Well it's Friday night and in a house of 18 people (yep, I live with 17 other people) I'm the only one home. Yes, I've always been this lame, but tonight is a special night. I just got the crew turned over to me as I am the first one to go in the round of crew boss assignments. I'm now in charge of the entire crew and we just received an order to head out to the Croatan National Forest on the east coast of North Carolina. Right now the order is to help out with prescribed burning, but this time of year is also their fire season, so we will be there to help out if fires break out. However, we can also get called to fires anytime this weekend as well, which is one of the reasons I'm not joining in on the festivities.
We won't be leaving until Monday morning, but as always in this job, plans have a way of changing as soon as you think you've got them tied down. So tonight I'm working on gathering intel on the area and making sure I'm ready to go. I've made a list of questions for my supervisor, travel plans, finance code information, contact information, weather forecasts and things to remember while on assignment. In bold on top of my page reads "Food, shelter, and engaging work". That phrase sums up how to keep a hotshot happy. I've also got various notes and ideas scribbled on 4 seperate notepads and have attempted (in vain) to put them into one. I've made a list of things I need to accomplish this weekend before heading out, and things I need to buy. One of the more local guys dropped off his map depicting heli-spots on the forest, on his way out to the local Ale House. I've written down questions I intend to ask the guy in charge when we get to the Croatan.
For now I've put away all the maps, notes, the gps and my radio and will curl up in bed and continue reading "A Guide For Prescribed Fire in Southern Forests" which will hopefully enable me to better understand the assignment we're about to take on. Everything is different here. Fires burn differently, fuel (vegetation) types are different, soils are different, heck we even will see fire burn through swamps! What a sight that will be. Our crew structure is different, our vehicles are different. We travel in 6 pick-up trucks as opposed to the 2 buggies and 1 supt truck back home (and occasionally a chase truck but that may be going by the wayside). Our radio communications are slightly different. Oh, and they talk different. We don't say dinner down here, we say supper, and I was just fined another dollar tonight for saying "dinner".
Another major difference is that we'll spend more time in hotels than sleeping on the ground. This is new to me and it also presents new issues. Showers for example will be a new thing. Not that I've never showered before, I'm actually quite learned at the art of showering. However, showering on assignment is different. For example, we pack light, so my clothes will be dirty. But if I shower, I will be clean. And then I will put on dirty clothes in the morning. It's just unfathomable. But I can't just not shower because being in hotels, we will also be eating in restaurants and it is just not ok to be that dirty in public. It's different when you're just out in the woods and don't come across civilians for 14 days. I don't know, we'll see how that goes.
Staying in hotels also presents a sleep issue. For both myself and my roommate. Possibly more for my roommate. It's one thing to get up and roam around fire camp when you can't sleep, it's another to turn on a reading light in a hotel with your roommate right next to you who was sleeping. And it's harder to roam in a hotel at 2am. Less safe places to go.
Anyway, I could go on, but it's past my bedtime. Hopefully I will return with amazing news of my travels.
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