Returning Dodgingtown Volunteer

Logged Time In Oregon Wildfires

By John Voket

As the news of thousands of residents west of Casper, Wyo., were being evacuated from approaching wildfires hit the wires last week, Dodgingtown volunteer firefighter John Oliver was on his way to some well-deserved R&R in Upstate New York. Mr Oliver returned August 12 with a crew of Connecticut wildfire specialists, after spending more than two weeks battling blazes that scorched thousands of acres in Oregon.

The local firefighter traveled west with a crew from the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), at the request of the US Forest Service. According to the DEP, the crew was assembled and trained by DEP’s Forestry Division.

Don Smith, state forester and director of DEP’s Forestry Division, said prior to Mr Oliver’s departure, “The DEP is very proud of their members of the Interstate Fire Crew, as they are willing to perform a very difficult and important service wherever they are needed.”

The DEP-trained crew, consisting of DEP staff and firefighting personnel from across Connecticut, was deployed to the fire for a 16-day rotation. The 21-year-old former NHS lacrosse star was part of a crew that included other volunteer and paid firefighters, as well as professional forest fire specialists including a seasoned 64-year-old veteran nicknamed “Badger Bill.”

Mr Oliver first learned about the opportunity when a flyer was circulated during a weekly Dodgingtown department meeting.

“I thought it was for a Connecticut crew to work on fires in Connecticut, so I signed up,” Mr Oliver said. “But when I found out it meant I might have to travel, I said I would do it anyway.”

Home from college, Mr Oliver, who is carrying a political science major and an environmental studies minor, has been volunteering with his neighborhood fire company in Dodgingtown since he turned 18.

“It was just something I was interested in at the time, but look what volunteering has gotten me,” he said. “I get to learn this new skill and travel across the country to help people.”

His training, which included a 40-hour class and a qualifying three-mile run with a 45-pound bladder pack on his back, which had to be completed in under 45 minutes, was all done at the state fire training academy near Bradley International Airport.

Once he arrived at his base camp, which consisted of hundreds of tents assembled on a practice field at a local high school, Mr Oliver set about quickly getting accustomed to an up by 5 am routine that incorporated hard work on scene and hearty meals taht provided 6,000 to 9,000 calories a day of “fuel.”

“We’d be up by five for a briefing at six,” he recalled. “We’d be on the bus by seven and on scene until seven or seven-thirty at night.”

While most nights found him back at camp, he had at least one night of late work backing up a working crew of “hot shots,” actively battling a working fire.

“It doesn’t sound too exciting, but we just lined up on a road for four hours after our shift looking for burning embers that might be drifting across the fire break,” he recalled.

On another occasion he was stationed so far out in a national forest, his crew was ordered to camp on site with trucked in food service and trailer-based showers. He found himself so drained by the end of his shifts, however, that he sometimes went two–three days between showers.

“Yeah, we got pretty grimy,” he said.

Since he came from the heavily populated Northeast, Mr Oliver and most of the other firefighters in his crew were tapped to handle hoses.

“It was completely different than regular firefighting though,” he explained. “Here, you see a fire you put it out. But in a wildfire area, putting out the fire can help spread fire and make it worse.”

He said the key to effectively fighting a wildfire, which is a perfectly natural and normal occurrence when happening in a concentrated area, is more about manipulating the fuel.

“Forest fires are a part of nature, but once people started occupying the western states and getting good at putting out forest fires, it began making things worse,” he said. “Now instead of having little spots of dry fuel that might get set off by lightning, you have entire forests that are set up to burn.

“Nature doesn’t have megafires,” he added.

While he never dwelled on it, Mr Oliver said a monument to wildfire fighters near where he was stationed reminded all the crews of the dangers inherent in fighting these blazes. Despite the modern equipment, communication tolls and aircraft assisted suppression drops, a crew of 14 firefighters perished in July 1994 near Glenwood Springs, Colo.

In his training, Mr Oliver became familiar with the standard issue fire shelter, a virtual fireproof cocoon.

“Ideally, you should never get in a situation where you need to use it,” he said.

While he was armed with his fire shelter, one of the standard pieces of safety equipment he became accustomed to using here in Newtown was all but nonexistent during his two weeks of wildfire fighting.

“Once you got out there, there were no air packs, just bandanas,” he said.

While Mr Oliver said the experience working in the state forest in the so-called “armies of summer,” on his job as a “ground-bounder” was exhilarating, he saw evidence of how important his job could be when he visited the community of Sisters, Ore.

“The fire got so close, the town literally had to be saved,” he said. “When I was walking around, there were signs posted on all the buildings saying ‘thank you firefighters.’”

Although he won’t have enough down time to do another tour before returning to school in September, now that Mr Oliver has his prized red card — his wildfire certification — he is looking forward to working on other crews “for a few more years, at least.”

“A lot of the firefighters I met out there love it,” he said. “There are a lot of misconceptions about wildfires. I like to think it’s necessary for these fires to happen. But while we’re trying to get it back to the natural way it’s supposed to be, once it gets that big we just can’t let it burn.”