the road to one of the towers.

The job is finally starting to move along fairly well.  It isn't as much fun to do this as it is to do rehabilitation on fires because things do not move as fast.  There are lots of times when changes need to be made but they have to go through an approval process where in the rehab world you have to make the call on the spot and go on.  This is a little different for me because of what I did in the job I retired from.  There I was the decision maker that approved any changes---here I sometimes don't even get to make a recommendation.

A big plus on this job is that I am getting to know a lot of really good equipment operators.  I really respect the good operators because when I was trying to operate Cats and back hoes I never got to where I could really do a good job with them.

LIFE IS STARTING TO GET HECTIC!!!     

MEMORIAL DAY 2013

This is a photo of Jake Garn speaking at the dedication of the Veterans Memorial in town today.  It is an awesome memorial and although I did not grow up in this area I know a lot of people that have their names etched into the granite blocks.  It was a good thing to go to this dedication, if no more than just to be thankful that we are free because of many peoples sacrifices.

The honor guard reminded me of several times assisting with those honors at a funeral.  I thought long and hard today about the three that died in the plane crash on B Hill many years ago.  That was a tremendous loss to two communities.  RIP Dave, Steve, and Randy.