Wildfire Warriors: Strike Teams & Sleep Hacks

Get ready to uncover the demanding realities of firefighting on the front lines. Join us as we reminisce about the unforgettable experiences that come with battling blazes and breaking stuff, all while building bonds that last a lifetime. Jimmy's sharing gritty, real-life stories from wildfire season in California, and giving you an insider’s perspective on the strike teams that tackle these wildfires. 

From the painstaking process of laying hose lines and the essential role of hand crews, to the strategic use of backfiring and tackling the unpredictable nature of wind and crown fires, we break down some of the critical tactics used to keep fires at bay. We also shed light on the grueling 24-hour shifts, exhausting mop-up operations, and share some creative ways firefighters find rest in the field. You'll even hear about the essential services provided at base camps, where weary crews can catch a much-needed break. We promise you'll be fascinated!

Whether you’re passionate about firefighting or just here for the excitement and adventure, this episode offers a deep and engaging look into the lives of those who stand between us and the flames.

Life Safety Associates specializes in emergency response training for corporate ERT Teams. We help businesses create competent and confident first responders who are ready to handle unexpected emergencies. For more information you find us @lifesafetyassoc or email@lifesafety.com.

Chapters

• 0:00 Life and Safety Podcast
• 8:22 Firefighting Tactics and Life
• 17:21 Firefighting Strike Team Incidents
• 25:43 Firefighter Strike Team Life

Transcript

Jimmy: 0:23

Hey, what's happening? It's Jimmy and Megs with another Life and Safety podcast. How we doing out there today in podcast land. That was weird why did I say that.

Megan: 0:36

That was different. I really couldn't tell you.

Jimmy: 0:40

Oh man, first off, I want to just want to thank everybody that keeps listening. You know we got our 500th download last week, so thank you all very much. Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop is right. Thank you all, we truly appreciate it. Uh, I still am in awe that people still want to listen to me talk. Uh, so thank you all very much.

Jimmy: 1:03

Now, with that being said, today we're going to to talk about a question that I get asked a lot, and it's what do I miss about firefighting?

Jimmy: 1:15

And I usually tell people I miss breaking stuff and I miss hanging out with the guys, guys, so hanging out with the guys, not only at the station but on strike teams going to these big fires. We're in the middle of fire season right now in California and we've got some pretty big fires going on, especially the Park Fire right now, and that started in Butte County, which is right next to where last place I worked in Nevada County, so we used to go into Butte County, which is right next to where last place. I worked in Nevada County, so we used to go into Butte County quite a bit. I was actually on a Butte County fire the Feather Fire when 9-11 happened, so you know definitely fought a lot of fire in that area, so I definitely understand what those guys are going through and the conditions they're in. So, with that being said, I was going to talk a little bit about life on a strike team. What is?

Megan: 2:14

a strike team.

Jimmy: 2:15

So what is a strike team? Good magazine. So a strike team is five fire engines led by a captain or a battalion chief, and they're an individual unit they call it an individual unit working together. There's engine strike teams, there's hand crew strike teams and then there's dozer strike teams. All right, we're not going to get into the technicalities of that too much, but if you ever see, you know, two inmate crews or two hand crews driving down the road with a truck in front of them, that's an inmate hand crew. If you ever see five fire engines with a pickup truck in front of it, that's an engine strike team.

Jimmy: 2:56

And they're going to a fire. Or they're going to someplace to cover or they're going to stage someplace. Which means the state in all of its wisdom thinks that there are going to be big lightning strikes or possibly big fires due to high winds and high temperatures and dry conditions. So they're going to stage strike teams, fire engines, either in the south middle of the country or state excuse me like Madera for centuries, or they're going to send people north, okay, and then you sit there and wait for a fire. I've been in Madera staging because most of my career has been in Northern California for days Sitting in a park or sitting in a hotel room. Well, sitting in a hotel room at night and then sitting either at the Madera Fairgrounds or in a park for days, just sitting there waiting for something to happen Zero fun.

Jimmy: 3:59

Yeah, that sounds horrible, it's pretty gnarly, but it's always a lot of fun because you get to hang out with firefighters that you don't always get to see. You know, from different stations you get all the different personalities and the silliness ensues.

