Well I finished my assignment in the Umpqua! Was a lot of hours and not a lot of free time. Living out of a hotel room sucks so it was nice to have long busy days working. Going out of state to a Forest Service station outside of CA was interesting. Weird not having the CalFire folks around and you can tell funding is much more limited in Region 6. Roseburg was a cute town, the folks I worked with and met were absolutely awesome with the forest service. Great bunch of people they got working there.
I had to cut my full 14 day assignment short because of a big fire that broke out in my home forest, the Six Rivers National Forest. I heard about from Oregon, and before I knew it, they wanted me home. The fire is still going good and hopefully not getting too deep into the Trinities...nasty, steep terrain to be fighting fires out there! I hope everyone stays safe out there.
My trip to Roseburg ended, I finished my 2 weeks with 185 total hours of work! Also managed to get in a little over 23 miles of running while I was there, all of it at night in the dark. Was fun and a different experience. Hope to do some more night runs!
Our fire updates can be seen here:
Looks like their getting a good handle on the fire, the rain the other day really helped slow its spread.
On Friday I ended up leaving Roseburg in a hurry around 1600 and got home at 2130 (5 1/2 hours, was jammin) and ended up playing in our expanded for a hour and a half throwing some supply orders in ROSS. Than Sat and Sun I played IA dispatcher for our forest, not too much involved in the fire, since the Type 2 Team had got on scene and was managing the fire. It still stayed very busy.
Sunday I timed out. With the forest service, for safety reasons, they have a 2:1 rule. Work so many hours, required to get half that number in sleep. 14 hours of work, supposed to get at least 7 hours before returning to work. Same goes for days, except the increments are different. I reached my 14 days of continuous work so I had to take 2 days of R&R, PAID!! So I'm on mandatory, paid, days off at the moment.
Not much rest today though. Unpacked finally! Cleaned out my fridge and studio. Went through the 8-9 boxes of stuff that was waiting for me when I got home (I did quite a bit of online shopping while in Roseburg). Getting ready to go for a long run (only 6 miles to work and back) and than bottle my Porter which should of been bottled a week ago. More time should clarify and smooth it out nicely.
We got a IA dispatcher from Utah who is filling my spot while I'm on days off. Our expanded is packed with around 7-8 people working feverishly to keep our fire needs met. It was fun training an incoming dispatcher for my first time. Showing them how we do things and our local SOPs....hope she's still alive when I check things out today. If we didn't have a fire going, my mandatory days off would have coincided nicely with my usual days off, and would have had 5 days off (woulda been so outta here into the hills), but with the fire going I'll be called back in to work my normal days off (more OT!!!). With this slow season I'll take all I can get!
Look forward to getting back into my normal routine though. Got lots of stuff I'm dying to do soon: kayak, more running, biking.....hopefully I'll find somebody to enjoy all those cool things with! Gonna be fun either way!!
All I need now is some food in the fridge and some good times! Got a few things on Craigslist I'm getting rid of, cleaning house with some other stuff. Life is good!
Hope everyone out there is well, keeping the smiles going, and having an awesome time!
Sorry for the lack of pictures, being cooped up inside all day I really didnt get a chance and there wasnt much at night to snag. Here's a pic of an airtanker dropping a load onto a small fire that started just off of I-5 when I was in Oregon, pretty good shot!
Will have some others of our fire here later on...take care 8)
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