Day 5

July 11^th – Wednesday

This morning was freezing. After everyone finally got over the bear scare we woke up at around 6ish. Early day, caffeine is definitely needed. Today we went to ____. The showed us a lot of different things such as; fire trainer, smoke jumper, airplane hangar, supply cache, aviation section, and dispatch. All of it was extremely educating and fun.

With the trainer they really pushed options for wildlife fires services and BIA. They were very informational and it opened my eyes to the option of firefighting. I am not exactly sure what I want to do with my life at this point and I feel like I need time and experience to figure it out. I will definitely be utilizing them.

Then, the group took a tour with the smoke jumpers. AWESOME, I was so surprised that such a thing existed. The jumpers loved their work and worked very hard to get there. They jump out of planes and try to control a fire and prevent it from becoming a big fire. Dougie and Sam were rookies, they are new to smoke jumping 2018 season. They were our tour guides and were the best. It is a hard and long path to smoke jumping. Typically you are a hot shot firefighter first (this may take about 3-4 year of experience to reach). The hot shots are the front line fighters, most experienced and knowledgeable. After it takes even more training to become a higher ranked smoke jumper. Doug is 27, have been in the fire community for 5 years. Sam is 26 and has been in fire for 9 years and he just became a smoke jumper and wanted to do this all his life. It takes a long time to be seasoned in this. I later asked if they were the best of the best and Sam replied with “No, no fire fighter is better than another. We all have a job which is to prevent and stop fires. We just do it differently. I don’t believe one fire fighter can be better than another.” I loved his response because their job is dangerous and to say it’s no better than another is very humbling.

Heading over to the aircraft carrier we visited with Jim Reed, aviation maintainer services manager. To sum up his job he is an extremely well skilled aircraft mechanic and inspector. He travels a lot and he said on average they’ll put in about 120 hours every 2 weeks. That is crazy and wild. I asked him how he maintained his home life and he replied with balance. He flies everywhere he needs to inspect a aircraft at and some days are long and some are short. His advice was “trust,” trust is the most importance part in everything. He gave a lot of advice of how to find our path and just emphasized it was okay to not know and make time to figure it out. Out of all the cool things we got a taste of he was definitely my favorite.

Later we headed to the fire tankers, again amazing. We met with Lauren, he was a copilot. We got into the tanker that released all the fire retardant to help stop the spread of fires. It was scary and I asked if dying was something he was afraid about then he laughed and said no. It was a huge plane with a big tank inside of it. I was to afraid to sit within the cockpit.

Our last stop, we went to dispatch. I was laughed at because I asked if that is where all the “beeeep beeeep” comes from, I was right because it is. That’s were all report, responders and any other important fire information goes to. They call up fire fighter, send the supply list, call the tanker and so much more.

Great day full of information and different careers. Loved all the people and interactions.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings

-     -   Destiny