Megan: 4:24

So is it? Each engine comes from a different station or is it all?

Jimmy: 4:26

Well, I guess, never mind. Yeah, so they all come from different firehouses or for different fire stations, um, in the same unit, right? So, for instance, this is uh, we live in san jose in the santa clara unit, so you might get, you know, I don't know exactly how many cal fire stations are in santa clara county specifically, but you might get five of them. You might get one engine from each rural station. That don't get to do much. And there's guys like oh, I didn't even know, you worked for us, kind of a thing, whereas if you worked at a busy house where there's still lots of fires, then you see folks coming in to help you with those fires. You might know those folks from just being on fires, but you don't really know them. And then you're on a strike team and you're eating dinner together, you're hanging out in the park, you're on a fire line doing things, and you get to know each other pretty well.

Megan: 5:17

Then you know, um, so that's a lot of fun, uh okay, one of the questions that might make me sound completely inept, but I'm gonna ask anyways, because I've always had this question. I know that there's a difference between a fire engine and a fire truck and I know that some firefighters are very particular in that there is a difference, but I don't know the difference. What is the difference?

Jimmy: 5:43

It's actually a good question. Okay, so the big difference is a fire engine carries water and has all the hoses and stuff on it, whereas a fire truck has the big ladder on top.

Megan: 5:57

Okay, and then so the fire truck. Do they also have hoses at all that they can use, or no?

Jimmy: 6:05

So I'm going to talk in generalities here. No, not usually. There are fire trucks that do carry water and fire hose. There's a different name for those. Again, we're not going to get into that right now. But the major difference, to answer your question, is fire trucks have the giant ladder on top. Fire engines are just water and hoses and medical stuff and things like that Cool. And there's firefighters out there right now that are going and this and that and that, cool. Yeah, I'm not getting into that, I hear you. And then there's obviously different types of fire engines. So like the ones that Cal Fire Drive, those are off-road fire engines. They call those type three fire engines. So like the ones that Cal Fire Drive, those are off-road fire engines. They call those Type 3 fire engines. I'm not going to get into those types, but yeah, that's kind of how that works out Very generally for those of us who have no knowledge.

Megan: 7:02

Yes, yes.

Jimmy: 7:06

So what are some of the conditions these guys are dealing with on the fire line? What's the fire line?

Megan: 7:14

What's a fire line?

Jimmy: 7:15

Yeah, so they call the fire line the actual edges of where you're fighting the fire, right, you don't run through the middle of the fire, right, you get burnt, right. So on the edges, they call it the fire line. Or you're cutting hand line, you're laying hose, you're watching the dozer cut track, and cutting track is them actually just paving, you know, with their big dozer, you know shovel, just cutting, knocking down trees, moving brush and just cutting a big, huge fire brick.

Megan: 7:46

You're using so many terms.

Jimmy: 7:48

So a fire brick is thinking of it as like a giant road. They're making a road in between the burn area and the non-burn area, or the green and the black Right. So the black is all the burn side, the green is all the live side. So what the dozer does is they actually take the big, huge dozer blade and they just run a whole line through that, and usually two dozers going next to each other and just plowing this huge road around the fire. Um, now, a hose line is the where the firefighters are actually taking fire hose and sometimes they're actively fighting the fire. If they're lucky, and they're just hiking through the mountains, through the hills with a hose on their back and laying water, they're actually just fighting the fire, actively fighting the fire, doing a progressive hose lay, whereas every 100 feet they have to stop and add another length of hose, and they just keep doing that until they get all the way around the fire.

Jimmy: 8:58

and then there's hand crews, which are guys that are basically doing what the dozers are doing, but with their hands and hand tools chainsaws, mcleod's, pelaski's, just basically different, like an axe and a different a really cool rake, and they're just doing the same thing.

Megan: 9:14

And they do that so that there's nothing to burn. Yeah, so that it doesn't cross onto the green.

Jimmy: 9:20

Exactly, they're removing the fuel. Okay, they're removing the fuel.

Megan: 9:24

Oh, that makes so much sense, right.

