Curlew Fire

Thursday afternoon we were just coming back from an accident on the freeway. Spencer was supposed to be on call but had asked Todd if he could cover from 1700-1900. We said no biggie we didnt have any plans. Well exactly 1700 hours a page came in for a fire on Wildcat mountain. We headed to that one. Dad was already in Snowville (aprox 30 min away) and Wildcat is 1.5 hours away for us. So he got on scene and set up command on Wildcat. He noticed there was another fire burning pretty much right next to it. He assigned us that fire and we got more resources responding.  This is the view of Wildcat and Curlew from Hwy 30. 

We made our way through the fields and got on scene. We had just over a 60 acre fire headed fast to the east. We got the east side stopped and the winds pushed to the west hard.

 We were able to get a circle around the fire all while watching Wildcat in the background making sure it didnt make a push for us across the flat. 

 Dusty got on scene and made me the IC5 trainee. Aka im in charge of the fire. This was my first one ever. We were committed to the fire throughout the night.

It ended up being 67 acres

 Wildcat from our fire. You can see there is maybe a mile between them

 We had one blown tire on the tender and one broke valve stem on another truck

I cooked Todd and I dinner for the night lol 

We released all our resources but one brush truck. They were going to be reassigned to Wildcat the next morning. We set up camp for the night.  This was our nightlight. We kept an eye on the fire and slept with a handheld radio on monitoring their fire while we tried to get some rest.

 Those are two glow sticks with flagging between them so no one drives through and makes  line around where we are sleeping. We also had our trucks blocking our camp

 Well during the night, we got to bed about 2 am and as we were all almost asleep (Rilee, Todd, Me and Amy) a herd of antelope wandered into our camp. Antelope are blind at night... sooo I was pretty sure I was going to have to explain on a report how I was attacked by one at night. They came right in between the trucks then a herd of about 10 of them took off running. Scared the hell out of us which turned into a camp full of giggling girls. Poor Todd. Just as soon as it would get quiet one of us would start giggling. About an hour later another herd of antelope came through our camp and did the same thing! Then Rilee started talking about ghosts and haunted cemeteries in the area. Which led to more giggling. Then the coyotes started howling and Rilee is scared of coyotes. We finally got some sleep until about 5am when the coyotes started howling again. Rilee got up and slept in the truck.. which led to more giggling. Finally it was time to get up!

 Todd wanted to take a selfie to prove he was the only one brave enough to handle a camp with 3 girls all night long.. and that he survived.

 Resources were brought in that morning for the Wildcat fire.. we had to eat our MRE's still. It was a pretty decent breakfast.