Wildland Firefighting - Pictures & Information

As a teenager, I would see wildland firefighters on TV and comment that it looked like a miserable job, being in the hot sun all day fighting a hot fire. I seemed to keep that attitude into my mid-20s during college when I was studying forestry. Still, a summer spent working on fire would look good on my resume. In 2002 I got a job on a DNR crew in North Bend. Although we were stationed there, we could be called anywhere in the state of Washington. These pictures are from some of our dispatches to places like Yakima, Spokane and Leavenworth. Because we were an engine crew, we were always close to our extra supplies we kept on the engine. Basically, we could carry extra Gatorade, bigger and better food and always have access to water to cool off if necessary. Because our engines were 4WD and compact, we were usually part of a strike team, a group of engines that waits for an emergency assignment. If we were lucky, we could arrive first on a fire and put it out before other resources were necessary. At other times, we would assist fire line crews as they built a fire line, if the line was near a road we could access. Then there was the dreaded mop-up where you just go around looking for hot spots to put out in areas where the fire is pretty much out. During the summer of 2002, we went to three dispatches for 2 week periods each. Back in North Bend, there was not one fire that summer, which is not that unusual for the area. It was a good experience overall, I learned a lot about fire, a bit about state funds and too much about my other two crew members.