Fighting Fires with Field Notes

Jean Pierre sent in some photos from his recent trip as part of a 20 man wildland firefighting crew sent to battle fires near Ruby, Alaska. With our Expedition Edition by his side, Jean Pierre met up with the rest of his team in Denver. From there the group flew up to Seattle, picked up their line gear, then continued on to Anchorage where they boarded smaller prop planes for the final leg into Ruby.

In Ruby, we were tasked with maintaining and improving a ”hand line“ that was setup to protect native allotments, as well as cabins that were situated South-East of the town itself. We also laid 3,000 yards of trunkline hose and 1,200 yards of nozzle hose, to aid in our mop-up operations. The inventory for the equipment used on this line was taken on yours-truly’s Field Notes. When the time came to relinquish the list, it proved to be a challenge since the Yupo paper was tear proof. Eventually we had to use a knife and now, I’m missing a leaf (and it’s counterpart in my memo book!)

On the 5th day working the Bruno Creek fires, we were dispatched to help secure another line. This one was laid down hastily to protect the Atchley homestead / cabin, some 200 miles east of the town of Ruby, in what is considered Alaskan wilderness. Meaning the only way for us to get there, was by helicopter! We were ferried in four groups of 5 with only part of our gear as the plan was to have us stay there 24 hours. On the third day, the rest of our gear was dropped in, along with various supplies, as it was clear we were staying there for the remainder of our assignment. We ended up putting in close to a mile of handline that was sixty feet wide in some spots. Our sawyers were working from one full tank to another, only stopping to fill their chainsaws with premixed gasoline and bar oil. Meanwhile, we were swamping all the wood they were cutting into the “green,” also know as the other side of the handline, in relation to where the fire is coming from.

Heading out to the 64.67890 / -154.43654 - you can see the smoke plum from the fire-head in the background. I took copious notes relating to my squad’s daily schedule... Inventorying gear, keeping count of break time vs work time, but more importantly, information about the fire weather (relative humidity, dry bulb and wet bulb temperatures, wind speed, etc.) - the latter are an indicator of the expected fire behavior in our vicinity as we had our lookout ”sling weather” - a term referring to the act of rotating both the dry and wet bulb thermometers. At one point, one of my colleagues got curious and wanted to know what kind of notebook I was writing on. When I handed him the note book, he turned to the last page and started reading from it. For some reason, we were so tired and sore from our 16 hour work day that we started laughing like a bunch of crazies. He read it out loud, with a hint of British nobility in his tone and that made it even funnier.

Much appreciation and admiration goes out to Jean Pierre and his comrades for all that they do. From photos and 60 second news clips it’s hard to grasp how much hard work, blood, and sweat goes into fighting these dangerous flames. After a brief and well-deserved break Jean Pierre is heading back out this week to take on some of the wildfires raging through Northern California.