Red 39

Red 39 Been back from Red 39 for a couple days. It was a human caused fire, there was a contractor crew doing logging and one of their machines started the fire. We weren’t the first crew on the fire, we were called in 2 days later to hit 3 spot fires off the main fire. The fire was originally small but it had a sudden wind shift and was now 65 hectares. We were just coming off 2 days off and I was in the shower at 9am when I heard someone knocking on the door- it was my crew leader saying we had to be at base right now because we were going to Red 39. Within the hour we were on the chopper heading to the fire. One of my favorite parts of the job is the unpredictability. The first 3 days of the fire were good- after we hit the spot fires spot fires we had to put in a line to stop the fire from jumping a creek into some standing trees. We were working around an area of new regen trees which burn really easily. One night at 10pm we saw trees torching (on fire from bottom to top) which is unusual so late at night. Unfortunately the 3rd night we got 60+ mm of rain which put an end to the fire behaviour pretttty quickly.

We were on the fire with 4 other Red Lake crews and we were all camped together which was fun. One night I was awoken at 630am to what sounded like something stepping on my tent, and then grunting. I somehow convinced myself it wasn’t a bear, and went back to sleep. I was telling my crew leader about it in the morning, and then the other Red Lake crews came over to see if our dining tent had been ripped apart by a bear as well. It hadn’t, but it proved that it had been a bear that trampled my tent. We all went on the line that day and the bear came back during the day and mauled all of our dining tents and garbage bags. The overhead of the fire thought it’d be a good idea to switch campsites to avoid anymore bear problems. Our new camp was wicked, right on a lake that we could swim/ wash in after work. Of course, the bear found us a few days later. I don’t know what he found so interesting about me but he showed up at my tent again one night at midnight. I woke up my crew leader who had the chainsaw in the fly of his tent and we started it up and chased him away. One of the other guys we were camping with had an air (bear) horn that he fired off a couple times and we didn’t see the bear for the rest of the time. My crew ended up being the last crew on the fire so we were there for 13 days. I got to do AGA scanning one morning which meant flying the whole fire looking through heat sensor binoculars looking for hot spots. They do it for bigger fires to make sure there aren’t any hidden smokes/ hot spots. My crew leader did the main part of it but I got to look as well- it was difficult to tell the difference between actual hotspots and rocks that had absorbed heat from the day. We went at 530am before the sun was up to minimize the possibility of the AGA showing daytime heat, but it was still hard to tell the difference. When we got back from the fire we went to Okanse again and cut a helipad for the prescribed burn that I was talking about last time. It was a lot of work but I always like getting experience on the saw. I just had 2 days off which was much needed after 19 days of work. When we were at Okanse we got A LOT of rain which has knocked down our hazard again. Looks like we’ll be slow for a while, but you never know when it’ll pick up again. I’ve added some pictures of our fire/ my crew.

My crew- me, AJ (crew member), and Jack (crew leader). They're amazing!

AJ and I built this bench- our first attempt.. worked out pretty well. Having a back rest in the bush is AMAZING!!
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