bggamers Loc: georgia

Hello, see your making yourself comfy. See your already making friends and checking out the playground hope you're not on fire all the time. Welcome hope you enjoy your time here

TexaCan Loc: Homeward Bound!

Thanks for using a word that I had never heard of! While researching on Google, I ran across a site that you could look for others that have your first name. I’ve only known of one other person that had ever heard my name. I found 5 people in the US! One was extremely interesting........a New York City Firefighter!
Not only did he/she have my first name, but also my middle initial!

I still don’t have a clue what Dilligas means, other than a gas station.....that I’ve never seen in any of our excursions!

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

Tell us what you do when there are no fires. How much of your time, what percentage, was actually dev**ed to fighting wildfires in you 35 years of work? I would like to know. We can all use more education.

Wildlandfirefighter

It probably dates me lol, back in the day when swearing in public was much less prevalent, there were a whole host on acronyms that were in common use. This one happens to mean "do I look like I give a sh*t".

Wildlandfirefighter

Well today there is a fire season somewhere in the US most of the year, it just moves from one geographic area to another, so somewhere is always burning. Most federal and state lands not only have to deal with wildfire suppression, but they do an awful lot of prescribed burning to reduce fuel loads and help with the natural cycle of nutrient recycling in the wildlands. So for instance, in Florida for example you have a combined fire season between the hot and dry months of the year where you are putting out fires, and the cooler times of the year when you can conduct prescribed burning under the proper conditions to meet land management goals and not have the fire get away. Most of the upland ecosystems in this country developed over time with either natural fire from lightning, or anthropogenic fire set by native American's as major natural forces for the past 10,000 years. So these areas developed with frequent low intensity fires that came through and cleared out the understory, but did little damage to the forests as there were no ladder fuels to get the fire from the ground up into the tree tops.

One of the problems we have today is people moved into a lot of these areas and we began putting natural fires out. Over 100 years of this policy, we have a lot of this country where the fuels have built up to a point where instead of frequent low intensity fires occurring over large area of the landscape each year, we have super fires. The number of people that have moved into what we call the "wildland urban interface" or WUI, areas in or adjacent to wildlands, has increased exponentially. Its become much more difficult and resource intensive to manage wildfires in much of the country today because of this. So by prescribed burning during the cool times of the year when you have much mellower fire behavior and can actually control the fire you can reduce those fuels and protect the homes that are located in the WUI.

So there are two local fire seasons pretty much anywhere in the country, a wildfire season, and a prescribed fire season. We also have a situation here in the US where those seasons come at different times of the year. So although you might live and work in Florida, once the summer rains start in late June or early July, the wildfire season ends, and the prescribed fire season won't begin until the fall. So over the summer months most firefighters get assigned to fires in other parts of the country that are within their wildfire season. Fire fighters are mercenaries, doesn't matter where you work or for whom, if you are in the system you can be called up and dispatched from your area to all over the country or the world, just like the military. For instance, I spent February and the start of March in 2009 in Victoria, Australia assisting them with the worst fire season they had ever seen, prior to the one that just happened this year. We had a few hundred of our hotshots over there helping out. We have mutual aid agreements with other countries for fire just as we do for the military supprt.

So when not fighting fires or doing prescribed burns, that's when you do all your planning and pr********ns for the upcoming season. You can imagine the planning and prep work to do a prescribed burn is pretty labor intensive. Then there is a ton of other prep work to do, refurbishing all your equipment after the fire season ends, preparing firelines for upcoming prescribed burns or doing WUI projects like clearing out underbrush around homes to stop fires from jumping from the ground to the trees, training to keep qualifications up etc. No, wildland fire is a bit different than structural fire, not much idle time for sure.

Over my 35 years I was on around 450 wildfires and 350 prescribed burns. Up until about 2005, the standard length of wildfire assignment on the large fires was three weeks; 21 days solid without a day off for R&R. Today it is 14, they found that the number of accidents and injuries tended to increase after 14 days as firefighter started to get fatigued. Standard fire shifts are a minimum of 12 hours per day, but if you get into a new start you might work 36 hours straight before any reinforcements can get there to help.

Anyway, sorry for the book, but you did ask.

dtucker300 Loc: Vista, CA

Thank you for making it clear. We learn something new every day. Most of what you are saying I was already aware of as I have a couple of friends who work for CalFire. And I know they put in some very long hours interspersed occasionally with periods of several days off, but nevertheless, they put in as many hours working, if not more, as anyone else. Every occupation has its own set of unique demands. Yours is no different. Nurses and doctors, for instance, work long shifts.

Don't be too upset with those members on OPP who belittled your occupation and work-load. They were generalizing from other government occupations and bureaucrats that we are all too familiar with to yours, and it wasn't fair to do that. They have a valid point. It just doesn't apply in your case. At least most people recognize the hardships and dangers that firefighters encounter. That is one of the reasons they are held in higher esteem by the public than nearly any other occupation.

I remember well the Yellowstone fires in the 1980s and the decision to let them burn naturally which was a 180-degree turn from previous strategies and policy of putting out every fire. We learned a lot from that experience and now do smarter fire control. But as you said, the big problem of WUI has increased tremendously in the past few decades. We have had our share in CA because of this and drought conditions interspersed by heavy rains that greatly increase the fuel available to burn. The history of the Los Angeles basin before people settled this area was an annual low but quick-moving grass fire that didn't harm the trees and it replenished the soil with nutrients and new growth of grass for grazing wildlife. It also helped reduce the number of vermin. One of the biggest fires that established the old policy of preventing any fires was the wildfire in Idaho over a century ago.

Wildlandfirefighter

Yep you are correct on everything you said👍. The 1910 fires were what made the country move to full suppression mode, but the WUI is continuing to expand, c*****e c****e has vastly expanded the fire season especially in mountainous areas, you folks have been living that in CA the past 20 years. Calfire is a helluva good fire organization but the challenges get more different yearly.