 In this module, we're going to look at the fire environment in Alaska. The 2004 fire season was the worst fire season they've had on record, and the numbers generated tell the story. The 6.6 million acres they burnt beat the previous record set in 1957 by over a million and a half acres. This was their most costly fire season in terms of suppression costs, and they hosted the largest number of Lower 48 hotshot crews and incident management teams than ever before. The first time engines from the Lower 48 were shipped up there and used on wildfires. It was the warmest summer they've had on record, and Fairbanks was smoked in for 42 days versus the old record of 19. They found themselves hosting a large number of visiting firefighters, and a lot of preconceived notions and myths were destroyed this year, as many people for the first time learned what it was really like to fight fire in Alaska. Things are different up there, just as they're different in various parts of the Lower 48, and it's our responsibility to prepare ourselves the best we can whenever we take an out-of-region assignment. So to get some first-hand knowledge of what it's like to fight fire in Alaska, let's talk to some firefighters who've made a career out of it. So I'd have to say that in Alaska the truth is that the Lower 48 fuel models don't accurately represent how the Blacks produce and the fuel models burn in Alaska. We have a tendency to use the CFF DRS, which is a Canadian force-fired danger-radian system. We have two fuel types for Black Spruce. One is called C2 and C1, and C2 is a closed Black Spruce, thicker lowland. C1 is an upland Black Spruce, which would be similar to this with sparse fuels and vegetation, but those sparse fuels and vegetation have a lot of calomagrostis in them, and there's a lot of dead and down underneath them that they grow in a clump. They're called button grasses, so they grow from the center out and drop, so the head is really nice and green, but actually dry. The heith on those will go anywhere from ankle heith to hip-high on them, and so you're talking about a bale of hay standing up when it's hip-high, just stacked next to each other, so the only thing the Canadian model doesn't do a real good job of is spotting, but Black Spruce doesn't typically spot that far because it doesn't have the elevation, the heat all rises in it. But what we do like about Black Spruce is plume-dominated fires, because actually when we get plume-dominated fires, we can actually manipulate them, and when they're laid down or at an angle or anything like that, it's hard to do it. That means large-scale burning and taking the risk to burn it, which we use aerial firing, PSD machine, as one of our primary initial attack tools besides the jumpers, notch shots and a hell attack and engines and everything. That's always a tool we have that we use it for. And large-scale, by large scale, you know this year we run a fuel sector where we turn on the machine in 26 miles, and this year we've personally gone through 203 bucks of PSD balls doing backfires and firing and forward firings as we like to call them on the work. A typical deployment for a crew from the lower 40 into Alaska would be to land in a port city, and usually they'd get Alaska briefing, which is unfortunate, but it doesn't happen until they arrive, and it'd be nice if that happened prior to departure from their home unit. But they'd get Alaska briefing, and that will try and get them somewhat acclimated to what's going to happen, and then a lot of times that will be their last contact with any real civil civilization. They could end up in any one of numerous remote areas where there's no store, no facilities. The contact between most crews and most fires down south is a daily contact, if not multiple times in a day talking to the crews and actually physically seeing them and talking to them. In Alaska we have so much distance and stuff like that that I might not see one of these crews for four or five days, and we might talk to them on the radio multiple times a day, but we don't have contact. And contact is one of the big things that people have a hard time with. If they're not looking in your eyes when they're talking to you, they don't understand that you're not getting it. There's some places where we're stretched out on this highway right now for about 112 miles one way, and going north we're stretched out for another 80. So the area is very large, and me actually physically seeing everybody every day is not going to happen. Even if we had multiple branches on this, it wouldn't happen. But contact is a big one. The other one I would say is be prepared to live like you were camping. And the toughest part of that is that you have wildlife out here that's an issue, you have helicopter time that's an issue, and you have the probability that you might get fogged in or smoked in for a couple of days and not get seen. So prepare your camps. We say at least have three days of food and water on the ground at all times to maintain that. The other one is that you have to live in a camp with 20 other people and get along with them because you're not going to get away from them. There's no opportunity to walk into fire camp and talk to other people. There's no opportunity to go down and use a telephone or take a shower. You're stuck in a setting like this, and it may have a lake and it may not or stream or water that you're going to end up fighting fire with guys for 21 days or two, 14 period days now. We eat a lot of rats, a lot of MREs, and usually every four, three or four days we get a fresh food box orders. It's got a bunch of canned food and pasta and rice and steaks and hot dogs. So I mean it's just like you're camping up here. That's what's really unique about fighting up in Alaska. It's not the catered food that you'll get down south. No bag lunches. It's usually rats and the fresh food boxes that you get resupplied before days or so. I guess you would, the fresh food boxes is hygiene because there's no washing facilities down here. You guys have to build your own washing facilities out of key containers and use them in stream and soap and water because everybody's got to use that food and your knives and forks and stuff like that. You know, everybody has to dip out of the same peanut butter jar. So that's a huge issue is hygiene and locating your, you know, your outhouse further away from your camp than you normally would because it's going to be a cooking kitchen area also. So those are a couple of considerations for that when you do your lay out in your camp and where you're going to have your bathroom facilities and your eating facilities and the