Scott Swanson
The Wildland Fire School and Field Training Exercises held June 20-24 at Sweet Home High School was about the same as it’s been for the last 15 years, but for a lot of trainees, who found themselves on Green Mountain Friday morning, tasting smoke and figuring out how to lay hose, it wasn’t typical.
That’s because it was real.
Paul Hiebert, fire management officer for the Sweet Home and Detroit ranger districts, said “very few schools actually have smoke involved. I’ll bet 90 percent don’t have smoke.”
He and others said most such schools mainly center on classroom instruction and most students don’t get out to taste the real thing.
That wasn’t the case Friday as 200 trainees from across western Oregon and their instructors fanned out across a recently logged patch of Cascade Timber Consulting-managed timber where instructors had started small brush fires. They went to work with hand tools and laid hoses to spray down the smouldering embers.
The five-day school also included intensive classroom instruction in basic fire behavior, communications, teamwork, leadership, fireline safety, use of engines, tools and hose lays, fire investigation and fire prevention. Students from four national forests – Willamette, Siuslaw, Umpqua and Rogue River-Siskiyou, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management and the Oregon Department of Forestry slept in tents on the Sweet Home High School athletic field and ate in the cafeteria.
It was “a really great experience,” said Zach Hayes, 23, an administrative assistant at the Siuslaw Ranger District whose family has lived in Sweet Home for two years. “Managing these burns is not something everybody gets to do even though that’s a lot of what we do in the Forest Service. You get to feel what being on a fire feels like and it gives you a more realistic sense of duty when you work for these agencies. It ties us all together.”
“It’s great,” said Jake Goodwin, 25, a fifth-year firefighter based at the Sweet Home branch of the Oregon Department of Forestry. “I’ve done other training. But as far as I can see, this is pretty extensive with respect to experience everyone is getting. There’s no real replacement for live fire.”
Students from Sweet Home included Matt and Mitch Grove, Levi Marchbanks, and Zach Hayes, who moved here with his family two years ago. The Grove brothers, along with Russell Duer, Gabe Salvage, Nate Eisenhut and Jake Goodwin, are on the fuels crew, which is in its third summer of helping local landowners reduce the fire dangers around their rural homes.
Chad Calderwood, Sweet Home ODF wildland fire supervisor, said that the wet spring has postponed the fire season by a couple of weeks but it has also created fuel conditions that are expected to be “above normal.”
Plus, he said, forecasters are expecting a hotter, drier summer than in recent years.
“It’s just going to be later,” Calderwood said. “That’s what worries us. It’s still green out there and the stuff’s still growing.”
He said it is important for people to get serious about clearing debris, brush and grasses from around their homes. The fuels crew is available to help homeowners who need it, he said.
“Once a fire gets to a house, there’s not much we can do,” Calderwood said. “(Clearing fuels) gives people a better chance to defend their home.”