Lookin to be ONE HELL of a fire season........
- Thread starter 67Dart273
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Treblig
Well-Known Member
California should be pretty bad this year too...........................their reservoir water levels are the lowest in years. It's hard to fight fire without water????
pishta
I know I'm right....
We got 24 fires A DAY in the beautiful (cough) city of LA...all homeless started! I can imagine the 101 in the valley being burned once a week. That **** doesn't care if you live in a $4.5M house or a friggin tent. Troubling thing is its all avoidable yet no one does anything about it.
mopowers
Well-Known Member
Lately, it seems every year is a bad year for fires.
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yellow rose
Overnight Sensation
Yep. I’m not feeling good about it.
inkjunkie
Well-Known Member
I seriously hope you are wrong but I suspect you are going to be right. My neighbor has a truck with a very large water tank on it along with a generator/pump. Jim, the neighbor that just passed from Pancreatic cancer and I have used it to contain a brush fire until DNR could get here. Neighbor that has the truck, well, he is battling cancer as well. I need to get in touch with him to see where he has the keys hid...and to see when the last time the truck and generator were run.
1969cuda
Well-Known Member
You would think there isn’t anything left to burn here.
Dartsun
Mopar Dude
In Oregon we’ve got alittle rain last few days much needed. My new lady I’m hanging with had a forest fire start across the street. Blue River Oregon.
Unconventional
Well-Known Member
My old partner and I were working on the asphalt plant one Saturday on top of the Bag House, think giant vacuum cleaner with 350 8"x 16' long filter bags, dust collector and also 70% of the combustion air for the aggregate burner. Nobody else on the property. "Jack, I smell something funny." We look around and 1/2 mile away a column of smoke is growing the other side of the vineyards in a big grove of Eucalyptus trees. County FD only 1 mile away no worries. "There they go, we can go back to work." he says. Or so we thought, 10 minutes later somebody is yelling "HEY! YOU UP THERE!" look over the side and the captain of the fire crew and his pickup are parked 40' below us. They wanted us to take our water truck over near the fire and transfer the water into their rig. Had to go see if the driver had left it loaded Friday to begin with, I knew where he hid his key.
Do my walk around, build up air and wander over there. Upon arrival the engineer looks over my truck, digs through his fittings and finds he has no way to connect to our truck. Only hose the truck had to offer was a 20' 1" hose we used for watering the trees
. "You know how to use this?" he says pointing at the side spray nozzle. We make some elevation adjustments on the nozzle, "Get your junk out of the way so I can move". I extinguished about half of it and about when I ran out of water reinforcements arrived. Water truck driver not happy with me Monday morning when he finds his truck empty 
.
Do my walk around, build up air and wander over there. Upon arrival the engineer looks over my truck, digs through his fittings and finds he has no way to connect to our truck. Only hose the truck had to offer was a 20' 1" hose we used for watering the trees
. "You know how to use this?" he says pointing at the side spray nozzle. We make some elevation adjustments on the nozzle, "Get your junk out of the way so I can move". I extinguished about half of it and about when I ran out of water reinforcements arrived. Water truck driver not happy with me Monday morning when he finds his truck empty .
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67Dart273
Well-Known Member
Back in the 90's when I worked for the Motorola outfit in Spokane we had what became known as "Firestorm" (1991). It spawned a HUGE job for our outfit. The various fire depts tried to loan out each other crews and equipment during firestorm, but nobody had foreseen such and the RADIOS WERE NOT COMPATIBLE. They pretty much "took over" the entire county fire radio equipment/ channels/ sites/ etc. and revamped, rechanneled, relocated some equipment, and bought some more, new and used, having the goal that someone with a handheld radio could talk on at least one fire channel anywhere in the county.
They did not quite meet that goal, but close. I spent a LOT of time reconfiguring gear at various radio sites from the N end to the S end of Spokane county
This was an incredibly complex project. For example, there were several sites where several radio receivers were listening to their respective channels, and shot their audio output down to dispatch at the pubic safety building in Spokane. These outputs went to what is called a "voter" which picks the best receiver signal and sends that to the dispatch consoles, as well as back out to wherever the repeater transmitter is located.
This audio must get from wherever the receivers are to the dispatch voter. This varies as some remote sites don't have the same facilities.
One such convoluted path, were 3 receivers up at Deer Lake MT near Deer Park WA. There was no audio link up on the mountain, no microwave, no fiber, no telco lines. So we shot them down to Deer Park via 3x dedicated radio links to a pumping station which provided an interface to fiber. The 3X receiver audio then made it's way over telco lines and fiber until reaching one of the county microwave stations. The county microwave voice/ data system operates in a big circle, so that if one station fails, some of the communications is still relayed via the "C" rather than the "O"
Now, finally, the audio(s) are relayed to dispatch via the microwave.
So for the receivers at Deer Lake, just for the 3 receivers, we imployed RF links, telco lines, fiber, and the county microwave.
