Getting Ready to Move On

As my day at work draws near its end, I can't help but think about the 15 days I have left in Utah. Two weeks from tomorrow I'll be driving home to Great Falls, VA. I've been thinking about home a lot the past few days. I've been thinking about how I miss my mother and how I miss Ashburn. The Ashburn Volunteer Fire & Rescue Department, of which I've been a member since December of 2002, has gone through a lot of heartship and a lot of change in the past 12 months...most of for which I've been either across the country or out of the country all together. I received an email today stating that there are talks of an engine heading down to assist with with Hurricane Gustav. I want nothing more than to be there along side whoever steps up to help staff that engine heading down but I won't be home in time. After the summer wildland fire season next year, I'm planning on taking 2 semesters off to work on my Paramedic. I'm starting to really long for next fall.

I'm waiting till I get home before I start counting down till my 4 Oct deployment date down to the ice because at 34 days it's still depressing knowing I have that long to wait before I'm back in the place I love so much. For now, I'm enjoying my last couple of weeks here as well as preparing for adventures and academics to come...

Lots of fire....for two days

Irregardless of my injury, I was called by my boss around 2030 and was told of a fire near Bryce Canyon National Park. The unfortunate thing about it was that I had to be at the air center at 0430...that's right, 4:30 in the AM. We began working on the Straight Wildfire Use Fire around 0600. The entire day was actually pretty exciting. A lot of backburning and a lot of line digging. I preferred the burning over the line digging (asides for other obvious reasons) because of my finger (I had to put a splint on because I could feel my stitches tugging when I moved my finger). Because of my disability I was primarily carrying a driptorch for most of the day setting back fires. Nightfall came and a lot of things went wrong with the incident's management. With another burn plan going on separate from ours, the sole trail that provided access (as well as egress back to our vehicles) for our entire division got burned over. While we hiked all the way around the fire (as night fell) we realized the gravity of our situation as we were walking amongst burning snags and unburned fuel below us: We managed to survive the night as well as a few hours in the morning only to head to Toquerville, UT for a running 20 acre fire. After a couple hour drive back towards Toquerville and Cedar City, we made it to the fire and were almost put to work immediately but we had to wait for a few retardant lines to be put in by the heavy tanker working our fire:




For 2 days of solid firefighting, these two fires have probably been the most fire I've seen all season...

Stitches

In the tradistion of everything that is me, I managed to start of the first houer of the firdt day of my tourr at work with a scrench (paert scewtdriver and paert wrench used on chainsaws) almost a 1/2 inch into my finger. Thinking I was ok, I managed to go 5 minutes beforw realizing the gravity of my situation and driving myself to the ER for stitches and a lovely workman's comp claim.




As minor as the injury was, I went back to work on what my doctor called "modified" duty not necessarily "light" duty. At first I didn't think it was a big of a problem than it turned out to be by the end of the day until I realized how much of a pain in the ass it was to type with a bandage that doubles the width of your finger. You'd be amazed how much you take advantage of having two index fingers...

3 weeks

Today marks exactly 3 weeks till I drive back home to DC. It's been a very long season with a lot of ups and a lot of downs. Some of the roommates I've gained and met over the past week have become very good friends of mine and I'm pretty thankful for that. Work has been very slow. We're beyond the point where we try to use busy work to keep us occupied. Our afternoons at the air center are spent talking with each other, miscellaneous tasks around the base, and the occasional impromptu nap. Friday we participated in a rather fun prescribed fire...other than that that's the only flame I've seen for a few weeks.




I should be getting my tickets for my flight to the ice any day now (after I fax in my Terms of Agreements which I've already done so twice this summer). I haven't started counting down till my deployment date yet because looking at that number would just depress me. For now, I'm just going to count down to the 15th when I drive back to Virginia. I wish I had something more exciting for you but, sadly, thats it...

