On Monday, Engine 3673 out of Soda Springs was asked to respond to the Marsh Creek 2 fire. It was called the Marsh Creek 2 fire on account of its being right next to the Marsh Creek 1 fire that had burned the day before. Both fires were on county land, and BLM is only funded to fight fires on county land for so many hours a day. After the allotted hours on the first fire, the county asked the BLM to leave because they didn't want to pay out of their own pockets. The BLM acquiesced, the fire jumped the highway, and we got to come back the next day for a "new" fire. This time the county let us stay all day.
The first part of the day included "pump and roll" suppression techniques. This is what you see in the first photo. I drove the engine, the rookie sprayed burning brush and grass with the hose, and our engine boss used a shovel to spread dirt, mud and embers in an effort to cool the line. Later in the day we hiked some chainsaws over the hill and removed the lower limbs from some Juniper trees which were surrounded by burning duff. With the limbs removed, we could enter with shovels and pulaskis to scrape out the hot needles, moss, lichens, etc to prevent the trees from torching in the middle of the night. We were on this fire from noon to 9pm with 2 other light engines and 3 heavy engines. 1 heavy engine with its crew of 5 stayed the night on this one to make sure it didn't jump the road and give us the Marsh Creek 3 fire on Tuesday.
5 comments:
This is so neat to see what you do. Great pictures. Thank you for saving our land
It is really cool to see pictures of your work. It's crazy to see how much has burned and funny that if the county would have let you finish the job right, there wouldn't have been as much damage.
Man Mike, you look hot...and that hillside is smokin'.
Cool. It is neat to see what you do. Thanks for doing it!
Have you been to Neola??
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