Jimmy: 9:26

And then along with that, usually there's somebody doing backfires sometimes. So backfiring is when a firefighter is what we like to call dragging fire. There's a thing called a drip torch. Think of an oil can like what they use on the Tin man, but it has a little flame attached to it and when they tip it over it catches the oil and the gas and everything that's in there on fire and the firefighter just walks along the grass and drips fire out and the fire burns away from them and towards the fire, removes the fuel and there's goes towards the firefighters with the hose or with the hand line and it removes the fuel. But it's kind of controlled. So they're doing both of those things or one of the time.

Jimmy: 10:19

Um, so those are kind of things that are happening on these big fires and obviously, if it's windy or windy, excuse me they can't do that because the fire just runs away from too fast and it's too dangerous for the firefighter to get in there. Um, and sometimes the fire is so big, the flame lengths are so high, they actually can't get in front of it because it's, you know, 10, 20, 30 feet up there, because it's on the trees, or they call it a crown fire works in the top of the trees and it's just running from top of the tree to the top of the tree, the top of the tree, and actually not even burning on the ground. Um, you don't want to stand in front of that, obviously that'd be bad, that would not be, ideal.

Jimmy: 10:58

Oh so those are some of the things that are happening on the fire line. Uh, the firefighters are usually work 24-hour shifts 24-hour shifts.

Jimmy: 11:09

So it's kind of funny because the shift usually starts at 8 in the morning and then it goes to 8 o'clock in the next morning, depending on where you're at on the fire line.

Jimmy: 11:23

If you're actively fighting fire which doesn't happen because the fire burns so fast away from you, usually You're only on the fire for a couple hours and then you trying to stop, like the trees that are on fire or the bush on fire, that where the main fire has gone past. So you're kind of what they call mopping that up. So you're trying to put out all the hotspots so that doesn't get a custom wind and jump over, you know, behind you into the green live area. So all that stuff depends on what's going on. Usually, if you're at the back of the fire and you're doing what they call mop up, which is really boring, it's no fun at all because you're just dragging hose around and finding like little smoking spots of like things burned like hot ash and you're just pouring water on it and like mixing it up. Sometimes you get a tree, sometimes you just get little ground things and you just. It's pretty boring.

Megan: 12:17

Well, I will say, as somebody who doesn't fight fire for a living, that sounds very adrenaline inducing, but I'm sure for you who's seen a lot worse, that's very boring. The head of the fire.

Jimmy: 12:28

If you're on the head, or what they call the shoulders of the fire, and you're actively fighting fire. If you're on the head, or what they call the shoulders of the fire, and you're actively fighting fire, it's pretty exciting. It's a lot of fun. If you're just sitting in the very back of the fire just mopping things up, it's not that fun. So when you're out there again, it's 24 hours usually you sleep out there, if you can, um on the fire engine or just people get really creative to find spots out there um. You never sleep underneath the fire engine, though. Just in case something happens and they don't realize you're underneath them, they start the fire engine, they run you over. So that's always a bad thing. So never sleep under the fire engine. People sleep in the hose beds. People sleep in, um like you know, the front seat, that little over the seat back. They'll sleep on the bench seats in the back, wherever. Sometimes I've seen people pull the benches or the pads off of the bench seats and like stick them in the dirt and like lean them against trees or like put them on a park bench and sleep, you know. So that's pretty and you know pretty ingenious.

Jimmy: 13:40

Now that's when you're actively on the line and then you get off.

Jimmy: 13:44

You're like you know, depending on what's going on, the captain or the over the battalion chief is, or over the strike team leaders will say all right, we're going to drive out of here because it's going to take us an hour to get to the main road, or it's going to take us two hours to get to the main road or a staging area where we can get food or what have you. And then we'll drive into the base camp. And the base camps are really cool. They're giant cities. They're just trailers with food, they have shower trailers, they have a medical tent, they have basically anything you can think of to survive, from batteries to radios like walkie-talkies, to sleeping bags, to signaling mirrors, to road flares, just anything you can think of. And it's kind of interesting because the firefighter can just walk up and say hey, we're on strike team 1, 2, 3, 4, and we need 60 C batteries, and they'll just give them to you, so the place gets taken advantage of a lot that makes sense that tracks.

