 Fighting fire it is dangerous. It's gonna be dangerous. It's no matter what happens. No matter what we do in the world From the moment that you step off of a piece of equipment and you put a tool in your hand or A hose in your hand or whatever you step off that piece of equipment and you go to fight that beast It's dangerous job. People are gonna get hurt. I don't care what fire environment that you're in You're dragging a hose lay into a burning building or I'm taking a shovel and throwing some dirt on a piece of sagebrush. Our job is inherently dangerous and it's going to Always be dangerous There are risks that are gonna be taking no matter how many thousands of checklists that are thrown at us We still have a job to do we still have to go out there and cut the brush and Drag the hose and put the fire out and it's still got to be done that way Regardless if you have a hundred checklists or not, it's still going to be dangerous Open your mind. I use that as a stressful stressful situation You know another stressful situation in my life was I was in the first Gulf War And if you ever hear an air raid siren goes off and makes your asshole slam shut I'm gonna let you know and the first night there right siren went off and oh my god That's incoming to kill me. That's all I thought and I looked through that tunnel like this and All 20 of us in the same tent did we saw the same tunnel and all we could think about was that bunker right there Well in the process of us all trying to rush into the bunker my best friend got trampled Because everybody's trying to go out the same door He got trampled got his arm broken about 14 different places and crushed all of the fingers on his hands and That point in my life along with this Tarkio. I just said whoa Life-changing it's life-changing situations for me those two situations life-changing Wow, you need to open your eyes when you get stressed And I've made myself Made myself when I start getting to I know myself at that point I just know because of my tube I've also attributed to two situations of Tarkio and in the Gulf War Hey, you need to calm down dude. I need to open your eyes and not let this happen again All of a sudden we all felt the wind and I distinctly remember all of us look Hey, look was this wind coming up and it was up Canyon was coming right at us It was like let me turn a light switch on at that point in that spot fire came active I can still vividly remember Sustained crown run fire just sheeting across the top of this mountain We'll have the column lifted. All right, and we started looking around and down drainage of us We watched it basically start and In a minute two minutes max that thing was five acres and it would just spreading out through the pine litter Actively as it it spread out through the pine litter litter right behind the flaming front the trees were torching up And it was starting to you know get sustained group torching and it was going We had spots all around us. Hey, let's go. I remember Division saying let's go. I remember op sand. Let's go We bug out there's fire behind us now It's moving as we made that turn. I got a call from Robert Barrett and he asked me said Mike Where you at? I said I'm below the alternate escape route. I'm at that big first hairpin turn And he said well, you can't come to the upper safety zone because I just drove through fire to get here He said I advised that you use the alternate escape route So we got to that intersection of the switchback roads and the alternate escape route and we waited on our dozer again as We're sitting at this intersection. If you will we're facing south The dozer operator standing by my door I'm sitting in the passenger seat John's driving and I'm looking up the windshield in the direction I'm looking at the map and seeing where this alternate escape route goes and here's division Delta and There's the nuclear column coming off of division Delta also and There's a nuclear column behind us. So I said, you know, we both looked at each of John Hubbard And I looked at each other and said whoa, wait a minute. Wait a minute Never been on this don't know what it's like air attack couldn't see in there too smoky. So I Call operations. I said, do we have anybody that is on that alternate escape route that can tell me What it's like if is it compromised because there's a big column coming off of Delta. I Told friend that he was definitely cut off. He's And I said, hey, you remember, you know, you got the alternate escape route copy that We'd identified it ahead of time. You know where it's at. Yep. Got it and Heading there. He's heading there Minutes later Division Gets word that that might be compromised Relays that to those are boss friend. He's not happy I'm not going down an escape route that might be compromised as 20 miles of of windy, you know dirt road and I'm building a safety zone. I'm like, you got a spot. Yep Guys we got a spot. We looked that on the way up. I'm like go for it. That was it Kind of a sinking feeling couple of sinking feelings for me Feeling pretty responsible for these guys We got a bomber safety zone. This is a good one. Okay. I trusted the guy. He's pretty darn sharp, you know, and And he did he made a good quick decision there There was no hesitation. He'd already scoped out of place on his own And I went right to it So our primary up the canyon where the spot fire was that's gone our secondary to the safety route The same just on that I punched in the date Extra two days before was done and our alternates done. Come on dick step into it. Let's get to a Spot that I just I'd found myself and John Hubbard had identified