When one thinks about fighting a forest fire, they usually imagine ash smeared exhausted fire fighters out among smoking and flaming trees, but it didn’t take me long working for the BC Forest Service to find out that there was a huge amount of unseen work hidden in the background, that has to be done to enable those frontline fire fighters to be able to do their work. Here is one of my experiences from 1994 working as the acting warehouse man for a fire.
On September 20th, I experienced one of those extra long days of Forest Service work, because of a forest fire. It was a Tuesday, and I had spent my regular hours at the office making maps on the computer. After work, almost immediately after getting home, I got a “Call Out”.
There had been a lightening strike burning on the slopes of Dawson Creek at the lower end of our Forest District, far down Kinbasket Lake, south of Valemount. That fire had flared up, and the Initial Attack Crew of fire fighters in Valemount had been sent out to deal with it.
I was called out to drive to Valemount to “man” the Initial Attack Cache (supply shed) in their absence. I was tired and not very enthusiastic about having to drive all the way to Valemount after my day at work, but as the designated warehouse person on fire standby, I had no choice.
I first drove to the McBride Forest Service Office and got a Forestry pick up and then made the one hour drive to get to the Valemount cache. Once I got there, I ended up just just sitting alone at the cache until 8:30 with no activity to act on, and nothing to do. I then got a radio call to leave the IA Cache and drive back to the McBride Forestry Office.
When I finally got back to Office, I was tasked with loading two pickup trucks with fire fighting equipment (pumps, hoses, polaskis, hand tank pumps, tents, sleeping bags, chainsaws, fuel, etc). After loading the trucks, I finally got home at 11:30. Although I was very tired, I didn’t sleep very well knowing that I had to get up at 3:50 AM, so I could drive one of those pickups full of fire fighting equipment to Valemount by 5:00, and once there: open and run the Initial Attack Cache.
During that next day, I again endured long periods of time with nothing to do, manning the cache. Then I got a radio call telling me to drive the truck and trailer back to McBride to pick up more equipment. Once I had all of the equipment loaded up in McBride, I drove the supplies back to Valemount, where I handed the truck, trailer, and equipment over to a fire fighter who drove it down the far end of the lake to the “Daw” Fire.
I remained at the IA Cache twiddling my thumbs until a freight truck arrived with 103 forty-five gallon barrels of Turbo-B jet fuel.
The truck driver and I had to manhandle all of those bulky heavy barrels in the dark. The jet fuel was needed for helicopters fighting the fire. Once all of the fuel barrels were unloaded and neatly lined up on the ground, I had to wait around for a ride back to McBride. I finally got home to McBride at 12:30 AM.
Mercifully, that next morning, I was able to sleep until my regular wake up time at 6:52 AM. However, once I got to the office, instead of going to my computer workstation to do maps, I was told to go back to Valemount to pick up the Forestry truck and trailer. That short sounding instruction morphed into me staying at the IA Cache all day until 5:00.
I ended up having to empty out all of the fire supplies stored in the IA Cache and send it all to the Daw Fire. It was a large fire and after they had received all of what I had sent, they still asked for more equipment.
The generator at the Fire Camp seized up which meant they had to get another one from the Prince George Regional Office which was more than four hours away. Luckily, I was not the one that had to go get it.
I got back home at 6:00 and herded the goats, then drew my weekly cartoon for the newspaper before finally getting in bed at 10.
Take a look at my paintings: davidmarchant2.ca