My First IA as Crew Leader!

I finally have some days off so I'm posting  a few blogs.

As I mentioned in my last blog, my crew leader was offered a new job in Fort Frances that she had been hoping for so she left in the middle of July. Since I did my crew leader course (SP300) this spring I was asked if I wanted to take over her position. I was a little reluctant because I really enjoy the crew boss position- I like cutting and the amount of responsibility I have. I ended up accepting the position, one of my crew members was also promoted to crew boss and we picked up a new crew member. It is definitely a different feeling, being the person in charge, having to make all the decisions. It helps that I have a strong crew of guys with me that I can rely on.
After our set of days off we were on Red Alert a few times before we finally ended up getting an IA. Red Alert means that the helicopter is packed, you are in full nomex and you are supposed to be dispatched within 5 minutes of the alarm. We were all doing jobs around the retrieval area, and I wasn't feeling confident that we'd get a fire that day. It had been a slow last few days so I was expecting another slow day.

WRONG!

When the alarm when off I swear my legs went numb... it took me a few seconds to process what was happening. Everyone in retrieval and the warehouse was wishing me good luck but I couldn't even hear them. I was so nervous! My guys were at the chopper within 2 minutes and the pilot was close behind. There is always an IC3 on the chopper along with the red alert crew (I am an IC5 which is the lowest level, the lower number means you have more experience). This was comforting, especially because it was one of my favorite tech's named Jamie. He helped me a lot, told me I was going to do fine and that I'll always remember my first IA and how awesome it is.
When we lifted off we were originally dispatched to fire in the Kenora district, but were quickly re-routed to a fire in the Red Lake district that had been called in by a fishing lodge. From 15 miles back we could see a little white smoke. The closer we got the more comfortable I started to feel. It wasn't a massive black column, I knew it was a manageable size for us. When we got overhead we were circling to check out the fire and look for a place we could land to unload. The fire was burning on an island, and there were trees all along the shoreline which made landing impossible. We noticed a boat a few miles away and flew over to them, a group of American fishermen. We flagged them down the siren on the chopper and waved them over to the shore. We dropped off our cutter and a person to help him on a shore and the boat of fishermen came over and drove them to the island. Our cutter cut enough trees that we were able to just put our nose on a little rock outcrop. The shoreline was steep so the pilot had to hold power the whole time we were unloading. We were a good 10 feet off the ground, passing our bags and equipment down to our 2 guys on the ground. Jamie (the IC3) got out with us (they always get the IC3 to get off for a crew leaders first IA to help out. Once we were on the ground the fire was easy, it was a quick hose lay to the fire and we tied off to the lake on both sides. Jamie was picked up within half an hour and left us to the fire. We set up a cool camp for the night, and got POURED on. There were massive storms all night with loud thunder and lightning. We got 12mm of rain on our fire so it was pretty quiet the next day. We worked on it all day and were picked up that night.

Jamie during our hover exit

My first IA- RED59

The Holman Crew
Shawn, Greg, Scott, Me!

It was such a great experience and I got good feedback from Jamie and the managers when I get back. They said I had a good scouting report, and I sounded confident on the radio. After the feeling came back to my legs and I realized that we were actually being dispatched I felt pretty confident. It was the perfect fire for my first IA, good size, still good fire behavior but nothing too crazy (and no blow down or waist deep swamps!) I'm back in Red Lake now with 2 days off (my 3rd day off since my July 1st). I'm tired from the whole month of July and excited for the time off. Things have been quiet the last few days because we got a lot of rain. It's supposed to be nice for the next week though so things may pick up again.
I would love to get at least one more IA before the end of the summer- put all the things I learned from the last one to use.
Other provinces are also getting hot and have been asking for crews- Quebec, Northwest Territories and Manitoba. I'd love to get an out of province tour if we stay with our low hazard here.
Taking time on these days off to figure somethings out for school in September as well. This summer has flown by I can't believe there is only one more month till I'm starting my Masters!

Fire Season 2013

It had been a pretty quiet summer for Red Lake. On July 1st we were at 12 fires. By the end of the day on July 2nd (my birthday!) we were at over 40. Probably couldn't have asked for a better birthday present than that. We were dispatched to RED013, but it was one of the lower priorities due to it's size/ fire behavior so we didn't leave until the morning of July 3rd. The plan was to drive to Bak Lake (our forward attack base) and then get flipped into the fire from there. The fire was only 3km from Bak Lake. Well, in typical MNR style we ended up waiting at Bak Lake for several hours before we were able to get into our fire. It was a VERY busy morning for helicopters because a lot of the fires were showing intense fire behavior, between putting new crews on fires and re positioning crews to safer spots they hardly set down at all. Two choppers came in to refuel while we were waiting in Bak Lake and asked us if anyone was on the fire just over the ridge because it was putting pretty good smoke. That was Red13, and we told them that we would be on it as soon as there was a free chopper.
When we finally got to the fire it was called in at 2 ha... that was short lived. The head of our fire was going pretty good when we got there and we had our helicopter stay and bucket on it while we started laying house. Eventually the buckets weren't of any help because the head was so intense, so my crew leader called air attack (water bombers) and they came and started bombing on the fire. By that time our fire now had a spot fire a couple hundred feet ahead which was the priority for the bombers. The bombers stayed on the spot fire and the head of the fire until they were out of gas and had to return back to the airport. The bombers left our fire pretty quiet, but it still had a lot of smokes on it. It ended up being about 14 ha, and the spot fire was about 2 ha. We had 3 other crews on it with us, 1 on the main fire and 2 on the spot fire.

Watching the bombers on our fire

The helipad we originally were dropped off at was a "floating" bog (I would hardly call it floating because we were up to our knees at the best places, and past our waist at the worst). After we crossed the bog to the fire we were in complete blow down, at some points over my head. And if it wasn't blow down, we were scaling the side of a rock cliff. It was a pretty crappy place for a fire, there was no easy walking and we had to do A LOT of cutting. That part I don't mind though because I love cutting- especially in blow down.

Our helipad 

The bridge we built so we didn't have to wade through the swamp to get to our helipad

Deciding what to do with all this blowdown

We stayed on fire in total for 10 days, the last 3 days my crew leader had to go to Dryden for training for her new job (resource technician position in Fort Frances) so I was left in charge of the fire. At that point the fire was pretty dead, but we had a big furry friend visit a few times. We got to our helipad one morning and a bear had eaten almost everything on it. Jerry cans of gas, 4 gallons of chainsaw bar oil, dry powder fire extinguishers, bug spray- and then all our food. The only thing it really left was a Big Turk chocolate bar... which we found funny because everyone always says how they're the worst chocolate bars but I love them- guess the bear didn't. In the midst of cleaning  up all the garbage, the bear reappeared on the ridge. We scared him away with the chainsaw but he came back 20 minutes later. The helicopter came over and scared him away for the rest of the day. He was just a little guy, probably curious about what we were doing and enticed by all the food. He came back that night and ate more bar oil and gas, we scared him away a few more times with the chainsaw and then eventually he just stopped coming back. I think the bar oil and gas may have got the best of him...
While all of this was going on we were getting more new starts and Red31 was going for multiple km runs every day. The final size of that fire was about 20 000 ha and took up most resources in the province. Bak Lake became the hub for the incident management team and logistics for the fire...