The Northwest is on fire.
There are more than 10 large wildfires — classified as a fire burning more than 100 acres of timber or more than 300 acres of grassland — burning across the Northwest, many of which have damaged thousands of acres, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center.
University of Idaho student and resident firefighter Jamie Wees said the fire season in the Northwest begins in late summer, so this year’s season is just getting started.
“I think (it was) last Wednesday, we had a pretty good storm roll through,” Wees said. “I’m not sure how many fires it started, but some of the guys on the crew were going to four different fires a day — you fly in, cut some line around it, and then you fly out and go to another one.”
During the school year, Wees is a resident firefighter and a crew boss for one of the five shifts worked by 24 full-time students who are also enrolled in the Moscow Volunteer Fire Department’s resident firefighter program. He said resident firefighters respond to most incoming calls for medical assistance, and all of Moscow’s fire calls. In exchange for their work in the program, students receive training and free housing in the fire stations.
“Getting to live in the station is really nice,” Wees said. “We don’t have to pay for housing in exchange for running calls. It cuts down on the housing budget quite a bit not having to pay for dorms, or renting a house, or anything off campus.”
Wees said students in the program also take classes in fire essentials and EMT training, and it’s possible for a student to receive both a fire training certification and an Idaho EMT license before starting a second year in the program.
Wees started fighting wildfires in the summer following his freshman year of college as part of a district crew of 20 people in the North Fork of the Clearwater River. While he said it was memorable working on the Clearwater, he said he enjoyed spending this summer working as part of the Salmon, Idaho, rappelling crew even more.
“Personally, I would say I like the rappel crew just because the amount of initial attack experience you get is pretty awesome,” Wees said. “The amount of experiences you get to improve yourself, and to open up new task books and get more qualifications are why I like rappel crew.”
For most of his summer, Wees worked as part of a large fire support team that flew helicopters to large fires in devastated areas of Arizona and Nevada to deliver supplies, drop water on flames and carry firefighters to designated firefighter posts.
“With the bucket work, we don’t necessarily change what we do too much, because they call us in, like ‘hey, we’d like a water drop right here’ so our pilot would fly over, and just drop the water right where they wanted it,” Wees said.
Wees said one of his favorite parts of the summer was attending an eight-day rappel training academy in Salmon, Idaho, alongside rookies from fire rappel crews across the US. He said successfully repelling requires quite a bit of strength due to the intensity of using a rope to move up an incline. He said before someone is sent out on a fire, one must go through training that starts on the ground and works up — first to a 25-foot tower, and then to one that’s about 49 feet.
“I was standing up in that simulator, and one of our helicopters came over, and it couldn’t have been more than 100 feet above my head, and I could feel it, and it was pretty sweet,” Wees said. “I’d say that was the coolest moment going through rappel academy.”
Wees said the academy helped him feel prepared to rappel in real-life wildfire situations, something that he did about 30 times over the past few weeks.
“It’s peaceful. Everything was so ingrained into us in the academy that it’s almost second nature. You know exactly what you’re doing, and you just do it,” Wees said. “And the next thing you know, you’re on the skids looking down, checking your rope, and you’re 250 feet above the ground.”
Wees said although the Northwest usually faces difficult late-summer wildfire seasons, he’s glad there are training programs that prepare men and women to join the fight against them.
Daphne Jackson can be reached at [email protected]