Finally! A fire call! The call came in about 4pm on Thursday. For a few days it had been pretty quiet around here and there wasn’t any lightning forecast for the day so it came as a surprise. The fire was near Price, UT. As it turned out it was a lightning strike from several days prior, it just had been smoldering around until some wind came up and started to fan the flames. This fire was pretty straight forward… we jumped it, put line around it and mopped up until late that night. The next day we mopped up some more with the help of a few helicopter drops, and had the thing cold by 4pm, 24hrs after we got the call, now that’s efficient firefighting. That’s the reason that we can justify our program, our job. Had they taken extra time to have crews of people walk up to the fire from the nearest road, the fire could have been too large to contain right away and may have burned down into the community below. The most critical thing is getting to the fire as quickly as possible and attack it while it is as small as possible. When the fire was out we got a helicopter ride to the Price airport and waited for our plane to come pick us up and fly us back to Spanish Fork. Easy as that.
flying to the fire
Perfect fire! Small but not too small, good jump spot and beautiful scenery!
Once we hit the ground we were very busy. We had to assemble our tools and hustle to cut saw line, dig fire line and try to contain the fire quickly because the wind was blowing and causing the fire to really take off. After several hours we were able to get the flames knocked down and the fire contained but unfortunately in the chaos I didn’t get the opportunity to take any photos. So, the ones I got were from the next day during the “mop-up” phase. They aren’t as glorious as pics with fire in them but it gives you an idea of what it was like…
The fire slowed it's progress once it hit the aspen
It ended being about 2.5 acres
Helicopter bucket drop- helps out a lot getting 50 gallons at a time
Hi Bjorn-
I didn’t see a way to contact you, so I hope leaving a message for you in the comments is okay.
My name is Brett McKay and I run a website called The Art of Manliness (www.artofmanliness.com). We’re a men’s interest site that’s dedicated to helping men become better husbands, fathers, and just all around good men. The blog has over 70,000 daily subscribers and receives over 2 million page views a month.
We have a bi-weekly series called “So You Want My Job” where we interview men in desirable jobs about what it’s really like to have that job:
http://artofmanliness.com/category/so-you-want-my-job/
We’d love to have you take part in the series. A lot of men are very intrigued with the world of smoke jumpers. We’d send you the questions and you’d write up the answers.
Thanks for the consideration-
Brett McKay