Back to Work

So I now have 28 days and counting till I drive home from Utah. After a bout of food poisoning, I started working again only to leave Utah for Arizona to do a project just outside of the Grand Canyon. Although it wasn't fire, it was nice to have an easy task of building loads of fencing materials and hiking 4 miles into to receive them while our helicopter long-lined them into us. Near the (normal) end of our shift, we got dispatcehd to a fire in the Fishlake National Forest right outside of the town of Circleville, UT where we worked until 2100 hrs and made it back to the airbase around midnight only to leave again at 0600 to go back to the same fire. At least we're not sitting around doing nothing...

Tomorrow starts the beginning of my 3 day break. Because of some issues with my landlord and him possibly screwing me over, I'm going to spend most of that time talking with a lawyer(s). I'm definitely going to try to get into the park if I can. I definitely feel I'm starting to come out of the funk I was in because of the Line of Duty Deaths from the Iron Complex. I have 4 weeks left here so hopefully they'll be good ones.

A Better Day with Things to Do

Today I'm sick. Deathly sick. Sometime within the past 48 hours I contracted food poisoning (for the second time this year) and I've been paying for ever since I woke up this morning (I have been literally paying for it as well...$500 for an ER visit...). I called out from work sick today, went to the hospital, got some anti-biotics and here I sit in front of my computer. I feel I've been pretty hard on myself the past couple of weeks and its been seriously affecting my performance as a firefighter (both wildland and structural as I found) as well as my normal ability to think decisively, quickly, and clearly. I decided to take my mind off my mental and current social problems and focus on things that I need to worry about as well as the things that usually bring joy to me.

Being in Salt Lake really got me excited for the up-coming main body season at McMurdo Station as it did last year. It was cool meeting up with those I spent 5 months with last season as well as meeting the new folks coming down in September and October. The one thing that sucked about SLC was the fact that I may have failed my IFSAC test for Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting but I'll deal with that when I find out for sure.

Now that I'm back home I have other things to keep me busy when I'm not at work. My landlord is (at least I think so) trying to screw me out of my room so he can move 7 girls into the house. He tried getting me to move out by tomorrow without even looking at my lease. His assistant came over to tell me that I had to leave until I told her that my lease was not up. Considering I had asked my landlord over 5 times for a copy of my lease, she went to their office to get it only to find out that my lease is up on the 30th and he still has 7 girls he promised to house in this house. So now they're trying to move me across the street into a room I have to be out of by the 25th. They're solution for the other 5 days? Pay me $100 for "my troubles". I don't know what I'm going to do yet but at least I still have more time.

Asides from that, not much else is going on. I took a small trip to Brian Head, UT to get a pair of bindings installed on my skiis. Now I'm back at the house and resting.

I'm trying to get ready for McMurdo the best I can without being at home (DC-home). I'm planning (or at least trying) to go to Morocco shortly after my redeployment in Late February/Early March which means I may need to get a visa and a few other things to facilitate a climbing trip be it alpine/mountaineering or rock climbing. There have been a lot of changes for the United States Antarctic Program this year...one of them being the Hold-In-Christchurch option for people deploying to the ice. It use to be that you could mail something from the states directly to the CDC so that it could be held there throughout your deployment awaiting you when you arrived. Now that they've done away with that, you have to have things shipped directly to McMurdo and then you can ship it to Christchurch to be held...crazy, I know.

All in all, I'm glad to be back and I can't wait to get down to the ice. Hopefully we'll see some more fire before I drive back to the East Coast...

