On the Road

Righty Tighty said

You hit the bullseye with all of that. A perfect example is the Aspen Fire in 2003 here in AZ. Nobody wanted prescribed burns for different reasons, but then when the forest finally lit off, it was a disaster. We need regular fires with lower intensity to keep the fuel load manageable.


That's a long drive for such a small fire. No other resources that were closer/available?

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The funding mechanism to get resources out here to do prescribed fire is to wait for a wildfire and use the authority to put resources on order. When the wildfire is over they keep the resources in the region. They don’t have the personnel in Fla. alone to accomplish as much prescribed fire and they don’t have the money in the prescribed fire budget to order the resources. Fire budget has way more money so we do it that way. It’s like, “Since your here, and the wildfire is out, ….”.

Personnel can be out for 14 days so we keep the engine out and replace the crews with fresh bodies. While the last crew was in Florida they burned 1500 acres in land plots. Florida is crazy. Things burn when it’s green. Palmetto and other plants like it have a lot of wax that burns hot. It all grows back faster than out west too.

We met replaced that crew in Jacksonville and drove all day to Baton Rouge. Tomorrow we have to drive to Fredericksburg, TX and see if we get assigned to a fire or stage somewhere.