tarp. Bring a good tent. If you have to put visqueen over your tent, it's not a tent. So make the effort and purchase a good tent. That's a huge issue with us right now. We're still getting people coming to Alaska without tents, period. And then we still get people coming with those pop-up tents. And, you know, that's not a tent for Alaska standards. Your tent is your survival. If it gets fogged in or raining, you know, that's your survival shelter. So spend the money on it. You know, we always use that theory, you know, a $10 helmet for a $10 head. So if you think you're only worth 100 bucks, you know, buy a $100 tent that's not any good, but spend a little more if you want to count on the survival. Rain doesn't put out fire in Alaska. Like I said, that moss layer is really deep. So you get heat gets under there. You get a ton of rain. That heat is still protected. You know, it's not getting to that heat. And after a couple of days, it dries out. And it'll start to build up again. Just when you think it's over, it's not. Rain gear is a huge issue. People not bringing rain gear, proper rain gear. I mean, we get rain on these fires for four or five days and people think we're deem-opin' them. And we don't. We stay on them and four or five days from then it'll be up and running again. So you're going to be working in rain and walking through this kind of conditions, you're going to get wet. So be prepared for an extended stay in the wilderness while you're working. Bugs, there's a bunch. There's definitely, it's known at mosquitoes. You also have white socks, horse flies. And they're relentless. They're everywhere. I mean, you can't get away from them. We dealt with some up in Venotai as far as horse flies. And they would just bite you nonstop. Bite right through your Nomex, do everything you have. Mosquitoes weren't as bad this year. I think just because of the part of being so dry as well. But then I think that's where the white socks stepped up. And they're just as bad. It's not worse. I mean, they bite and you'll swell right up. I've jumped in many streams and lakes around here to wash off. And, you know, you jump in with your clothes on, soap those up, take them off and soap yourself up and dry them off. So, you know, I typically, I'm old school. I, you know, two pair of fire clothes and they've been in my pack this year all year. And I think I've washed them twice. And that's just because I haven't had a chance to get through them rain and walking in the river and hosing them down when I can. But yeah, you're cycling through a lot of stuff. If you're planning on changing clothes every day, you're going to max out your weight in socks. But, you know, you can wash stuff out. You know, feet's a big one too. Good boots. I couldn't tell you preference on good boots. I buy a certain brand because they've always done me good. But taking care of your feet is certainly one of the better issues. We have a lot of water in your fight and fire and standing water a lot of the time. So, you know, real proper care of it. Good socks and good foot powder and taking care of your feet. It's a long way to medical attention sometimes. You have to rely on the people with you. You know, being 30 days in some boots that are not any good doesn't do anybody good. You make your living on your feet. If you're not on them, you're not making your living. So, spending money on good boots. We wear bean boots, which are a rubber bottom and a leather upper top, which has been improved for Alaska for even flying and working in. I wear those. But, you know, I typically step in water over my boots so it doesn't really matter. I'd like some of that drain as well. So, I wear leather boots all year around. Same boots I wear down south. I wear up here. The Alaskan teams typically are small. Usually we have 11 core individuals and then we build with whatever we can get, either pulled from within the resources on scene there or maybe ordering from other locations. And teams oftentimes come up here. They may bring, you know, anywhere from 30 to 60 individuals. And you have to make a choice right away who you're going to send in to the incident. So, you have to divide up what you think are essentials and that's usually your logistical folks to get things rolling that way along with operations folks to make sure you don't lose out in transition as far as your suppression tactics go out there. And, you know, the team size, the 30, 60-plus individuals, they become very unwieldy here as far as air operations go and logistically moving them and then all the support mechanisms that go along with them. And then teams, again, they are used to motels and a lot of things that are available in the lower 48 and here you may end up in just some wide open location next to a river or something like that and so your camp building becomes an essential skill out there. You know, a lot of it goes back to kind of old school stuff. You may have to hand draw a map initially and getting good maps out to the field has become an issue. A lot of times nowadays we are so self-reliant on GIS that that's what people are tied into and operations folks in the field may have to wait two, three days for a really good map and that's really unacceptable. So going back to the topo map, hand drawing a map out there and getting that out in the field may be your best technology to start with. And interagency cooperation here is huge. You know, a lot of times we don't care what organization you're associated with. We're looking for a yellow shirt really and it may come in the form of smoke jumpers, type 1 crews, type 2 crews. Fire departments are big here. We have volunteer fire departments paid volunteer combinations and just paid alone and getting those people to get into your organization too is essential and you have to maybe teach them what you want as far as what your expectations are out there and they in turn may be able to teach you some local knowledge as far as what you can utilize from around the area there. You may be stuck in a small village, a small town, something like that and again incorporating the local knowledge there. People know what's out there, what equipment you may be able to use. They may be able to get you transportation. They may be able to let you use a local school. They can certainly bring a lot to your organization and it's essential that you incorporate as much as you can out there. And now to give you the perspective from a lower 48 firefighter on assignment in Alaska, let's go to the Gardner Fire, which was part of the Taylor Complex. Chuck Russell is a firefighter from Wyoming and was assigned as a task force leader. My name is Chuck