Last Chance Fire

The Last Chance Fire. Great name for a fire. "Road trip!" exclaims Lark. And yes, in a way, many dispatches start that way. The road trip took us through southern NM and into the low desert country near Roswell NM. Let the travel pay start. Per diem. Latin for each day. English for paid meals by the Forest Service. Not only do we get meals paid for during travel. While away from our base we get paid 3$ a day to cover rent. Our rent is $3.38 a day. Leaving a whooping rent check of .38 cents a day. Its only that much because we have a common area and wood stove. The girls bunk house lacks the latter leaving them .04 cents a day to pay for rent.

Arriving late at night to a 20,000 acre fire leaves you in the dark. A type 3 fire management team leaves you even more in the dark. Located on a mix of BLM land and FS land the fire was wind driven and moving through PJ and grass. Not just wind driven. Micro burst, gale force, blow your hat off, sand in your eyes, howling, plain nasty windy. Gusts from 20-40 mph. What do the Gila Hotshots do? Get in front of the fire and burn off the nearest road. Wind, embers, fire and smoke in our faces. Ever seen the movie ground hog day? Three days of burning and holding roads. Fire can be like predicting the weather. You think you know whats going to happen. Then comes an act of god. On the third day. The winds blew strong. 5 miles of road to burn off. Gusts to 40 mph. Sustained winds at 20 mph. % Hope of keeping the fire from spreading to the knee high grass just on the other side of the two lane highway? 0%. Against all expectations the road held the whole way, late into the night. Somehow the millions of embers landing in the grass didn't catch the extremely dry fuel on fire. A day for all present to remember! Less out standing but closely related was the amount of smoke we breathed during the operation. More smoke than any of the most experienced guys could claim to have sucked down. Hours of smoke so thick you could barely see the guy 30 feet in front of you. Ironically the safety briefing was on smoke the next day. The Forest Service recommendation in smokey situations. "Move out of the smoke". Thanks FS. Like we were given that option...
Timed out after 14 days of fire. More including travel. Leaving us with 2 paid days off and some R&R. For me Java Blues in Springerville AZ. Good coffee, good food and later good beer. All on a Sunday in a Mormon town. Pictures might be up by Monday I'll be working on the editing today.