Friday afternoon Chris got paged out to a wildland fire in Peplin Valley. He was on call Fire Warden for the weekend. He had already been out on one fire had time to walk home, come inside and give me a kiss and the pager went off again. He said this one was a big one.
They had SEATS (planes) coming in to do drops and a bunch of resources headed in. They had EVERYONE out there.. every one but us. I am Todd's second. They kept us in town to handle the rest of the County in case anything happened.
We were paged out at 1am for a semi fire on I-15 in Howell. Kennedy had a sleep over at Grandma Tammys house. Taylor had called her and asked if she could spend the night because they were probably going to call us (Todd) out for the fire. We headed out to the semi and by the time we got there the trailer was pretty much gone. It was hauling flower and just melted a mess.
Flour and foam and metal.
We finished up that fire just before 4 am. We were set to go home and they asked us to come out and assist on the Peplin fire. We got there just before sunrise and got to watch the sun come up over part of the fire. Keep in mind this is only just a tiny finger of the fire. It started out small and by the time we got out there roughly 12 hours later it was over 8,000 acres. The fire spread like crazy. It was the same exact area we had been camping a month ago. The weeds had grown about a foot higher and had all dried out.
They let the center of the fire burn. We mostly put out the edges (to keep it from spreading) and any areas that had the possibility to make the fire run. If it stayed in the black we weren't worried.
This was the same area just a month prior
and this is the area now
You can see the point the fire started at clear at the end of the hill. It ran over several hills and all over the valleys.
They brought us out breakfast sandwhiches that morning. It was amazing. I was hungry and tired.
I even got to see my husband for a minute at morning briefing
Sean taking weather
We all get a little loopy after no sleep
Our obligatory tired dirty hot selfie
They had us stay til about 11 am. We still had to cover the rest of the county. Since Chris was on call Fire Marshall he had to stay out there all weekend until its done. Hopefully he will get to come home Sunday afternoon. Todd's job was to cover the rest of the county if something came in. We had to flag the roads on the way out. There were a lot of big wigs coming in from the State and a few other people and the roads can get confusing. We made it so a blind man could make it to the fire.
We finally got home just after 3. We were paged out on a injury accident and a grass fire afterwards. Kennedy had to spend the night at Grandma Jana and Grandpa Todds since I had to go to work the next morning and Chris was still gone. She got in her pajamas and was helping Grandpa Todd wash his fire truck.
