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...