the day before a parking area Is what I really looked at it for because I was thinking about the fire each day jumping each our line And so we're gonna start stacking engines in here one-way switchback road Let's make a little parking area if we need to and it was there's a good spot just to park engines there without doing any work When we determined that we couldn't take the alternate escape route that we were pickled if you will we really weren't worried at that point but John and I said I looked at him I say right there at the ninth point at the first switch back so we take that dozer and I'll knock that line of trees out push it off the side and That's gonna make a huge safety zone and he looked at me. I can see his eyes. Yeah. Yeah, that is a good spot Let's go the fire was coming up canyon at us But it was still going up Canyon, but it was burning up drainage It would shoot up the drainage Crest over the little ridge line back down It'd get established in the drainage bottom and it'd shoot back up and it's kind of what it was doing It'd make just roll a little bit and then make a big run uphill I can remember hearing it get established in that bottom of that drainage in the modi Creek It just everything changed. It just came to life. It's all of its energy focused Right in the bottom of that drainage and it came to life another huge column come up. It just went massive Donna and I talked about burning. We talked about hey, let's get some fire going on the ground here We dismissed that really quick after with that We're not gonna light at that poor. We're stand the edge of safety zone We talked our thoughts where if we don't want to lighting fire down here get something really hot and ripping and Draw that fire that's on top of us down So we dismissed that we don't know. Let's not mess with anything on that. Let's just let's just see We got a good safety zone. We reassured ourselves. We've got a good safety zone. It's gonna be cool we moved the pickup around to right where the front of the dozer and Where the pickup was parked before we had we had all of our gear in the back of our truck every bit of thing everything I own for fighting fire That I went away on single resource stuff was my red bag my tent my cell phone my camera Metals the underwear everything everything sleeping everything. We threw it out of the back Cordura burns We How many hundreds of times I've heard people yeah, my bag burned up in the back of the truck And that mindset got us save the equipment Throw everything out. So we threw everything with about the back of the pickup We threw it out on the ground at far back edge of the safety zone Then we pulled the pickup right in front of the dozer blade so the ass of the dozer was the rear of the door just excuse me was that pointing to the south if you will and We pulled them together like this and we kind of flitted around and we started getting buffers of fire coming in on us little stuff Little stuff animals running through the safety zone. We had a couple bears run through we had a deer run through We had some raccoons saucekunk run through They're all coming out of that riparian out of that exclusions on and that Namoti Creek and He was getting closer. It was getting closer We're getting I was getting a little nervous. I know everybody was too. It was getting hot The winds were howling they were they're coming in on us as fire was eating It was close enough to know we were feeling we weren't feeling the end drafts anymore from it We were just feeling the erratic fire winds off of it and it living in a convicted column of fuel We were within the winds of a convicted column And all division got on a ran it says well, I'm gonna order up a type 3 helicopter to fly in and land you I think you'd land them there and I did told I told them no you're not bringing a type 3 in here Because now we're gonna have an aircraft mishap. I Mean let's My thoughts where you got the smoke you got I've second-guessed myself about bringing in a helicopter and again The smoke the fire conditions the where do I put the equipment if I if I to pull the equipment to get out of the way To get that type 3 helicopter land on an uneven surface I don't know if I could have brought a type 3 in there in those conditions We all kind of pulled into the front of the dozer all three of us did and we pulled all our gear out I had pulled my I a pack out thrown it down We'd taken a case of water put it right there Throwing our packs right against the the edge of the the dozer blade And it was loud. I remember it was extremely loud at that point Because that fire that was below us was just thunder and it was jet aircraft on the on the tarmac screaming I remember seeing it just a big wall of fire hit the edge of our safety zone. I Ducked down and I looked up that just it's sheeted the sheet of fire just cascaded Over the top of this and can still hear it to this day But boy right after that that radiant heat hit us It was just like yeah, oh and it was You know to the point of it wasn't really really wasn't Skin-serene hot if that I don't know what skin serene hot is but I can imagine But it was hot like you're doing a burnout and in the middle of the day you're burning out and oh I got to get away from that and you just back off a little bit But we had nowhere to back off to and and then the winds just really hit us at that point I was actually one to say hey, it's time. Let's deploy our shelters. It was getting hot I was on my knees behind the dozer blade and my back was just really really hot like that hot I can't get away from if I was out in on the line or something. I would just