Some of the transmitters were located at Mt Spokane --KXLY4 building which is a great transmitter site, and a poor receiver site, LOLOL (High power TV transmitters)
They did not quite meet that goal, but close. I spent a LOT of time reconfiguring gear at various radio sites from the N end to the S end of Spokane county
This was an incredibly complex project. For example, there were several sites where several radio receivers were listening to their respective channels, and shot their audio output down to dispatch at the pubic safety building in Spokane. These outputs went to what is called a "voter" which picks the best receiver signal and sends that to the dispatch consoles, as well as back out to wherever the repeater transmitter is located.
This audio must get from wherever the receivers are to the dispatch voter. This varies as some remote sites don't have the same facilities.
One such convoluted path, were 3 receivers up at Deer Lake MT near Deer Park WA. There was no audio link up on the mountain, no microwave, no fiber, no telco lines. So we shot them down to Deer Park via 3x dedicated radio links to a pumping station which provided an interface to fiber. The 3X receiver audio then made it's way over telco lines and fiber until reaching one of the county microwave stations. The county microwave voice/ data system operates in a big circle, so that if one station fails, some of the communications is still relayed via the "C" rather than the "O"
Now, finally, the audio(s) are relayed to dispatch via the microwave.
So for the receivers at Deer Lake, just for the 3 receivers, we imployed RF links, telco lines, fiber, and the county microwave.
Some of the transmitters were located at Mt Spokane --KXLY4 building which is a great transmitter site, and a poor receiver site, LOLOL (High power TV transmitters)
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yellow rose
Overnight Sensation
And this is why you NEED to write a book. RRR already said he’d buy a copy too.
I was on Laguna Hotshots for a couple of years and on Type 3 Engines (600 gallons, 4x4, 5 personnel) before and after. Currently an Engine Operator.
There is no harder work than the Hotshots. Hike in, fly in, drive in and work for 14 hours and back out, sleep a couple. Do it again the next day for a 14-21 day roll. Occasionally those exceptions happen where you pull a 24 hour or more shift.
Recently I read something on here where some old grumpy man said that young kids don’t want to work these days. I am currently doing a Squad Boss detail with our Type 2 hand crew (Hotshots are Type 1) and had to collect the crew members driver’s licenses to scan them in for a federal driver’s license. Under 21 licenses look different than over 21. I was amazed that about 3/4’s of them were under 21. They all have hard on’s to make the Hotshot crew next year. Some real athlete’s. A lot of men have never worked nearly as hard as these kids work. It’s always been kids that work the hardest. From the days of CCC’s to the early hotshot crews and smokejumpers to my crew.
Remember them, gents. When you’ve got some rippin *** fire in your local forest or in your county there is a bunch of hardcore 18-25 year olds out there punching in miles of fire line.
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Speaking of fires, a hell of a blaze over in Illinois at a chemical manufacturing plant. That one will burn for a few days I bet.
Rockton Chemtool fire continues burning for 2nd day; evacuation order remains in effect
Rockton Chemtool fire continues burning for 2nd day; evacuation order remains in effect
As you know, many of the Federal Wildland Firefighter workforce is seasonal. Most of a Hotshot crew is seasonal as well. Last year our guys made over 1000 hours overtime in a 6 month fire season. There is only 1040 regular hours in a 6 month season (40 hour week).
That pays for a lot of semester hours. He's doing the smart thing. The money is good but every single older career hotshot I know has, or is needing, a knee surgery or has bulging discs. And, let's not even talk about the cancer from sucking in smoke for years. We've had too many cases recently in the past couple years.
For some, the excitement and adrenaline is too great to stop doing it though. The views are amazing and I get to see some of the most beautiful country. Last June we flew in to near the top of a mountain next to Mt. Whitney and spent 10 days working a fire right at the snow line.
I did some ride along's with a city (structural) department when I got out of the military and was pursuing my Fire Science associates. What a drag! Medical aides galore! No fires. Going into Wildland Fire was the only option after experiencing that.
diymirage
HP@idle > hondaHP@redline
man that looks like so much un
maybe that will be my summer project...getting the dirtbikes road worthy again (is that a contradiction in terms?)
my boy should be close to tall enough to ride my wifes TTR125...not that hes old enough to get on ORV trails, so that kinda sucks
as for the drought
i dont get it
all last year people were crying about the water level in the great lakes being so high the rich peoples houses were falling into the lake
and now, my retention pond is at the lowest level i have EVER seen in
I think thats the point about climate change . Its going bizerk from one extreme to another .
My brother in MN says it hasnt rained in many weeks. That is odd for MN.
Our seasons are changing so much that elk are rutting later and ski season doesnt really start until Feb and resorts still have tons of snow in April/May...
My brother in MN says it hasnt rained in many weeks. That is odd for MN.
Our seasons are changing so much that elk are rutting later and ski season doesnt really start until Feb and resorts still have tons of snow in April/May...
I feel for you guys going thru a drought, just this weekend it rained so hard here, the roads turned into rivers.
The ground is just saturated with water.
The ground is just saturated with water.
DodgeLad
Skipped the Light Fandango
Looks like Shangri-La
Are you guys in the west getting ready? Create your defensible space. The time to do it is now.
We are deep into the prescribed fire season. Been clearing a bunch of acres of dead and down trees.
We are deep into the prescribed fire season. Been clearing a bunch of acres of dead and down trees.
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