April 7th

Beautiful morning but it froze last night. Temp is 4C right now.
Had a good visit with the folks from Tete Jaune yesterday.
Then had company o/n and watched a movie.
 Here is the first part of my third story of my "Summer Smoke" trilogy.

SUMMER SMOKE

Part 3

  

Fire In My Belly

And to Maryann who shared

Prologue

I

 was born, grew up, got a job, made the job a career, retired and went back to work.  Sound familiar? I did what many before me did and many after me will do.  I enjoyed my job of thirty-five years, some parts more than others.  When I was growing up (age 15) I fought my first fire; a year later I had the opportunity to show grown men what a firebreak was and how to build it.  I fought fires over most of British Columbia.  I felt the anguish of losing hard fought progress and I felt the triumph of the words “we’ve started mop-up”.   When I retired from my career, I went back to what I loved the most - the excitement of being involved in fire fighting.  I did this in several ways, “grunt” work, training, supervising, and developing plans. The opportunities were throughout British Columbia once again, but I was fortunate enough to find opportunities in Greece, Mexico and Ecuador as well.

  But a time comes when the loads seem heavier, the heat is hotter and the days seem longer.  Younger, fresher people are lining up, clamoring to push you aside.  One cannot hold resentment; age and time are the enemy and in every walk we must make way for those who have followed us down our chosen paths.

  Some of us, the lucky ones, may get an extra chance.  I did!

Chapter 1 – A phone call

I

 returned from my second stint in Ecuador in 1996.  I was now 62 years of age had been away from the Forestry inner circle for eight years and I realized that the time had probably come when the phone would no longer ring with a summons to another fire related project.  For me it was a mental shrug.  I had prepared myself for this certainty and was content to really retire this time.  I did continue doing some minor training jobs in 1997, but they were routine and quite frankly there was no excitement.

  Then one day in the spring of 1998; we came home from a short trip and there was a message on the answering machine from a James Furman in Florida.  His message indicated that he had heard of my work and that he had a job I might be interested in.

  I phoned the number that had been left and was connected to some place called Jackson Guard.  I was put through to James                   Furman, the Chief Fire Protection Officer.  I asked him what Jackson Guard was and was told it was the civilian arm responsible for all forestry matters for the Eglin Airforce Base.  He went on to tell me that they were in need of someone with my background that could identify fire interface problems and develop a plan to manage them and would I be interested in submitting an application and resume?  It would be a two-year contract.

  Well, here I was, my twilight if not already here was certainly fast approaching – my ego had just been stroked! I told him I would have to give it some thought and would let him know within 24 hours.

  Maryann and I got out a map of Florida, found that the Eglin Airforce Base was located on the Florida panhandle and appeared to be situated between the towns of Niceville and Fort Walton Beach.  We talked it over, but in truth the decision had already been made!  The next day I phoned James and said I would be happy to take the job on.

  Before it could happen however, there were some hoops that had to be jumped through.  Neither the United States Airforce or Jackson Guard did the hiring; this was done by another agency, which in turn contracted the hirees’ back to the Airforce.  I was fast tracked so thanks to fax machines and email the hiring procedure was completed within the week; this included a physical exam and a drug test.

  Next I had to apply and obtain a permit under the North America Free Trade Agreement in order to work in the States.  This was a faster route than a Green Card.  Still it took almost a week which included an interview in Vancouver BC by an American Immigration Officer. 

  Finally everything was approved; we turned down an offer to be moved down with furniture and other household goods and arrived at Fort Walton Beach in early May.  We were put up at the officer’s barracks on the Eglin base until we could find our own accommodation.

  We were fortunate enough to locate a town house only a few hundred yards from the Jackson Guard office and looking out on to the airforce golf course.  Palm trees, summer weather, private swimming pool, the Gulf of Mexico 15 minutes away – what more could we want?

  

Chapter 2 – The Job Begins

I

 reported for work the morning after our arrival and was immediately introduced to all the Fire staff and then to the department heads.  It was a “déjà vu” experience as it was like returning to one of our Forest District offices, except on a minor scale.

  The job that was my assignment was, from a field perspective, fairly straightforward.  I was to identify the fire risks on and adjoining the reserve and to quantify those risks. Then I had to prepare a plan to either alleviate them where appropriate or have an attack plan where they could not be alleviated.  But there were complicating factors that impacted on the desired results. 

   Eglin Air Force Base is a 600,000 acre reserve; it contains six airfields each with a different type of air squadron or squadrons.  For instance the Eglin base was headquarters for two squadrons of fighter aircraft and one squadron of fixed wing gunships.  The Hurlburt base was headquarters for a squadron of helicopter gunships and a squadron of transport aircraft.  One base near the north perimeter of the reserve was highly classified and I never learned for sure what was based there.  Another base near the west end was reserved for naval aircraft and was used in unison with Pensacola.  Another small base was also classified but it in fact did not have any aircraft that were visible.  In addition to all these there are seven communities ranging in size from small towns to small cities.

  The bulk of the 600,000 acres is pine forest with highly flammable sub tropical shrubs and vines.   The creek and river areas contain grasses and other assorted vegetation, all highly flammable as well.

  The area is often in the path of hurricanes, lightning storms are frequent from May to November.  On top of all this, every explosive that the US military has ever planted, dropped or shot has been used on the lands of this military reserve.  Some never exploded and are still there somewhere.

  One factor that was for me a personal complication was that I was re-entering an office situation that had moved into the computer age while I had been busy traipsing about the world almost oblivious to new technology.  My job also included developing a computer program that would take my work into the 21^st century!

  A few days after I started, I discovered that Jackson Guard had a sophisticated prescribed burn program; as I had my experiences from BC in my bag of tricks, I prevailed upon James to be included in the program.  He was happy to accommodate as manpower was always at a premium.  Following quickly on that I was asked if I wished to participate in some of the wild fire control actions that were frequent during the long summer(s).  I confirmed that I would be happy to, both types of fire actions would assist me in observing and learning about fire behavior in fuels and temperatures I wasn’t familiar with.

  The one hitch to both was that I had to become qualified under the US Forest Service Red Card System.  It took me two attempts and five weeks of rigorous exercise before I made it.  Apparently I was at that time the first person in the US to qualify for the first time at age 63.

  After that I became more and more involved in both prescribed fire and wild fires, I tried to participate on every one although at times I had to say “next time”.  My primary job was the Interface Project and I often had to meet with the various community fire officials and ultimately became involved with interagency planning.

  After a few months, it was suggested to me that we should move to Florida and sign on indefinitely.  My reply?  “Well I had already had a thirty-five year career and another nine years as a private consultant, I wasn’t ready to start a new career and I was doing this because I was having fun.”

  That first summer I was on at least 25 fires, I kept a running total of the number of acres of prescribed burn I was involved in – until early December it was 58, 625 acres.

  One thing I quickly became aware of was these people knew fire, I thought that they could benefit from my experience.  I’ll give us a tie on wildfires but on prescribed burning they were head and shoulders above British Columbia and therefore Canada.  In this respect I became the student.