Interview with a Wildland Firefighter
Jeff Garmire
In the wake of an awful year for forest fires, I wanted to dig deeper by interviewing a Wildland Firefighter. I spent the summer seeing the wildfires on the news, and watching the destruction unfold across the west, including burning up our family cabin, but I wanted the perspective of someone on the ground fighting the fires.
I connected with Nathaniel Harp through email to conduct this short interview. We met while both hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2019. Nathaniel is known as Tazz on the long distance hiking trails and can be found on Instagram at @HarpoonTanger
Why did you want to become a Wildland Firefighter? Money, change, active job, seasonality?
I don't think anyone starts fighting wildfires for the money. That being said, wildfires started to peak my interest while hiking along the west coast and Pacific Northwest last year! Being from Oklahoma I had only heard stories of wildfires and their destruction! So after seeing the impact previous fires had on the back country and local communities along the way I knew I wanted to lend a helping hand.
What is your schedule like when working on a fire? How many hours per day? Days per week? Days on vs days off?
An average schedule for fire in peak season looks like this: 14 days on, 2 days off (otherwise known as R&R). The hours vary day to day, 16 hour days are very common, and I don't recall having a day under 11 hours this season. This season my crew had 67 days on fire and over 800 hours worked between July 16 - October 15th.
What states did you fight fires in this year?
I fought 3 fires in Oregon (WhiteRiver, Lionshead, & Holiday Farm fires) and 3 fires in California (Gold, Hills & Trimmer fires)
What is it like fighting a fire? What are the duties you undertake and are there different teams and tasks within your "crew?"
Fighting fire is an adrenaline rush. We have a saying in fire, "fight fire aggressively having had provided for safety first." A very strenuous but rewarding job. My crew is a 20 person Type 2 hand crew, which is led by a Crewboss and made up of 4 sawyers (my job) who run chainsaws. Then you have the rest of the crew equipped with hand tools. In tool order, pulaskis, grubbers, hazels hoes, reinhards, and mcclouds. We dig hand-lines which in most scenarios is a 10ft cut with the saws, and a 2ft scrape down to mineral soil with the hand tools. We use this method for hotline, direct line and indirect line.
Describe the wild destruction you have seen from the wildfires: Bare Ground? Downed Trees? Burned Structures? Dead Animals?
We call the fire's destruction "the black." I've seen burnt over heavy machinery, foundations of houses, and it's super common for the chimneys to be the only thing left of the houses! So imagine a neighborhood of chimneys.
Do the conditions (heat and smoke) impact you when working on a fire?
I saw a meme once that described these questions perfectly. It was a picture of a firefighter in the thick smoke, smoking a cigarette. For us it's part of the job, but i'm sure the effects will creep up on us later in life.
Do you have one or two quick stories about wild moments on a fire? Wind change? Chaos? Frenetic changing of strategy? Inaccessible location?
Let me set the scene; it was the tail end of our 12 hour shift. We were heading back to the rigs to refurb our tools when we ran into a 12 acre spot fire, our crew boss lined us out and we started digging hotline. For the next 4 hours the wind was howling, multiple trees were torching, the sun was going down, and the glow of the fire was our only light to work for the duration of our shift. It was apocalyptic, my adrenaline was through the roof as I cut everything in my path so the hand crew behind me could put in their 2ft scrape line. After we completed our containment line around the fire, everyone's eyes were bloodshot and watering, faces covered in black soot! The excitement for completing our objective was the rawest form of life I had experienced in a long time. The brightness of everyone's teeth illuminated the next few minutes as they were the only thing that was still white.
