KatieTheKat

For a little while there, it seemed the whole fire season might just pass me by and I'd be a wildfire fighter who never fought a fire.  But it is not so anymore.

First step was to pass the physical test so I could get back to work after being away for 2 months on medical leave.  Thanks to all my training and muscle strengthening in the Occupational Rehab program (OR1), I was able to pass the test by a pretty significant margin, at 13 minutes and 14 seconds (if it had taken me longer than 14min 30sec, I might be back at OR1 now).  It certainly didn't feel easy or guaranteed while I was in the middle of the test though!  Such intense suffering I have very rarely subjected myself to.  Again I found myself thinking as I huffed back and forth over that ramp with that massive hose pack on my back that I would likely fail and would have to come up with a new plan.  Then there was the intense burn in the quads connected with the simulated charged hose drag.  It felt like I could not possibly have the power in me to do the second lap, yet somehow I succeeded.

That first day there were no fires (well actually my crew was out in the morning when I arrived and struggled through my test, but no fires for me!).  Nor did anything exciting happen on day 2.  Even though it is so hot and dry, it was feeling rather like it did back in May when we had no fires at all.  Though this time there was a barbeque at the base and also I came back on "reds" and mod standby.  Reds means that from noon until 8pm, we are expected to be at the base and ready to lift off in a helicopter within 5 minutes of getting a call.  Mod standby further means that from 6am-12midnight (24:00) we are on call and expected to be able to get in a helicopter or truck within 20 minutes of receiving a call.  So Day 2 I stayed at base over my lunch hour and an extra hour and a half beyond my normal working hours of 10:30-6:30, but otherwise it was just a normal day at base.  We did some painting.

Day 3 was yesterday.

Day 3 I woke up around 8am and puttered about my morning.  I wasn't immediately hungry and I had showered the night before (painting in coveralls is sweaty work!) and anyhow I still had lots of time before work, so I was just lazing around a little.  Well I was sorry for not having put together some breakfast sooner when I got a call at just after 8:30am - my first fire!  I grabbed some granola bars and zipped up to the base.  I was the first one there out of my crew (luckily there were already officers around and the gate was open since I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to remember the alarm code and the fact that I had a key to the base on my keyring).  Soon the rest of the Coast Whiskey  crew arrived and we loaded into the helicopter.

In the helicopter

Already we had learned that what we were headed for was likely just a campfire on the beach over on a small island across the bay from Sechelt.  Sure enough, about a 5 minute helicopter ride later, we were circling over a contained fire pit on a rocky beach as my crew leader radioed in his report.




People started to appear on the beach and when we landed and unloaded all our gear, Josh went over to talk to them.  Neil and I watched from the sidelines as they chatted and then we saw the people take buckets to the ocean in order to douse the fire.  Meanwhile our helicopter had headed back to base since the landing site wasn't very good.   Once the fire was out, we were invited over to have a seat and chat with the very friendly people who were responsible for the fire.  Turns out they happen to live in an area that ought to be in the Sechelt district fire zone (and therefore would not have had a fire ban in place).. but they are unreachable by the municipal crew (being on an island) and therefore should have been following our rules which means no fires due to a fire ban.  So they were trying to obey the fire restrictions but were misinformed.  We had a good chat and waved goodbye when our helicopter came back.  In the end, we made it back to our base just in time for our normal workday to start at 10:30am.

Not exactly much of a forest fire.

So it was sort of a good thing that in the early afternoon we got another call (sadly just before lunch, for which I was expecting to prepare myself a tasty salad).  This time it was a report of smoke on the Sea-to-Sky highway side of Anvil Island.  Back in the chopper and off we went.


We found the fire and again made some passes over it while Josh radioed in his initial report and we dropped some ticker tape out of the window to mark the location from above (somewhat unsuccessfully).  Now we had to think about the logistics... and a significant one in the case of coastal firefighting is how tides will affect your helicopter landings and gear stagings.  There was a little beach not very far from the smoke, so we figured we should be able to hike in to access the fire reasonably easily (provided it wasn't at the top of the cliff).  But we also needed water and that meant filling up our Stillwells (basically big pyramid-shaped dry bags that hold a lot of water).  And we needed to put them somewhere while we hiked in so that the helicopter could pick them up and sling them in to us.  The little beach wasn't going to last long enough, given the advancing tide.

So we flew around some more...

That little cove was our landing spot and the start of our hike in... unfortunately, it only had a beach with space for a helicopter at low tide.

We decided to land on a larger beach, pump some water into the stillwells, have the helicopter sling those and most of our gear to a non-beachfront staging area, and then have the helicopter drop us off for our hike.

Helicopter on the beach with stillwell-filling station behind and above the tide line.

Pump to move seawater up to the stillwells.  I had to keep moving it up the beach as the tide came in.

Neil and Josh admiring the view while the helicopter moved our gear to the higher staging area.

The hike was tiring but not too difficult.  We stopped to flag our path along the way.  And after not too long, we found our fire.  Luckily, it was below the cliffs.  We judged it to be about 10 by 15 metres.  There were small patches of visible flame but mostly just smoke.

Forest Fire

The next step was to assess the area for "Danger Trees" - anything leaning or burned or with broken branches that might pose a hazard to us while we worked.  There were a couple - a little one with burned out roots right in the middle of the fire and a large one with dead limbs well off to the side.  Since we didn't have a chainsaw with us and they weren't major hazards, we just decided to stay clear of them.

No chainsaw.  That was a bit of a problem.  We needed a place that the helicopter could bring our gear to, but the canopy was thick and there weren't a lot of openings.  Luckily, Neil hiked up and found us an open boulder that had a clearing above and enough space for the slingload of gear, but was not suitable for the stillwells.

A real firefighter, waiting for a helicopter to bring in her gear.

We had our helicopter pilot (Matt) bring over the gear and undertook the tricky task of transferring it closer to our fire site off the boulder and over steep and difficult terrain.  The first thing we brought down was the chainsaw, with which Josh proceeded to fall a couple of trees closer to the fire in a place where we could set up the stillwells.  Once the coast was clear (ie. trees were not being felled), Neil and I brought everything else over.  I got a nasty wasp sting in my thigh in the process.

It got really red and itchy the next day.

By this time, time was getting on.  While the helicopter went to refuel (the pilot can't carry a full tank and all our gear with summertime temperatures since he doesn't get as much lift in warmer air), we got to work in setting up the pump and some hoses to put some water on the hot spots.  We knew we didn't have a long time to spare before "grounding time", so we worked quickly.  We had about 20 minutes to lay down some water, then we quickly slung up all our gear and had it ready for Matt when he came back with the helicopter.  A quick run/hike down to the beach for a hover entry since there was no beach left at this time, and we were off with ample time to make it back to our base before dark.

Once we got back (around 8:30pm), we weren't done yet.  We still needed to tune our chainsaw, flush the salt water out of our pump, hoses, and stillwell, refill our fuel tanks, and ensure our gear was ready to go for the next morning when we agreed to meet at 7am.

I got home, exhausted, pretty hungry, sweaty, and filthy sometime close to 10pm... first day of firefighting complete!


I don't think I have the energy just now to write about the second day (that being today).  Here are some pictures instead...

There's our little cove again.  Tide was high so we had to do a hover exit onto that rocky point.

First we filled our stillwells on a nearby beach.

Fire's still burning.

Unfortunately it's impossible to tell how muddy I am.  And this is before I really started getting up to my armpits in the dirt and rocks.

Fire site... all done!