Day 4

Day 4

Today we started off with meeting Annie Wittenberg, Aaron Olmos and Mike Gomez with the fire service and BIA. Something interesting that I learned today was what a hotshot crew is and a type 2 IA crew is. A hotshots crew is a crew that works together all the time and a Type 2 IA crew do not always work together they are moved around where needed. And a camp crew is pretty much what the name entails, it is a crew that works on logistics and other tasks at a fire camp. And then we met Doug and Sam who are both Redmond Smokejumpers. Smokejumpers are men that basically jump out of planes to fight fire and they are often the first crew at certain types of fires. Smokejumper’s can work on average 16 hour days for most of the fire season. We got to tour a 330 Sherpa and this is the type of plane that smokejumper’s jump out of. A 330 Sherpa plane that is dispatched for a fire will contain 10 smokejumpers, 2 spotters who direct the smokejumpers on when to exit the plane and 2 pilots who will drop them at 1500 feet in the air. Later we met with Jim Reed who works in aviation maintenance services primarily in Redmond, OR. He gave us a lot of good advice much of what he said made a lot of sense and I think him sharing advice that he got early on in his career that helped him will also help me someday. He said he was given this advice – ‘If you don’t know something, don’t act like you do.’ I think this is great advice it is good to ask questions and do the job right instead of pretending to know and possibly making a mistake. The cache in Redmond was very impressive, I appreciated how seriously everyone took their jobs. And I also liked seeing how they made being sustainable and efficient a top priority. Redmond cache is one of the leading cache’s in the country for recycling and reducing waste. Next we visited the fire tanker field and we were given a tour by a co-pilot who explained the layout of the tanker he worked in and what his duties are inside the tanker. I had never been inside a fire tanker and I was excited to be inside of one. Overall I have a better understanding of how important it is for people who work in a field like fire services to take every aspect of their day to day work seriously, it could mean life or death for someone.