Pennsylvania Forest Fire Wardens Association

ARTICLE REPRINT FROM: www.firefighterclosecalls.com

MayDay at Wildland Operations 

It was March 18 2009 my self and a forestry crew of 6 were on a forest fire in Jonson County KY, the fire started out small when we arrived so we saddled up and started the attack the dozer operator that was a retired forest ranger and a long friend of my family cut the dozer line to the top of the hill we were planning out the attack and he said guys something doesn't feel right im going to get off the hill you should come to myself and 2 others stated putting in our hand lines just as we were told the ranger and another crew member walked over the rock facing to start the other attack the wind started picking up and the fire was growing hotter and faster, when we got our line in I took the chainsaw and was cutting dead trees and scrubs out so the fire wouldn't jump our lines. When I looked back up all we could see is a wall of fire so we started to run as fast as we could I threw my chainsaw down the other guys had a blower and a drip torch in hand they threw their things down as well as we were deploying our fire shelters I was trying to maintain radio contact with our boss the ranger and got no reply I tried for 20 minutes or longer and got nothing when the wind died down he finally replied to my mayday he said that the fire was to large for a crew that small to even try to control and told us that the fire was up in the canopy of the trees that we needed to get off the hill as soon as possible. When we reached the trucks the dozer operator was in panic he said that he couldn't even hear what we was saying the roar of the fire was so great. As we were leaving it started to rain and I told the boss that I was actually scared for my life that day . He said son I was scared for the crew and not myself if you don't come home I don't come home when you make it home I make it home when we made it back to our standby location we were talking about what had happened that day and the office said that we didn't even need to be there because that was our 4th fire that day and we were to small of a crew to even be on fires.

LESSONS LEARNED:

The things that I leard was to not over exhaust the crew, and to listen to what the wise old owl of the crew says even know we are much younger and more energetic.

This article is a reprint from the website www.firefighterclosecalls.com

 FirefighterCloseCalls.com was an idea born from The Secret List, an independent newsletter produced since 1998 in an effort to bring forward the issues involving injury and death to firefighters... often issues that are ignored, quickly forgotten or just not talked about. Originally started as an e-mail group amongst some close friends in the fire service, it is currently received by thousands of fire service members.

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