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...