Things That ACTUALLY Help During Fire Season

Noisy Creek Fire, Washington State, 2017

It's officially fire season. If you want to know how you can ACTUALLY help out during a wildfire in your area, here are some ideas: 

If you want to do something to help out firefighters working on the lines, here are some tips to help keep the mayhem in fire camp at a minimum: 

- Firefighters are required as part of their job to come FULLY equipped for a two week assignment, with all of their personal gear, toiletries, socks, toothpaste etc. Everybody likes free stuff, but nobody in fire camp should be here unprepared.

- Most camps will turn away donations because they don't have the manpower to deal with distributing them and stuff will just get shuffled off to local food banks, shelters, etc. at the end of the incident. If you INSIST on donating stuff the most useful, most asked things are preventatives like Emergen-C, vitamins, or coffee (see below). 

- Firefighters are provided with over the counter medicines like Tylenol and DayQuil, Gold Bond Powder, foot care items, chapstick, sunscreen and insect repellent through the medical unit. 

- Homemade/baked goods can open Incident Management teams to health liabilities and will usually be turned away as well. They also violate the contract with food caterers in fire camp who provide everything necessary to meet the firefighter's 6000 calorie a day requirement, including snacks. This is for firefighter health and safety.

- Gatorade, water and ice are all provided. Don't buy this stuff for us.

- Contribute to local volunteer departments who have limited funding and face the toughest job during the first hours of initial attack. The volunteers often have to buy their own boots and supplies without any reimbursement, and they don't get paid like professional wildland firefighters who are on the clock, paid, for 14-16 hours a day.

- Fire camp coffee is brutal. If there is a fire camp near town, pay a few coffees forward at a local coffee stand for the firefighters that will be coming through. Or again, if you insist on bringing something to camp, instant coffee packets (like Starbucks Via) are like gold out here.

- Donate to the Wildland Firefighter Foundation (https://wffoundation.org/). They will be there for the firefighter when they, or their families, truly need it the most.

PLEASE SHARE!

P.S. - I know that everybody is an expert, so if you're wondering, I am speaking from 15 year of fire experience in both volunteer and paid positions as a Fireline EMT and a Public Information Officer. I have worked all over the U.S. (even Alaska) for every level of Incident Management Team, including running the medical unit for Type 3 firefighting organizations. 

Things About Appropriate Footwear

even breakfast laces don't make these more fun to wear

Here's the thing. I hate being told what to wear. It probably has something to do with denim jumpers and verses in Leviticus, but for whatever reason, biblical or otherwise, it's a trigger point for me. Stand to reason of course, that my life would be made up of a series of questionable wardrobe choices and violating societal mores that result in being told, more often than not, to go change what I am wearing. I even got sent home from school one year when I was teaching because a visiting parent didn't like a fire hoodie I was wearing.

When fire season rolls around, I have to brace myself for the inevitable wearing of the required uniform. The anti-airflow Nomex pants (there is a reason Gold Bond is so popular out here) and frumpy, scratchy shirts (unless you score an old school yellow off an aging DIVS who has outgrown his), and as a Public Information Officer, the dreaded POLO SHIRT.

Someday I will write a blog about polo shirts and how they fall into the same category as capri pants and visors. But footwear. Footwear is the greatest struggle for me. I prefer to live wild and free with as little confinement on my feet as possible, like flip flops. Fire boots do not fit this lifestyle preference. Nor do many other fire camp shoes I have tried.

Traveling doesn't count, Jim.

I have discovered, through more than one helpful talking-to from people in logistics, safety, or occasionally the IC himself, that flip flops are not acceptable footwear in fire camp, even if I call them tactical (this designation helps the moccasin, however, see below). So, being the careful rule-follower that I am (ahem), I gave up trying to get away with wearing flip-flops in fire camp years ago (even though some of my direct supervisors may say otherwise [JIM]), but I will confess pushing the boundaries in my choice of fire-camp footwear in lieu of my go-to standard.

Coming off the line after 12 hours of sitting in my truck (ok, sometimes I hike too) in stuffy fire boots that stifle my creativity and inhibit my cross-legged sitting habit, I am eager to get into something more comfortable as soon as safely allowable, or sooner, if nobody in overhead notices. These are some of the fire-camp footwear frontrunners that I have either experienced or seen.

The Crocs

Lightweight, easy, ridiculous. Sure you can, but why? That's all I will say here.

The Outdoorsy Keen

I have several friends who can or will only wear Keen shoes. I get it, they are versatile, and they scream "I am an avid outdoorsperson who also values comfort and durability." What's not to love, right? Keens are OK, but I have tried over 20 pairs and haven't found a single style that fits my foot correctly, so these aren't a great option for me. 

The Running Shoe

This is the fire camp standard. This is anyone with an O number that wants to convey the message: "I am fire qualified (hence the nomex) but have advanced in years and/or experience to the level of daily comfort footwear. But I am also ready to run."

