Fire Management//Warms springs.

Blog #5 

Fire Management//Warms springs. 

A belief is a poor excuse for an experience. I’ve learned over the past few days that if you want to believe something, that’s a good place to start, but the most powerful thing is to put yourself in the experience. If you think you know what Yakama is like, go to Yakama and then you’ll know what it is like instead of assuming something that could be false. Brad Bonahue the assistant fire management officer off-fields (AFMO) spent time talking to us about fire management. He started in fight fire back in 1993 at 16 years old, second-generation firefighter. He then landed his first job at age 18 and then went to college in Eugene. He mentioned that the way that fire management is set is they have an FMO Trey Lener and three AFMO's. In addition, they have an AFMO logistics named Luther Clemen and an AFMO operations. All of them take care of their links because they are such a big organization. During the summer they have around 100 workers and then they add their camp crews which take care or camps at fires. Realistically they are the number two complexity in the United States, where Navajo is the only one that has more complexity than them because they have five times the land. Brads job it to take care of all the field projects off and on the reservation, projects with forestry and national resources. Warms springs is very special because they have 20 person hotshots crew; they are the national resource that goes anywhere in the United States and Canada. They also have a 24 person engine crew which runs 6 engines, 2 dozers, and 2 water tenders. On top of that, they have a 20 person fields crew and a 10 person national fire module crew. 

I found it interesting that the reservation is 664 thousand acres, which always changed as they purchase more places. Applying tactical and simpler processes they care for the whole reservation county and off the reservation with different projects in areas such as Mt. Hood and places of free-land. Everything shared by Brad was interesting for me. I wondered what it would be like to be in a situation where there is a massive fire and how that impacts the workers. He mentioned that his longest working shift was 46 hours straight! During times like those when a worker collapses they exchange them and throw someone else into the work and keep going. I would assume that there are a variety of tactics and training for it. It was also interesting to know what every project that they do pretty much everybody has to sign the document that says they agree with the project. An example is a Timber sale that Brad signed after he reviewed the plan and made some edit suggestions. Some things he considers while editing the plan for a Timber sale are: what are we going to do with the trees after we cut them down, are we going to burn them, scatter them around mulched? It was nice to hear that they also take into consideration the tribes opinions. The tribes also make suggestions on what goes on. A good question asked was: what causes a fire? Often people assume that most fires are caused by people, however, about 95% of the fires are caused by lightning and 5% by human cause. This is not saying that there are not some fires caused by arson. The last interesting topics were funding and prescribed fires. Brad mentioned that their every year funding is programmatic; a set amount to keep their crews. A typical salary for a firefighter is about 12-15 dollars an hour, about 20-25 thousand a year. It also depends on the fires each year. Their professional opinion about prescribed fires is that they can try and mimic what a real fire would look like as if it were a natural fire from mother nation. Native Americans used to burn it a lot in the Spring and mostly the Fall time. So when the Native Americans would go and pick huckleberries up in the mountains they would light the hills on fire to grow some more berries for the next couple years. A lot of the projects are to thin it and burn the piles out and then go back and take a look at it. During the conversation, there was a question asked about the technology used for the burning. And interestingly they use helicopter drones to drop ping pong balls with antifreeze to make a chemical reaction in about 10-15 seconds. This is helpful because they can use the drones to burn a lot more acres in less time and it also prevents workers from getting injured. 

Our second guest speaker was Bob Sjoloud. He started as a firefighter and went to school and got a degree of fire science where he learned how the fire burned and how to put it out. After 20 years of wildland, he became the fuels planner at fire management in Warms Springs where he grew up. Currently, he works as the fields planner next to Brad planning from fields treatment to training.

 Overall it was a great experience being at Fire Management campground. They were very generous to provide a camping area and showers for us that night, and the WiFi password!