Jocko Lakes fire

Well, I'm back home for now. I had quite the work roll there for quite some time. I managed to work about 35 days with only 3 days off. Its nice to be back in civilization for now. I'm enjoying the modern amenities that take for granted sometimes, like your bed and toilet.

I was up on the Jocko Lakes fire working as an EMT for the last 16 days. I worked a total of 250 hours during that time. Days consisted of waking up at 5:45 every morning, stumbling up to the mess tent to get the coffee you needed so bad, then going straight to the medical tent.

For the next 2 hours we would wait for firefighters to come rambling in, most of them requiring only cold medication. I'd say about 50% of the camp had some sort of cold/snot thing going. After the morning rush, we rolled out the fire in the SUV and staged in strategic spots awaiting in would be medical emergencies. In the mean time I took pictures, read books and played John Madden 08'.

Crews would usually head into camp around 9pm, then we'd get to eat. Meals were huge, but I tried to limit my consumption, as I really wasn't burning many calories sitting in the rig all day. We closed out the day manning the medical tent until 11 pm, administering cold medication and other things that make a FF's life a little better.

Some ff's in the meadow watching a burn out operation

Nice mullet eh?




Helitanker dipping out of a local pond



We managed to breakup some of the monotony by hooking some fatty rainbows out of a local lake. Here's a FF from Phoenix with a 2 pounder



They used some CL-215 planes out of Canada on the fire. These things scoop up 2000 gallons out of the lake and drop it like retardant





An old barn



A huge burn out operation near Finley Meadows