Thursday night a lightening strike hit the mountains above Willard. Due to the location and conditions at the time it was decided it would be best to access it in the morning. Its mostly Forest Service area so they called in a crew and they responded up. They had air support and worked on assessing the size and doing initial attack Friday morning. Friday afternoon they were looking for Wildland Firefighters to fly up in the helicopters and be dropped off to go fight the fire. I was stuck at work :( and Chris was on call for work this weekend so neither of us could go.
Kennedy and Daddy went on a Daddy Daughter date running errands and Taco Time for lunch (one of their favorite places) On the way back they stopped where the helipad was set up in Willard and command was being ran. Dusty and Nickie were there. He let Kennedy wear his flight helmet. She LOVES helicopters and thought it was awesome.
Todd was supposed to be on call for the county this weekend and I run as his second. He got stuck running joint IC all day Saturday so Chris and I took the on call. The fire ended up being part State, part county and part city. It fell to the task of Box Elder County Fire Dept (aka Fire Marshalls office) to feed the troops. Willard Fire Dept assisted.
We set up our city hall and served them all their meals there. They brought in port a potties and they camped at the school/city park on the grass. They had all their vehicles parked at the church across the street and ran one of the command posts at the bowery at the city park. The park, church, fire station and school are all on the same block and kind of share a common area.
We kept their supplies like ice etc in our fire station, the helipad field was actually our Chiefs field and he gave them free range of all the fruit in the orchard. We kept them supplied with drinks and popsicles.
Sunday morning we cooked them breakfast. Normally when theyre on a detail like this they get boxed cold food. We decided to do one better. A group of us showed up at the fire station at 5 am to show these guys how we do it in Willard.
We cooked scrambled eggs (real eggs they were so excited) bacon, sausage, ham, pancakes and had fresh fruit. The night before they had Maddox fried chicken.
We had a crew of about 45 people but they said to plan on food for 100 because each person eats about two peoples worth of food. One of the large groups was the Weber Basin Job Corps.
After we did breakfast Todd let me come to the morning briefing with him. Then we headed over to the helipad where they wanted to fly an IC from Box Elder up with the IC from the Forest Service and have a close look at the area and what was left. Dad was just on his way home from work and wanted to fly up. He had Todd stay as the ground IC.
Helibase set up and morning crew getting ready to be flown in
Dads group was the last to be flown in. Hes the 3rd one from the front.
and off they go!
The pilot and helitac crew were awesome. They invited the kids over to check out the bird
Miles, Max and Kennedy
They told them all about the helicopter and let them play inside.
and let them wear their flight helmets
The ground crews called for them to do some more bucket drops so they hooked the bucket back up and headed up the mountain.
It must have just been the day for helicopters!
We were paged to a medical at Willard bay and ended up flying our patient out.
Chris helping load into the helicopter while we held the crowds back
On the way leaving the bay there was a 5th wheel camper that came off the truck and was blocking the entire entrance to the bay. We stopped and helped them instead of making them call a tow truck. It was a million degrees outside. Half our crew came from church of course ha
We used our equipment and jacked up the camper and got it so he could hook the truck back onto it.
Later that day we had to run shuttle of the fire fighters from partway down the mountain to their trucks. They had released the bird and they had to walk 2.5 miles down to their vehicles. We picked up part of them and shuttled them down. This is how you respond to Willard Fire Station lol! While that happened we were also page to a traffic accident...
and while we were doing that we were also cooking them dinner! They had the breakfast we made and then we had awesome sack lunches for them to take on the mountain for lunch. That night dinner was at 2000. They had been saying they were craving hamburgers so we made bacon cheeseburgers, amazing french fries (we have a deep fryer in our station ha!) fresh cold cantaloupe and watermelon and all the fixings they could imagine for their burgers. We even made them fry sauce. They were ecstatic. Way better than MRE's :) We had 35 firefighters to feed and cooked over 100 hamburgers. They ate them all. Plus we did about 6 full roaster pans of french fries. They were in love having hamburgers.
I didnt get a picture until after the rush. There are a few missing but this is a good part of the group.
and our hardworking crew outside.
We ate dinner at 9pm. Then had to clean up the city hall and station from their meals. Then we were paged to a grass fire.and then another grass fire.. and then a medical later..
We felt bad for them sleeping in the field next to our station because we were paged out a LOT during the weekend!
