During the first couple weeks of August, I had the opportunity to go to northern California as part of a multi agency type 2 firefighting crew. A crew is made of 20 people with a crew boss, assistant crew boss, and 3 squad bosses. My crew flew from Knoxville, TN to Redding, CA in the last week of July and rode by bus to Covelo, CA near the Mendocino National Forest. At that time, the Hunter Fire as it was called was only 200 acres in size.

When we arrived, we were told the terrain was very steep and difficult and that it was a fuel model 10, which means there is stuff to burn from the ground all the way to the canopy basically. One of the first things I noticed about the area was how dry it was; after living in Virginia for the summer I had become accustomed to high humidities.

Throughtout the entire 2 week assignment, the crew's basic duties were fuel reduction along control lines and mopup. This involved cutting brush one chain length(60 feet) in and moving it from the black(fire) side to the green side. Crews working at night would come through and then create a backfire to fight fire with fire. After they did this, our crew would go back through looking for hot spots that may cause trouble. We repeated this process for miles as the fire continued to grow and jump direct attack lines.

When our 14 day assignment was up, the fire had grown to 16000 acres and was nearly contained. It was an exciting experience, not to mention that I put in 270+ hours in 18 days. I definately want to go on a few more firefighting assignments and may even do it for a summer sometime. Here are some of the pictures that I have from the fire...







Patrolling the fire line...



My squad minus one...