Fire Overtime and Call-outs

 

    Going through my old diaries (I am currently on 1987), I have been surprised at how many chores and activities I had to juggle.  During forest fire season, working at the BC Forest Service, I was often scheduled to be on “Stand-by” after work, and during the weekends.  This meant I had to be close at hand and contactable by home phone or mobile radio, in case a forest fire occurred and I got a “call-out” to come in to work.  I was the alternate warehouse worker, so I had to issue and sometimes deliver the needed pumps, hoses, chainsaws, “piss-tanks” ( backpack water tanks with hand pumps), mobile radios, tents, food, etc, etc. 

    The Forest Service “Cache” or warehouse was stacked full of fire fighting equipment, and I had to retrieve it from the high shelves with a forklift, making sure I included all of the other related things, like nozzles for the hoses, and fuel for the chainsaws and pumps.  I then had to record everything that was sent out, and load it into a truck.  

In 1987, while all of our waterline business was going on, I was also doing all kinds of the other things as well:  shearing my goats, splitting firewood, mowing the lawn and of course, going to work, which at the time, included some forest fires. 

    On one call-out, I was told to use the Sharron’s Forestry truck pick up 6 barrels of Turbo “B” fuel for the helicopters that were working a fire.  I did, and later after dropping the helicopter fuel off at the cache (warehouse), I was told, “Oh, you shouldn’t be driving that truck, because the tires are extremely worn.  (Something I wish I had been told before hauling all those very heavy barrels of explosive Jet fuel.)

Needing to switch trucks, I picked up Lloyd’s Forestry truck which was at a garage, where it was been sent to be fixed.   However when I picked it up, I learned that the mechanics had never gotten around to fix it.  (One of the front wheels was an inch further back than the other.)  The next day, using Lloyd’s broken truck, I had to be at the “Bulk Plant” (Industrial fuel supplier) to pick up 30 more barrels of Turbo “B” hauling a large trailer.  Fortunately, I did manage to deliver all the fuel (and myself) back to the cache in one piece.

I got called out two more times that afternoon, to get fire fighting equipment together and deliver it to the fire at Kiwa Creek, which had been  accidentally started when a slash burn (burning the debris left after logging an area) that had escaped.  I didn’t get back home until 9:30.  I earned a total of 6 days off work from all of the overtime work that I had accumulated from working on those fires.  Earning those days off came in handy while overseeing our waterline backhoe work and laying the pipe.

Although very time (and life) consuming, working forest fires was very financially lucrative.  We had to keep track of our hours of work in “Fire Overtime Diaries”, and after that particular fire “flap” my diary was checked over by Management, who had some questions about my overtime.  After they had finished examining what I had submitted, I was surprised to learn that I ended up being paid $300 more than what I had recorded in my fire diary.

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