Jimmy: 14:58

Yeah, there's actually. Then they bring in a vendor, sometimes or sometimes one of the inmate crews, depending on how good the inmate crews are. They actually bring in vendors that'll like sharpen chainsaw.

Megan: 15:08

Sorry, inmate crew.

Jimmy: 15:09

So actually inmates, people that work that are prisoners oh, okay, got it, yeah, that'll, and they all man from the fire crews. So they have children, not children I shouldn't say that they have the youth. They're 18-ish to 16-ish and they're incarcerated, but they have done nonviolent crimes, if you will, and they work on the fire hand crews and I've actually seen a couple of those guys actually get hired on when they've gotten out of jail and actually work for the state. I actually worked for a captain who started off on the inmate hand crew and turned his life around. So it's a pretty cool program.

Jimmy: 15:47

Yeah, I actually saw a male inmate in Northern California. He had been on the hand crew for so long. The captains that managed his hand crew trusted him so much and he was so knowledgeable about like chainsaws and stuff like that that he actually actually let him set up like a stand to sharpen chainsaw chains and work on them for other people. And the guy was getting job offers from the logging crews and stuff like that that were on the crew on the fire lines saying, hey, you know, when you're done with this, if you want a job, we'll, we'll hire you. And last I heard he actually did get a job, actually as a firefighter and I think he's a, he's probably an engineer or something like that, now not a captain, you know. So he definitely turned his life around. Um, so really cool stuff like that happens there. So the supply tent, it's pretty wild, um, so a little bit more information.

Megan: 16:53

So you said that it's 24 on, 24 off, so you work for 24 hours, then you rest or do whatever it is that you do when you're not fighting fire for 24, and then how long does that go on? For like weeks, days, months? How long are you on a strike team usually?

Jimmy: 17:14

so cal fire when I worked there and I'm sure it's changed now, so I'm sure somebody's gonna freak out when I say this and all good. Um, when I worked, uh, it was a 14 14 day commitment. You couldn't be on a fire longer than 14 days. That doesn't mean you had you couldn't work, you just couldn't be on that incident for longer than 14 days. Mm-hmm.

Jimmy: 17:36

So, for instance, I was on the fire down south for technically it was 16 days, because the fire changed names two days into it and then we ended up being on the same fire. But since it changed names for 14 more days and it changed names because of jurisdiction, they're actually like oh, it actually didn't start there, it started here, so the fire changed. So I was on that fire for 16 days and they also didn't have wildland fire engines, they didn't have enough assigned to that particular fire. So we stayed there a little bit longer and then we left from there and we went down farther south and we ended up covering fire stations farther south in like San Diego County for another like six or seven days. So I think I was on duty that whole time before that big fires. I think I ended up being on duty for 32 days or something like that so I worked every day for like 32 days.

Megan: 18:55

Gross.

Jimmy: 18:56

Yeah. So I mean, if you just catch a fire, so to speak, and you're on fires for a couple days and now you have this strike team formed and they need you someplace else, you can just hop big fires, big fires, big fires and I think I've been to three big fires in a row. The longest I've ever worked was 40 days, something like that. That's a lot.

Megan: 19:22

Yeah, hypothetically, could you go back to the same fire after taking time off?

Jimmy: 19:30

No, no, because your time was spent Now if I jumped off of a strike team. So if I jumped off strike team A, let's say I had a day off. Then I went back to my firehouse and then they're like hey, we're starting another strike team, you're on it. I can then be redesigned to that fire. That way, as long as you change strike teams, yes.

Megan: 19:53

Makes sense.

Jimmy: 19:54

Yeah, I don't know that we actually said this part online, but it's 24 on, 24 off, but you're still on call when you're not even so you go to the base camp and either you have to camp at the base camp and basically you literally just throw up tents and you're there, um, or you get assigned to a hotel or motel and then which is ideal, especially if you've been on the fire line, because then that way you can go and you can take a shower and you're not showering with, you know, 500 other firefighters and other people which is kind of nice.

Jimmy: 20:36

So you go and you get a hotel room shower, try to sleep, and then you get to go out and eat. Now, when you eat, you do you have to buy your own food sometimes. Sometimes you get charged to the fire and the state's paying for it. You get, get you charged to the fire and the state's paying for it, um, and then we leave. But while you're sitting there, you're on call to make a point and there's nothing worse than sleeping in a hotel and having somebody bang on your door and saying, hey, we got another fire, they need us to go someplace else. Let's go. And that's happened a couple of times.

