After a late start to fire season, things are finally getting going here in northern Arizona.
I spent a big chunk of last week and this past weekend out in the northeast corner of the state for the Bridge Creek Fire, a lightning-caused wildfire that was burning on one side of Navajo Mountain out near Tonalea, Ariz., along the Arizona-Utah border.
My Incident Management Team got an order for the fire Tuesday, and were out there Wednesday morning to take command of the fire.
While the fire itself was in Utah, we ended up working out of Page, Ariz.
I’ve been working as a wildfire PIO for about half a decade now (time flies!) and fire assignments have started to become a bit more routine to me, so I won’t dive too deep into a 101-style approach to my work. Those exist elsewhere on my blog if you care to read.
But, just a few photos and stories from this six-day assignment on the Arizona/ Utah border.
Operationally, this was a tricky one! Remote, mountainous fires are always difficult, because access to them is close to impossible. This one was no exception. There weren’t any paths for firefighters to hike up the mountain — which was filled with sharp cliffs and drops — so the safest thing to do was to work to suppress it from above…
…with aircraft!
This one was an air show for sure. Even though the fire was out near Tonalea, we were based out of Page due to the fact that a large number of our resources were based at the Page Municipal Airport. We held our morning briefings out at the Page airport for the first few days, and we had a chance to take a tour of one of the Super Scooper air tankers, which was sweet.
The Super Scoopers — formally called the Canadair CL-415 — are designed specifically for aerial firefighting.
They were designed in the ’90s as a variation of an existing water bomber design (the CL-215) and can scoop up to 1,600 gallons of water in one go.
There are only six Super Scoopers in use in the U.S., so it was pretty cool to see two of them on an assignment, especially because I’ve never seen one up close before.
Since, yunno, Arizona, we typically have very little use for Super Scoopers here since there aren’t many places for them to draw water from. However, since the fire was right next to Lake Powell — aka the largest dip site in the state of Arizona — I finally had a chance to see a Super Scooper in action.
Other than getting to tour some insanely cool aircraft, I also got to tour parts of the Navajo Mountain area out on the Navajo Reservation.
It was absolutely gorgeous.
I was also overwhelmed by the support the members of the Navajo Mountain community showed our team. My PIO trainee, Noah, and myself went to a Navajo Mountain Chapter House meeting to give an update on the fire, and a member of the community spoke up during the meeting to ask his community to pray for their mountain and our fire crews. It was a really touching moment and I definitely went home and cried a little bit afterward.
Community meetings are usually quite a bit more confrontational.
The Navajo Mountain community was so kind and welcoming to myself and Noah at their chapter meeting, which was an unexpected highlight. I wish we’d been able to spend more time out in Tonalea to really give that community the attention they deserved.
My assignment ended after about four or five days once my Type 3 team realized we didn’t have the capacity to fully suppress the Bridge Creek Fire in the way we’d planned on suppressing it.
Our incident leadership made the decision to order in a Complex Incident Management Team (CIMT) to assume command of the fire, since CIMTs have more bodies, more resources and more capability to work on these, well, complex incidents. Hence the name.
Once the CIMT assumed command of the fire, I stuck around for a day to help with the transition, and then demobilized and made my way back to Flagstaff.
In addition to experiencing new sights and a new community, I was also able to support a few new-to-me local businesses.
We were on per diem the entire fire, which was nice. Often times, fires are catered because we have very little time to eat, sleep and shower. And while catered fires are nice because I don’t have to put mental energy into the process of feeding myself, sometimes I get sick of burritos and feel bad about throwing large portions of food away — fire meals are made to feed firefighters, and I cannot physically eat 5,000-6,000 calories each day. Also, I don’t eat meat which sometimes makes it tricky.
So, per diem assignments are awesome because I can feed myself all the vegetables I want while exercising portion control!
My favorite dinner I picked up during my assignment was an amazing tofu stir-fry with Chinese cabbage, Brussels sprouts, noodles and a scallion ginger sauce from Sunset 89.
I also somehow ended up in a hotel room that didn’t come with a coffee maker (what the heck, Best Western Plus?!) so I ended up making several coffee shop runs during my time in Page.
I tried a few different coffee shops, but my favorite ended up being Lake Powell Espresso, which had great paninis and cold brew.
Anyway, just wanted to share a few words and photos about what I’ve been up to lately since I’ve been pretty MIA over the last few weeks!
I’ll end it with a photo of myself in my awesome green cargo pants.
See ya on the next roll!
My views are mine alone and don’t represent those of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service or the United States government. All photos were taken by me and/or credited photographer unless otherwise noted, and are property of either myself or the USDA Forest Service. You can read more on my disclosure and privacy policy page.