Depressed - Back in Cedar City

I arrived back into Cedar City at around 2200 hrs this evening only to become overwhelmed with guilt and depression. The past 10 days in SLC have been hard but fun. Hearing word of the S-61 that crashed in California on the fire my crew was on hit me pretty hard. I've kept it in the back of my mind since I first heard of the news last week. Now that I'm home, it's hit me harder than ever. I feel guilty for leaving my crew right before they had to endure such a horrible event. While I was away from California where they had been stuck for 2 weeks they were having to deal with one of the most devastating fire aviation accidents in several decades. I heartfully feel for my boss, Michael Reid. He was the first person on the scene of the crash and he had to deal with the coordination of aircraft be used for fire suppression of the crashed S-61 and medivacs. He's going through a really hard time right now and I pray for him and my crew everyday. A lot has happened since I left. All 5 of my roommates have moved out leaving me in the house alone (which is actually a good thing). My crew had to attend a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing to deal with the crash. Like I said, I feel guilty and horribly depressed for not being their to support my crew, my brothers and sisters, in their time of woe and need. I feel like I left them, bailed on them, abandoned them. What I feel bad about the most is the fact that I left to learn how to fight aircraft fires and how to rescue victims of aviation accidents only to not be there for my crew when they needed me to help them deal with the lost of a fiery crash with 9 dead. All I know is that I have 4-5 weeks left in the season and I can't wait for it to be over....

Helicopter Crash

Today was the 2nd day of our Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting training here in Salt Lake City. So far its pretty good and, as I expected, we (the firefighters of the 2008-2009 austral summer season) are bonding pretty well. Yet I can't help but think about my crew and wildland firefighting. A friend of mine and a fellow crewmember sent me a text message about a helicopter crash that occurred a couple days ago on the Iron Complex. She didn't give me many details but I checked them out that night and they definitely weren't good. According to a news statement released that night, the pilot was dead and 13 were injured. Today, reading the news, I found out that 9 were dead and 4 in critical conditions due to burns after the Sikorsky S-61 they were flying crashed and burned. It's pretty sobering to me since that could have been the very Sikorsky I could have been flying in let a lone the one which I had toured and whose crew I interacted with. I can't imagine what my crew is going through right now considering they're still on that fire. With these deaths, everything seems trivial. Everything that makes it in the news seems petty compared to that of 13 people that put their lives on the line for the sake of others without thinking twice. What can piss me off sometimes is knowing that some people skip over those articles and stories they see in the papers for something far less meaningless. Right now, I'm praying: I'm praying for the families of the 9 missing and feared dead. I praying for the 4 struggling to stay alive. I'm praying for all of the other firefighters in Northern California and especially the Iron Complex and the helibase that they are able to cope with the loss of our brothers and/or sisters. I'm praying for my crew. I'm praying that they're able to pull together and help get through this terrible ordeal and these trying times. I'm praying that their spirits are high and that they remain safe for the rest of this season. I'm praying that there are no more Line of Duty Deaths this season...wildland or structural. I pray for myself that I can return home safely to my mother and continue on with my quest in life. Please everyone stay safe...

Overcome by Live

I'm still trying to understand the significance of this song. It's a beautiful song to listen to....

Overcome
by Live

even now the world is bleedin' but feelin' just fine all numb
in our castle where we're always free to choose never free enough
to find i wish somethin' would break cuz we're runnin' out of time

and i am overcome i am overcome holy water in my lungs i am overcome

these women in the street pullin' out their hair my master's
in the yard givin' light to the unaware this plastic little place
is just a step amongst the stairs

and i am overcome i am overcome baby holy water in my lungs i am overcome

so drive me out out to that open field turn the ignition off
and spin around your help is here but i'm parked in this open space
blockin' the gates of love

i am overcome i am overcome holy water in my lungs i am overcomed

beautiful drowning this beautiful drowning this holy water
this holy water is in my lungs

and i am overcome i am overcome i am overcome i am overcome

White Ladder by David Gray

As I contemplate the balance of my current lifestyle in regards to family and even romantic relationships I can't help but think about this song and how great (or how shitty) love can sometimes feel...

