Today my engine went to help out with a prescribed burn at the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge (US Fish & Wildlife Service) near Willows, CA. The refuge is just east of the Mendocino NF and is dispatched by the forests ECC, so we frequently share resources.
As we wrapped things up, the local fire department requested mutual aid for a fire about 10 miles north of our burn. As we were already there and this new fire threatened to burn onto the refuge we were invited to come along as an additional refuge engine.
The burn was quite interesting to me being quite different from the forest burns I'm used to. For one thing we were burning stuff surrounded by water, so instead of walking, we rode in an air boat. The firing method was the same though, drip torch plus an occasional bit of prop wash from the boat to get in going when it was reluctant to burn.
The water was an excellent fire line, so the engines were primarily there just in case something spotted outside the planned burn unit. There was one section though that used more traditional hand ignition and engine support.
Now I'm sure some of you in the south see this all the time, but this was new to me. I kept expecting to see alligators and cottonmouths (neither being native to California).
The refuge fire chief ended up being our division for the fire. He brought us to the head of the fire while other resources were working the flanks. Our plan was to follow the levies and find a spot where we could pinch the fire between the multiple bodies of standing water and burn out in front of the fire.
02-26-2014, 02:29 AM (This post was last modified: 02-26-2014, 02:30 AM by Aaronw.)
Plan B worked, by this time one of the local engines made it around to us, and was able to secure an anchor, we tied in with them bringing fire back along a levy road supported by a mobile attack from our engine.
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