Turn my body and walk away from it. I couldn't I had nowhere to go I was pinned to the ground. I was on my hands and easing that my back was just arched up I remember and it was hot. It was getting real warm. I get I remember to the point. I could smell my Nomex I've been doing this long enough now. I know when I smelled my Nomex starting to heat up You can smell when it's warm and that's where I was at I was warm and At that point well three deployed our shelters in the shelter. I remember it getting hot Like like sauna hot if you will remember the air temperature getting it just sauna hot remember I got into it and Thinking of you know what you do now train thinking of training Make sure all my ground flaps were down in the new shelters It's we can't not have a ground flap down there Just it's almost like encapsulated if you will kind of compared to the old ones got in it and Spread out and we were talking yelling but we were yelling back and forth each other We were right next to laying on top of each other but yet it was loud and It was starting to get some smoke and I was talking I'm really smoky in here real smoky and I think I think John said I'm not I'm not too smoky. It's not too bad or something and I couldn't figure out why I was so smoky and I For some reason I did this and I looked and there were embers that were blowing Underneath the wind was howling it would embers were blowing in underneath my ground flap So I was actually putting embers out that were inside That's what was creating all the smoke inside my shelter was burning chunks of wood that were just smoldering in there and just filling it up and I remember putting those out and shooting them to the side and Late in the shelter did the old actually Put the face down in the dirt I was breathing like this for a few because of the smoke that was in there and Not wanting to lift it up, you know thinking about all that stuff and I remember my back getting hot again My back in my right shoulder really is what it was so what I had to do to accommodate that I had to get on my left side and actually had to pull my Feet in in the kind of the semi fetal position and I had to pop the shelter off my back with my elbow and My elbow would get hot and I'd pull it down the shelter would lay back on me and I'd pop it back up and That that actually seemed like an eternity. It really did it seemed like a long time, but it wasn't remember John saying Hey the trucks burning I peaked I looked and I was laying with my back to the truck So I was I didn't want to move because I had that shelter that kept laying down on top of me and was getting hot and John says I can look at it. The the the rear tires are burning on it. They're like, oh, no I'm thinking I'm not in a good spot right here John got up. He said I'm gonna get up and go see if I can put it out real quick and he says my shelter I Watch the heat and he says no, I've already had my shut lift your flap up it gets cooler What I reached up when I lifted the flap of the edge of the shelter I just lived up about that far and just felt the cooler air come in versus that Just hot air inside that shelter popped it open I was like, oh and John then came right back. He says it's not it's not the truck. It's our gear. I Was like, oh the gear really got that point. I wasn't caring about the gear he laid down and laid back down and crawled back in it and Pass some water bottles back and forth to each other drank some water. That was refreshing inside the shelter for sure Some cool water. I had my canteen with me again training But what I had done is I'd kicked that sucker down when I got in there It's not perfect world by any means. I'd kicked it down. It was at my feet and I couldn't get it And when I did get it I pulled up to me. It was hotter than Hades John and I both got up left the shelter draped over us a couple times Got a big buff at a win that standlarks again did this snap start snap off The winds were still heavy there laid back down. I remember rocks rolling through this through the deployment site the biggest lessons learned for me really is is weather Directly related to the fuels Five days a red flag warning It took five days of single-digit rhs for those thousand hours of fuels to react on a fifth day It's to come to it five days. That's a big big big lessons learned for me I pulled the trigger a little bit earlier for me too now. So my trigger points have moved and People ask me all the time. Well, how do you move your trigger points and it's all situation Dependent and I pulled the trigger earlier a couple of times now None of them have really nothing ever happened, but I still pull the trigger I still got out of the way of something two ridges instead of one ridge if you will another big lesson has learned for me is I'm the thought of equipment versus Versus the safety I'm gonna write off a piece of equipment again Plain and simple That chunk of iron can be replaced with mind my situation that I have Right now under my belt With the tarkey over and over on my belt if I'm ever around and have crazy situation I'll deal with the write-off of equipment I'll front that battle whatever comes to me Honestly will fire shelter is just another tool of PPE to be utilized And don't let the stigma of oh my god the fire shelter come out that that's honest You know, that's a lessons learned to don't be afraid if you feel that you need To use that fire shelter because you have nothing else no other avenues to that's the last last use I use the last use fire last use As chunk of PPE on my back and it worked it worked like it was supposed to work. I'm here to talk about it