White Ladder
by David Gray


White ladder
Water and wine
Forever crying
Oh time
Don't wanna feel tonight
There's no rhyme or reason to life
This sweet life

White river
Thunder and war
Forever crying
Oh no
Don't wanna feel tonight
There's no rhyme or reason to life
This sweet life

To the night another body
To the night another name
To the night another valentine
A burning flame
To the night another body
To the night another name
To the night another valentine
A burning flame

White ladder
Water and wine
Don't wanna feel tonight

California and SLC

I finally made it back from California Wednesday night. I had mixed feelings about being there. It was great to get away from Southern Utah for a little bit but there were somethings that sucked about California.

For one, we didn't do much flying because of the smoke which, by the way, was surreal. I flew from Reno, NV to Redding, CA on our second day of traveling. As we crossed over the Nevada/California border, it was like hitting a wall flying towards and through the smoke. Eventually we flew over the smoke for a while until we had to descend into Redding. As we flew, the smoke made a distinct straight line across the horizon with brown on the bottom and blue on top. Eventually we descended into Redding's airspace and landed at Redding's airport where we sat for 2 days because both our helibase and the airport were socked in with smoke. We made it to the helibase only to get sent to another airport where, again, we got socked in...this time for 6 days.

Here's where it started to get shitty. The first day it started to clear up myself, another firefighter and EMT, and one of our lead firefighters where sent to a helispot closer to the fireline to perform a medivac. Again because of the smoke trying to get us up in the air was pretty iffy. The injury, we eventually found out turned to be a pretty serious compound fracture of a femur due to a snag falling on this firefighter. Because of the trees involved and the position this firefighter was on the slope of the mountain, a US Coast Guard helicopter was called in to perform a hoist. Sadly, Andrew Palmer died while en route to a trauma center in Redding, CA. There where a lot of decisions made in regards how to evacuate Andrew out which, I believe (and this remains solely my opinion and not factual events that took place in this particular incident) lost him valuable time all the while myself and another EMT ready to go up there to help the only Paramedic working on Andrew with little equipment sat at the helispot listening to the Coast Guard ship perform the hoist only a mere 2 miles or so away. I'm not going to lie, that affected me a lot. Not so much Andrew's death but the fact that we sat their helplessly and uselessly as we listened to plan after plan get hatched and turned down. Thankfully the Coast Guard took matters upon themselves and decided to transport him anyways even though he died shortly after their departure from the area. I'm still slightly affected even though this happened last week. I guess its something I have to get use to. Being called to help someone in need and being separated from them by such a distance knowing that I won't be able to reach them or them to me is really hard to deal with. I've dealt with some incredible auto accidents with entrapments, technical rescues, and industrial rescues where the patient (or sometimes victim)was entrapped for a period of time but I've always been able to at least seeor touch the patient. As I stood there at our helispot, flight helmet on, gear in hand, staring off at the ridge I had just witnessed the Coast Guard ship disappear behind, I couldn't feel anything but anctiousness to help Andrew and the medic who was reading off his deteriorating vital signs over the radio. Somehow, throughout all of that, I felt helpless...

Within 48 hours of Andrews death the fire service experienced 3 more fatalities of wildland firefighters working on fires in California. We also experienced another medivac which, again, our helicopter never made it off the ground to. The weather, however, cleared up significantly (at least till I left) and we stayed relatively busy doing troop shuttles, recons, and cargo missions. I was hoping to make it out to the fireline once but unfortunately helibase duties called.


I now sit here in Cedar City while the rest of my crew is still working on the Iron Complex. I fly to Salt Lake City on Monday for our annual ARFF (Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting) training held at Salt Lake City Fire Department's ARFF training (ironically, SLC's ARFF training center sits on the SLC International Airport grounds where a mock crashed Boeing 737 sits right in the middle of the normal runways...this is funny because I can only imagine the look on the faces of the passengers of planes taking off and flying by this "crashed plane" putting off 40 foot flames for our training). I'm excited about this because not only do I get to reunite with friends I made on the ice last season, I get to meet some of the new firefighters coming down this year. Anyways, while my crew is still working in Cali, I'm working on the BLM engines at the fire center considering Thursday through Sunday are my normal work days. Hopefully it won't be too boring here in town...