Jimmy: 21:18

Um, you'll get, like you know, the local fire station is on the big fire, or they don't have enough people at the local small town, and they say, hey, well, we have these fire engines sitting at this hotel, let's wake them up and send them. And you know, so that'll happen. So we've caught, like I've caught, like house fires. That way I've gotten I've actually gone to car accidents, which is very rare. For them wake us up to send to that where you know it costs us a lot of money and a lot of time on downtime to be there. Um, we actually almost ran into a, had a, had a police officer almost run into us, so we got up a huge. They didn't know if it was a big fire spotted it got so hot it was putting fires out ahead of itself or if it was a new fire and they sent us us. They woke us up and they sent us to this new fire we'll call it and they were like it's basically threatening all the subdivisions. We need to get there super fast. So they woke us all up. Some of us at the pool that wasn't the pool, I was actually sleeping the people come running in.

Jimmy: 22:36

We all get dressed, because we're not in our uniforms per se, we're in our hotel rooms sleeping, so we're sleeping in clothes. So we all get dressed. We do the best we can. We jump on the fire engine and we go and we're driving as fast as we can because it's a big deal, as fast as we can because it's a big deal. Well, usually whoever gets the green light with lights and sirens, gets the right of way. Everybody has to stop and if you get a green light, you go. And there's certain street lights. Have a system on there with a strobe light that'll turn the light green for you and red for everybody else.

Speaker 3: 23:14

It'll turn light green for you and red for everybody else.

Jimmy: 23:16

Well, we're going through the city and the fire or, excuse me, the police are going to code three to a crime and we're going to code three lights and sirens to a fire.

Jimmy: 23:26

So we're driving, we slow down, I'm sitting shotgun and I see the police car coming from our left driver's side and I go police, you know, traffic left and the captain says I see it, we slow down, it's clear, we go through. Well, what we don't see is a police car coming from the same direction who crossed lanes in the oncoming traffic. So he's hauling towel, his lights are on but his sirens aren't on and we can't see him from where we're at and we look over halfway through the intersection and he's slamming on his brakes and we look over and we just hear his lights were on and he, you know. So then we stopped, my, you know, captain stops because it's instinct, and the police car stopped literally two feet from the middle of our fire engine. He would have went right into like where all the pump and everything was no, and we had the right away. So we were right.

Jimmy: 24:38

He just he messed up and he was just like. You can see him sweating and cursing and like, and he's like, just let go. He's like I'm sorry. You can see him say I'm sorry because, yeah, and we left and we got to the fire and the fire engine behind us was like holy f? You just. That almost just happened, are you guys okay? Like on the radio, and we were like we're good, like we actually had to pull over because the captain was like shook, I was shook, the guys in the back were shook, like it was scary. And then we ended up getting to the fire after everybody else got there, obviously, because everybody got there and then it ended up not being anything. We kind of walked around for about an hour looking at the fire that the local folks put out, and then we went back to the firehouse and everybody debriefed and the police officer actually showed up and like super apologetic and was like I'm so sorry, it was super scary and everybody was scared and everybody kind of laughed it out and hugged it out afterwards.

Jimmy: 25:41

But it was super scary. So that's kind of what happens, like on off time, and then we wake up in the morning and we either get breakfast at the hotel or we go to the base camp and get food. The food at the base camp it's buffet food and it's like the cheapest buffet food you can ever have. Um, sometimes it's not bad, sometimes it's okay, um, but yeah, that's kind of what happens on on big fires team at a high level. If you ever see a strike team, definitely wave, give them a high five. Um, it helps their tally points. Those are the guys that they're on long ones. They'll they'll count how many high fives. If you ever see a strike team, definitely wave, give them a high five. It helps their tally points. Most of the guys if they're on long ones, they'll count how many high fives you get or how many waves you get, or they'll count out-of-state license plates or things of that nature. So, give them a high, give them a shaka, whatever, it'll help their tallies. Somebody's winning money. No-transcript.