Pinnacle Mtn. Rx Fire

We had the opportunity to burn out at Pinnacle Mountain State Park today. What a cool burn! Pinnacle is the northeastern extent of the Ouachita Mountain ridge systems across western Arkansas. I've been hiking there for years and every time thought, "Man, I wish they'd burn this!" The state park system in Arkansas has been slowly ramping up their prescribed fire program over the last couple years and this burn alone was several years in the making. Pinnacle Mtn. State Park is just west of Little Rock, so the burn would be a very public and political event and smoke management was definitely be an issue.
For all its complexity, the burn went off almost without a hitch. Over 600 acres of prescribed fire were implemented in about 4 hours. I had the opportunity to hike up to the top of the mountain with 7 other guys, then light our way down in a starburst pattern to mitigate the intensity of uphill runs. There is a trail that surrounds the base of the mountain and once all the interior igniters were clear of the unit the base was lit. It was a very cool burn and one that I'm glad I got to be a part of.
An added bonus was that we received very positive feedback from the public about the burn. Park rangers report that since the burn visitors have commented on how pleased they were that the park was burned. They appreciate the fuel reduction in their community and are interested to see the herbaceous response this spring. I am too!

TNC Arkansas' Prescribed Fire Blog

TNC Arkansas has started a blog to track all of our prescribed fire activities. When we get busy it'll probably get a bit backed up, but details of all our burns as well as photos, when available, will get posted there. Check it out and see what I've been up to since September!

http://streamrestoration.typepad.com/the_nature_conservancy_ar/

Five Months Later...

Wow! So I haven't posted anything in about 5 months and have undoubtedly lost all 5 readers that I had. Well, in that time I've moved back to Arkansas to begin work with The Nature Conservancy again, gotten married, honeymooned across New England and Quebec, and moved to a new place in Little Rock. My intentions were to keep this blog up over the winter and highlight some of my prescribed fire activities. Obviously that didn't happen. So what provoked me to start writing again you ask? The next wildfire season of course. Shortly after I finished wading through the application process I got a call from the Malheur Rappel Crew in John Day, OR and had a nice chat with them. They are a Forest Service Heli-Rappel crew on the Malheur National Forest. Two days later I interviewed for the job and got hired the next day. This is good news for several reasons: its a GS-05 level job (a step up from last season), its a rappel job on a reputable crew, and I don't have to worry about what summer job I'm going to end up with for the next couple months! Anyways, if anybody still checks this site, glad you stuck around and I'll try to get some Rx fire posts up in the near future.

Picnic Fire

Started my Engine Boss trainee detail this past Sunday with E-261 in Miles City. We got sent to a small fire in the Cave Hills of South Dakota on Tuesday afternoon. It was pretty well under control by the time we got there but we got to help out with a little night burn. Our second day on the fire we mopped up a little and let the interior burn itself out. As a result we had plenty of time to put together some log furniture. I was pretty proud of myself for ripping those boards for the table top reasonably straight! The second night on the fire we got a lot of rain, which pretty much put the rest of the fire to bed. We stayed through the burning period on the third day then headed back to Miles City. A nice little fire that kept us out on our days off! The best kind.

A Good Week

Had a pretty good week. The day we got back from the Cascade fire we spent a day on the Johnson Fire, a county assist. Then two days later I spent a very tiring day on another county assist fire SE of town, the Grimes Creek Fire. This fire had the best fire behavior I'd seen on the district all year with active crown fire runs and 2-3' flames in the grass. We landed near a county engine with only a driver and no operator, so I jumped in with him and did some pump and roll until he ran out of water. Next I directed bucket drops and cut some line around hot spots. Later I tied in with a BLM engine and did a little burnout, then suppressed the resulting spot fire. I hiked the fire edge until I met up with another BLM engine that was preparing to do a larger burn out and convinced them to let me run the burn as a Firing Boss trainee. We had two torches going until we rounded a corner and found out that another unit was pushing fire at us from the other side of the fire. Then I grabbed a torch and lit mid-slope to try and get more fire on the ground between their fire and our line. By the time it was all tied in (bottom picture) I was just about ready to drop. The fire put up an impressive plume (top picture) then settled down and just put out a lot of smoke. It ended up being about 110 ac. The helicopter headed back to Miles City and a couple of us stayed out and helped mop up until about 2300h. It was a really fun fire and I got to do just about everything on it. Three days later we spent a day and night on the East Fork fire on the Custer NF, a nice little 1 acre fire. All in all a busy week in an otherwise slow season!

Cascade Fire

Just got off the Cascade fire in Red Lodge, MT. We ended up spending 5 days on the fire. It was a new experience working on a large helibase and I learned a lot. I had the opportunity to fly around the fire a couple times while doing a recon with the Ops Sec Chief and got this video of the fire making a crown run towards one of the remote spike bases. You can't really see it in the video but there are a couple of guys running around on the ground moving gear into the safety zone. I bet they got a little hot there. I ended up spending some time on the ground at that spike camp and found some tool heads with the handles burned off so I guess they didn't get all the gear out of the way. All in all a fun fire and a good chance to make some money in an otherwise slow season.

Been on the Cascade Fire

Been on the Cascade Fire in Red Lodge Montana since Wednesday doing recon and cargo. Good hours, good experience, bad food. Oh, and I'm 26. Picture from the Red Lodge Pizza Co. Trying to get my 8 seconds on my birthday.