Russell and I was assigned to the Gardner Creek Fire as a task force leader on Division Gulf. After we saw which direction the fire was going I called the division supervisor and let him know that it was going to bump the Alaskan Canadian Highway at some point. And this is Alaska Canadian Highway right here and the Canadian border is about 20 miles that direction and then Northway is back to the west of us and we're about 12 to 15 miles from here. The main objectives for this assignment was to keep the fire north of the Alkan Highway. We didn't want fire on the other side of the road. There's too much line to go direct. We just, we didn't have enough and the idea was to try and stay one step ahead of the fire and kind of hurt in the right direction by doing an indirect attack, burning out on the road. And that's the problem out here Alaska there's really not very many natural barriers and Alaska Canadian Highway was the best thing that we had. We just made some strips right along the Alaska Canadian Highway. Started around this bend, the backside of the hardwoods through the black spruce and there's a mixture of white spruce in there. We dropped it down the backside of this and then we ended up cleaning up the hardwoods later on the lee side of the slope. We dropped down into the tussocks and we got in here this black spruce tussock mix it really started to burn a lot better and our burn was being more effective and this is where the main portion of the fire was going to hit was in this bottom. So we just continued to progress. We dropped down to one burner because it was awful hard to walk in this tussocks. I don't know if you've ever walked in before but when I first came up here in a briefing they said it's like walking on a grease bowling ball on a water bed fairly well, fairly good analogy in my opinion. We continued to burn just off the highway and we tied it back into the highway before we got into the heavier fuels and our burnout met well with the flaming front and we just had a few spots that we had to pick up and the fire was pretty much tied in. I think one of the main things different from the lower 48 fighting fire and of course there's a lot of different fuel types in the lower 48 that are vastly different amongst themselves but the main thing that I've noticed up here is that you end up having to do a lot more with a lot less. You're given a division that's 27 miles long or 20 miles long or you've got a 200,000 acre fire and that's your chunk of country that's unheard of in the lower 48. As far as crews coming up here there's a big difference as far as our direct attack goes. There is no such thing as in most places up here as putting a scrape down or putting a line down you're beating it out with spruce bows and cutting saw line and bringing pumps and hose in later if you have water sources. Don't plan on getting anywhere fast. To look at a map and to go across country I can travel a mile back home even in pretty rugged terrain in a pretty big hurry. This is flat right through here where we're standing and these tusks just make travel very difficult, very slow and you need to take that into consideration you can look across the train and say well that's flat I can boog through that that's not the case. There are no good natural barriers that I've seen I mean you'll get a lake and you'll get a slew in certain areas and that's about all you have you've got just seas of black spruce and tusks and everywhere you look there's fuel on the ground so that's a... I've always had a problem coming up here and trying to find a good safety zone and a good escape route and a lot of times what you've got to do is just find a good piece of black to tie into and that's your best bet. The other thing is it was hard for me to look at the big picture once I came up here right at first I'd walk a dozer line and it ends I'd walk a hand line and it just ends nothing was tied in that I could see and you start looking at the big picture and a lot of what we were doing and what previous teams before I got here were trying to accomplish was steering this in the direction that they wanted it to had they knew they couldn't get around the whole thing so they punched in a dozer line and it ended and that was the area they were going to burn off of and let it do its thing once it blew on past and I'm not really used to that I'm used to tying everything in and it's all tidy and neat when we're done You always got to keep control of yourself and that's the most important thing is all of us are given assignments by overhead and we need to look at what we're supposed to accomplish what the goals and objectives are and weigh those with the risks and whether we can accomplish them or not in the time given us and once we say yeah we're going to go for it and we can do this then we need to start being accountable for ourselves and it doesn't matter if you're firefighter type 2 or if you're the division suit safety starts with ourselves first and the training we need to pay attention to and we need to have that situational awareness and we need to know what's going on at all times I know a lot of times when I first start out in my career you get your head in the dirt and you know that you're supposed to dig line but you've never looked out for the last half hour 45 minutes as to what's going on around you you're counting on somebody else but we always need to be aware of what's going on around us and take it all in if we can and that's the best thing that I can say is that this area that the snags come down it burns through 15 minutes later I can stand in one spot in a black spruce or a white spruce patch and here 15, 20 snakes come down the root system is not very deep at all and if you don't have your head up and you whits about you you can get conked down the head Despite the record number of people we had in Alaska this year and the extreme fire behavior they experienced fire line safety remained the number one priority commendably they only suffered a few minor injuries and zero fatalities throughout the season which is typical of Alaska's exceptional safety record In the recent past many Alaskan firefighters have had the opportunity to take out of region assignments down south but this year provided opportunities for a number of first timers to Alaska it's our hope that whenever you take a fire assignment to an area that you haven't been before that you prepare yourself the best you can before you arrive the internet has proven to be a very valuable tool in this regard but for now let's get into our groups and discuss in more detail what a person should do to get ready for an assignment outside their local unit