Red 18

Had my first fire of the season on Wednesday- Friday! We got dispatched at 230 in the afternoon on Wednesday, from the air it looked pretty good- my crew leader scouted it as 0.1 hectares with a 1000ft pumping distance (from water to the fire) and even commented "the walk doesn't look to bad". Wroonngggg. Ended up being 3000ft through alder bushes and swamp haha. It took us a bit to get hose to the fire and I got to see some decent fire behavior! Trees torching off which I love the sound of! Once we got the fire wrapped it was easy going. We stayed 2 nights in the bush (swamp).. I had a really good time. Got to do a lot of cutting and more experience on the saw which is always a good thing. It was a lightning fire- from the day before. Our indicies were really high but we just got POURED on today!! Think that'll put us back in low hazard for a while. I've got 4 days off- thinking about going to Kenora or Winnipeg for a night or two... don't know what to do with myself for 4 days! Hoping we bounce back to high indicies quickly!

All trained up!

I've spent the last 2 weeks in classrooms, various courses. The first week was my S200 course (crew boss course) at Vedette Lake which is Fort Frances' forward attack base. It felt weird to be back there, but it's a beautiful spot for the course. We were in the sauna every night and I made it in the lake twice. (It was freeeezing). I got to see a lot of the people I have met on fires for the past 2 summers, which was nice to catch up. I really enjoyed the course as well. We went more in depth with indicies, what they mean and what they predict. More about the weather and how to read weather maps, and how to tell whats going on with the weather from looking at clouds and the wind. We also learned how to read and use a GPS (as a crew boss I carry one now), how to convert basemaps and block numbers to eastings and northings. I learned about that stuff last year with my crew leader but it was a good reminder. We also talked about our responsibilities on the fireline and on an initial attack. Crew boss is responsible mostly for nozzling the initial line and ensuring the crew members know where the escape routes and safety zones are. After the S200 I went to Dryden for Occupational Health and Safety Supervisor course... since I'm a crew boss I'm considered a supervisor so I took this course to find out all the things I could potentially be liable for. It was only a day but it felt like I was there forever. I didn't enjoy that course as much, SO boring. It's pretty hard to make Health and Safety an interesting presentation. Then Thursday and Friday of this week I was doing Standard First Aid re certification on base. That was a little better than the Occupational Health and Safety course but not by much. I'm so glad to be done with all the classroom learning. Next week we're at the forward attack base Monday to Friday. It's called Bak Lake- I haven't been there yet but I've heard it's nice. We had a bit of rain last week but our indicies are slowly climbing so maybe we'll be dispatched to a fire from there. Usually that's where they cover alerts for the Far North regions- Pikangikum, Sandy Lake, Deer Lake etc. We've had 9 fires so far, mostly in Pikangikum a few weeks ago there were about 7 in a weekend- all human caused. I've got the weekend off and it's beautiful out!! I did laundry and some errands today and might be going golfing tomorrow. Tonight is the wedding social for one of our techs and everyone on base (and probably in town) is going. I'm looking forward to that, should be a good time. Happy early mothers day to the best mom and grandma in the world! <3 Love you both. And to all the other mothers out there. You're amazing.