Marshal Fire

on sunday the 12th, i got up and headed to work at the usual time. sundays are usually looked forward to at work for many reasons, one of those being cause of sunday differential (extra pay for having to work sunday), another being that we usually take it easy compared to a normal day. i arrived at the station and started performing my regular daily station duties. at 0830 we did our 6 minutes for safety and were then told to gear up. this meant we were goin on a hike. our hikes are usually between 3 and five miles long and always involve goin up hill. we have a saying at work, for those who get lost or disoriented- just go up, thats always the right way. no matter how sore or tired you may be, the direction needed to be traveled seems to always be up. about half way up the hike the heat (103) is taking its toll. when we started, there were 4 people behind me, when i turned around i noticed that they were all gone. the pace and the heat were to much for them to keep up with the rest of us, so those of us that were still together, turned around and headed back down the hill to find the rest of the guys, each guy we found on the way down fell in line with the rest of us till we got to the last guy, which is when we turned back around and follow him back up the hill at his pace, with the usual words of encouragement(you suck, lets go, push it out, your gonna get us killed if we are on a fire, and many more that are prob. better if i not mention :) ) being shouted by the rest of the crew. once we make it about 3/4 of the way up, one of the squad bosses yells out "free for all to the top" and we all naturally pick up the pace in an attempt to leave the slower guys behind, and possibly improve our own position by passing up slower guys ahead. after a few minutes of this increased pace i notice that one of the saws ( guy who carries a chainsaw) is starting to gap (get left behind by the group) so i yell at the rookie in front of me to get up there and take the saw and close the gap. and like a good rookie, he does what i tell him to. shortly after, i pass the guy who was carrying the saw before the rookie took it. he is struggling to keep up, so i tell him to fall in behind me and keep up. he does so for a little while and then starts to fall out again, then i notice that he has stopped, and i can hear him puking, so i yell out for him to keep walking, he can puke while he hikes, several others in the back yell out the same. stopping is never an option no matter how short a time it might be. as we reached the last 100 yards, i look behind me to see that the puker has made up some of his lost ground, so i yell at him to keep up me all the way to the top. at this point, i hunch over and start to run ( like you see the soldiers do in all those vietnam movies) the rest of the way to the top. i pass by the rookie, who no longer has the saw(apperently someone else took it from him) he took a couple steps to try and keep up, but decided he didnt like my pace and slowed back down. about 30 yards from the top i start to pace another guy, but he hears me coming and talkes off with everything he has left to successfully keep me from passing him. whe get to the top and catch our breath, while some guys puke, and everyone drinks water. after our P.T. hike they line everyone out for what they are gonna be doin for the day. while everyone else was goin to be working at the station, me and another guy were goin with my captain and squad boss into town to pic up supplies for the station. so we piled into the six pack (crewcab truck, cause they can hold 6 guys) and headed off into town. after several hours of shopping at smart and final, home depot and autozone, we head back to the station. we got back to the station at 1334 (lunchtime) we left all of the supplies in the back of the 6 pack and went inside to join everyone for lunch. after we had been sitting down for about 10 minutes we heard the tones responding us to a fire, so we all hoped in the vehicles and started heading to the fire that was located near MT baldy ( about and hour and a half drive from where we were) after about and hour and fifteen minutes of driving, we were canceled. so we turned around and started heading back to the station. after about 30 minutes, we were responded to another fire, this one on the I-five corridor ( about and hour and a half drive past the station). so off we went. when we had made it about half way we were canceled. so we turned around and started heading back to the station. after about 10 minutes, we were responded to another fire that was in the same area as the first responce. so we jumped on the 14 s. and picked up the 210 east, after about 2 hours we got to the Marshall fire, which was in marshall canyon. this was near a golf course and some big houses. it was actually in county jurisdiction (not on the forest) but since it is a high profile area they had us respond. we unloaded, geared up and thats right, you guessed it, we hiked to our starting point and began cutting line! we started leap frogging with a con crew, and like always we cut alot of underslung line which means lots of trenching. after a couple hours, we were in a pretty hot section, when all of a sudden i felt something cold on my neck. i looked up, only to find that i couldnt see more than a couple feet. in that split second, dread set in. i realized that we had been cought in a drop (aircraft had dropped its water load on top of us), just as the realization hit, i was immediately soaked with water, almost like being in a monsoon on steriods. we kept cuttingline, and were caught in several more drops . eventually we tied in our peice of line. by this time it was dark and all that could be seen was a pile of telephone poles that burning up wind from us. there were also some unmarked barrels just up the drainage from us, so my captian told us to get out of there as fast as we could. when we got to the top, i could hear my captian telling the I.C. (incident comander) that we werent goin back in there no matter what, unless they got some one in there to take care of the hazmat first. after about 2o minutes, they released us to the fire. we hoped in the vehicles and began the long drive home. just another day at the office!


*if i use a term or something you dont understand, feel free to ask.