Sean C. Morgan
Pat MacMeekin fanned flames uphill toward a house Friday morning as he demonstrated fire behavior to high school students attending Sweet Home High School’s annual fire school.
The tongues of fire moved through dried twigs arranged on a table with a pair of simulated hilltops. At the summmit of one was a small paper house. MacMeekin, who works at the Philomath office of the Oregon Department of Forestry, picked up a fan to simulate how wind can push flames in a wildfire.
The flames climbed the simulated hillside. Waiting below on the other side of the hill was a simulated town.
The table-sized simulation followed a day of fighting controlled live fires on Scott Mountain property managed by Cascade Timber Consulting.
Some 87 students from nine schools attended fire school, which began on Wednesday and ran through Friday.
The students checked in Wednesday evening at Camp Tadmor and then attended abbreviated versions of classes adult firefighters will take in June during annual fire training in the Sweet Home area for the upcoming fire season, said Forestry Club Adviser Dustin Nichol.
Oregon Department of Forestry Sweet Home Unit personnel Neal Miller, Chad Calderwood and Craig Pettinger provided the classes, taking part of the curriculum they will use in June to teach the students.
“They give them a pretty good introduction,” Nichol said.
During a field day on Thursday, crews of students worked with ODF personnel, rotating through stations that included hose lays, mop-up and hand lines. The ODF employees were called out to the first wildland fire of the season as they left at the end of field day.
The 6.3-acre fire was located at the intersection of Highway 20 and Soda Fork Road about 25 miles east of Sweet Home.
The area where they worked on fires was swampy and wet and surrounded by roadways, making it difficult for fire to spread, Nichol said.
Nichol expressed appreciation to CTC; Milt Moran, vice president; and Dave Furtwangler, president, for making land they manage for the Hill family available to the students.
It’s one thing to help teach students but another thing entirely to have a landowner or someone representing a landowner open up their property for this type of training, he said.
“They’re going way out of their way to get kids a hands-on learning activity.”
On Friday, students participated in four stations, including the fire table, compass and pacing, dirt throw and a pack test. At the fire table, they learned about fire behavior. In compass and pacing, they learned to find their way with a compass. At the dirt throw station, they simulated extinguishing fire by covering it with dirt. The pack test is a requirement for firefighters.
Providing instruction and working with students were representatives of CTC, the U.S. Forest Service, Oregon Department of Forestry, Starker Forest, Society of Forest Engineers.
It gives those organizations a chance to see the students coming up, Nichol said, and the students get a chance to see different parts of forestry.
“Things went really well,” Nichol said. “It seems like each year, it gets better and better.”
This was the best one yet in terms of the number of students participating and the weather, he said. “We’ve got them coming from one end of the state and the other,” Nichol said.
Schools included Sweet Home, Sabin, Knappa, Clatskanie, Amity, Bonanza, Tillamook, Scio and Philomath high schools.