Wildland firefighters Park Fire feat
GRFD Twin Hills Station 2 (Trenton Dawson/The Puma Prensa)
Written By: Trenton Dawson
On July 24, 42-year-old Ronnie Dean Stout II shoved a burning car down an estimated 60-foot embankment, starting a fire at Bidwell Park in Chico later named the Park Fire. This required people like Battalion Chief Jeremy Pierce, who was one of the many wildland firefighters forced to put their life at home aside and fight for weeks under harsh temperatures and terrain.
As Operation Section Chief of the Park Fire, Pierce oversaw it spreading 430,000 acres, equivalent to around 16 times the size of the city of Santa Rosa. At a glance, control of the Park Fire may seem like it was not successful, Chief Pierce and many other firefighters have a different perspective. “There were two huge successes,” Pierce explained. “We were able to evacuate all the citizens out ahead of this fire and… able to keep all of our firefighters safe and return home” and “able to save as many structures as we could… only losing 637 structures.” This compared to the 36,000-acre Tubs Fire which burned over 5,000 structures and claimed 22 lives. But what did this take to accomplish, and what sacrifices were made to achieve this success?
The Park Fire is the 4th largest fire in California history, requiring immense manpower needed to stop it. “On the Park incident, we had roughly 6,800 firefighters” Pierce stated. When a large incident like this happens an incident base is set up. Facilities are set up for showers, laundry, mail services, and a mobile kitchen unit. It served, “right around 80,000 meals over the course of the incident,” Pierce said. Sleeping situations vary between people. Some people are in tents, nearby hotels, and sleeping trailers. Pierce describes sleep trailers as “Semi 18-wheeler… towed in, air-conditioned, and it sleeps 36 firefighters at a time in triple bunk beds.” They do not have much more than a few feet of room around them when lying down. “So it's essentially a city is set up,” he explained. Most firefighters are there two weeks at a time before being sent home. Pierce remarked how “[he] was there for 23 days consistently.”
When seeing a fire so big and so destructive, it's hard to imagine how it gets put out. As Pierce states, “The only way to stop those fires is to separate the fuel from the burn.” It’s not putting the Park Fire out, but stopping it. Firefighters did this by creating fire lines. This is done using either bulldozers or hand crews. Where terrain might stop a bulldozer from making a line due to steepness, large trees or rock, hand crews come in. “A typical fire crew (20 people) in grass can cut a three-foot line, about 1,000 feet per hour,” said Pierce.
Fire season is a time of deep uncertainty. From sweeping wildland fires to frequent brush fires, this season is the most demanding of many local firefighters. They go through immense sacrifices to help during these uncertain times, missing out on summer events and time with family. “I was gone for 36 days away from my family…and if you're not there, you're not there… the sporting events, birthdays, and the anniversaries that I'm always missing… and the hardest part is for my family who's left behind… my wife needs to take care of three kids, drive them around, get them to school, fix the dishwasher that broke, mow the yards, wash the cars, you name it.” Pierce expressed.