Two Camo Princesses and our Prince Charming: Murray Hill Fire

We have had a really long two weeks. Long days and long nights. Not much sleep and just running ragged. We had a family vacation planned for this weekend and I was SO excited. I was going to relax. Sleep A LOT. Spend a lot of time at the pool and do nothing. Chris, Kennedy and KayCee (our cousin) took the camper up to East Canyon Thursday afternoon. Chris even took the day off. I work 12 hour shifts on Wed-Fri so I planned to just come home after work Thurs to do chores, water the sod etc. Then Friday after work I would head to East Canyon. Todd and Jana had their camper up there too for the same days. They both spent Thurs night up there. Todd had to work Friday too and stop at his house and do chores. We planned he would just pick me up after work Friday so we didnt have to have so many vehicles up there and we would just carpool.

I got my chores done, we headed out of town and were almost to Morgan when a grass fire came in. No biggie. We're on vacation. We're 15 min from camp. Well then they said it was the east side of the highway.. and houses were threatened.. and it was running. Ok well thats ok still. We are 40 min away. Then our Chief tells us to get our butts back home because he needs us and his arrival report has 45ft flames running east and towards homes. Son of a! We could tell from the initial traffic it was BAD. He started ordering additional resources like mad. We told him we were on our way and turned around at Morgan. We called Jana and Chris and told them we werent going to make it that we would be there in the morning (its 7pm) We had to hurry home, change our clothes and get Todds truck. We could see this from the freeway

When we got on scene additional resources were being ordered in and we were still in the initial attack phase. We were given the North East flank of the fire. Our job was to stop it from jumping the canal and stop it from getting to the house to the north. We worked it for a little bit and when we got a second we saw behind us it had jumped the canal road and was headed east. We had VERY strong winds from the north (sustained 47mph) and they started to swirl.. and then went to the east also. Its almost impossible to stop a fire with 45-50 mph winds. It just does what it wants. But we were able to at least stop it from getting to houses and push it east.

This is once we got some of the fire under control and the winds subsided some.

I was waiting for more hose to be brought down to me so I had a minute.

After about an hour or two we got an additional crew that were assigned to me. For the first hour or two it was just me and Todd. He was running my pump and taking care of the truck and I was down with the hose. I got 2 people.. and then a little while later I got 5 more.

By this point we were out of water. My crew was passed off to another person and I was on water and crew shuttle. We had people from other agencies on our crew and to drive our trucks you have to be 'on the dept for insurance purposes' so others couldnt get water for us. I took one brush truck down to fill and got some pictures and visual of the south end.

These ones were from the news just to give you

an idea

Van (our chief) Dusty (state fmo an the same cousin Dusty) and another fire guy

On the fire we had Willard, Box Elder County, Corinne, Tremonton, Garland, Brigham, Fielding, Northview, Weber Fire, Uintah and Plain City (Im hoping I didnt forget anyone!)

We worked that fire until 3am roughly. We had the houses saved. The majority of the line held on the north east end and the south end was east of the canal. We left and had to be back at 6am for briefing. We had a few people who stayed on scene for night watch. We really planned to head for camp but they said they really needed us to stay until they could get more crews in Sat afternoon. So we agreed and were back at 6am. When we got there the IAP for the day had the map and we were surprised to learn how many acres it was.

We had a bunch of BLM and Forest Service crews come in Fri night and set up at the church parking lot across from our station. By the end of the day the number of crews had doubled.

Morning briefing with the crew leaders

We headed back up to the fire and got our first good day look of it. We drove to the south end to see how far it spread. Our task was Alpha (North again)

Where Im at right here is the top of a subdivision

Since it was so hard wind driven it was a really spotty burn. A lot of fuels left in the perimeter.

We made our way up to the north end to start work for the day. They told us we would be out of there by noon so we could join our family.

Todd and our division leader discussing last nights fire behavior.

This is all we had to start the morning with. 4 people on the Alpha division. Thats why they needed us ha! But all 4 of us are Willardites

We got to work. I know it seems like I dont do much but take pictures.. but I do. Im just really good at multi tasking with my camera in one hand!

The whole objective of the next day is to really heavily secure the fire line. Put out any hot spots that can be a threat of crossing the line. A lot of heat gets stored around trees. They get so much duff around them it burns hot and retains heat. You get those hot piles and the sun comes up, humidity drops, a little wind kicks up and your fire starts right back up across the line. Its very important to get it cold all around the fire and several feet in. Its ok if things burn in the center of the fire surrounded by black because they really have no where to go.

You can see how close it came to the house.

Our hand crews arrived and so did our relief.

We set up a drafting station for everyone to refil out of the canal. We had 2 fire water tenders and one from Granite Construction the night before but they were working on trying to get manpower the next day to staff it. There was a big tour de cure race going on, plus another dirt bike event in two agencies that were assisting us and they needed their personnel too.

We ended up duct taping a rock to the draft hose to keep it up enough but in the same place. The forest service guy laughed at us but thought it was a genius idea. I told him thats how we do it in Box Elder County.