I have worn various iterations of running shoes which invariable make me feel like a poser (since I don't run unless it's to save my life) and although they're lighter than boots, they still require tying and all of the difficulty of putting on that every laced shoe demands. The payoff is in comfort and good pedal support for long days on concrete, wood chips or a folding chair.

The Chucks

I guess you could pretty much call me SOF

Over the years, I have worn baldies (Chuck Taylor's, for the uniformed), which are ok until late season wet fire camp grass or soggy sawdust penetrates the canvas and they never dry out. This year I bit the cost bullet and got a pair of Altama Low Tide Raid Shoes from Grunt Style because they looked really rad. Like baldies on steriods. Like I am actually a badass, and not just a wannabe. These are pricey (I can get you 20% off if you're interested), but they are water resistant (kept my feet dry in a torrential downpour) and if they do get wet, which they're designed to do, it drains out these cool little spots that double as breathable vents (making them cooler than your run-of-the-mill Gortex footwear), and they dry STAT, which I think means really fast in emergency-room-tv-show lingo. Also they are worn by actual badasses, so there is that.

The Tactical Moccasin

This is my absolute favorite, when I can get away with it. Depending on the fire assignment, the management team, and how many effs I give, these will pass muster. For about the last four years, I have been wearing Minnetonka Cally Moccasins. The first couple of years, I wore one pair into tattered little pieces of unrecognizable leather. Now I bite the bullet and get a new pair at the beginning of every season because they get trashed around camp all summer, and because when they're brand new they're SO SOFT AND SQUISHY inside that it's like wrapping your feet in baby bunnies. If I have to explain why this is a good thing then there isn't much point in continuing this conversation with you. In the medical unit, these have been a lifesaver. Or a footsaver, at least. I have been asked to refrain from wearing them in some camps, but I will keep trying until Tactical Moccasins are universally accepted as camp-appropriate footwear. Maybe I can work in a diversity argument and my Native American roots... except I haven't got any.

So there it is. Everything you never wanted to know about what to put on your feet in fire camp, or any camp for that matter. And lots of pictures of my feet, which are fairly important feet as far as feet go. The have a lot of traveling to do.

Things About Getting Caught

I caught a cold. Well technically, it caught me, even though I was fleeing it aggressively in the form of hand washing and germ avoidance. In technical fire terms, we call this “camp crud” because everybody in camp has it, and every surface in camp is covered with it. I will take what's going around in lieu of the the gastrointestinal version of camp crud, though (give me a sinus headache over violent diarrhea any day). No yurt latch, outhouse door, or pair of tongs in the salad bar is safe. There isn't enough hand sanitizer in the world. The pervasive germ probably starts at someone’s house when a preschooler wipes snot-covered fingers across their soon-to-be-dispatched daddy’s face and the benevolent firefighter shares his family germs with the rest of his 20 man crew, who spread, from camp to camp, the viral love. It’s definitely epidemic, but luckily, nobody dies.

enter at your own risk... no, seriously. (PS, not on this fire)

Or maybe not so lucky since I woke up this morning wishing I was dead. My head felt like it had railroad spikes driven into both temples and that little spot right between my lungs and throat was on fire. And it hurt to move. I started out slowly, trying to determine if I felt like I needed to Lie Perfectly Still Forever because the NyQuil I took hadn’t worn off by 05:28 AM or if I really was That Sick. Turns out I was. I knew when I handed Nyquil to a fever-stricken girl from the kitchen crew that I was doomed. Watching all of those grubby hands root through a box of cough drops on the table in the med unit gave me full body shudders before I was even running a temp.

The beauty of getting a virus like this is that it seems like the rest of my body calls a truce from the inflammatory onslaught that is a daily occurrence. It’s as if the torn labrums in all four quadrants are like “all hail the coronavirus!” and bow down in deference to full-body aches. The bug has removed all guilt I usually feel for not getting out of my truck to do daily exercises, as any movement right now makes the whole world spin viciously like I am at a rave and on way too many hallucinogens.

I would like to offer my sincere appreciation at this time for whomever it is that developed guaifenesin as a cold remedy. I am seriously in love with Mucinex and today, specifically, the kind with dextromethorphan built it. Also a quick shout out to REAL Sudafed. I’d be lost without you, baby. All that phenylephrine crap can get lost.

One of my favorite parts about working in the medical tent at fire camp is coming up with the most effective cold remedy “cocktails” for other firefighters, and traditionally once a year, myself as well. In Oregon, you can’t get real pseudoephedrine without a prescription which is cruel and unusual punishment for all head cold sufferers and one more reason to hate the whole meth culture. The best daytime cold cocktail is real Sudafed, Tylenol or ibuprofen (depending on your preference) and Mucinex. At night, I am all about the NyQuil and Mucinex - and if I am REALLY bad, I will add more Sudafed too, unless I am in Oregon and am forced to suffer without. We usually are able to get the generic versions of all of this stuff in fire camp and have a steady supply, which is awesome. If you have to suffer, you might as well do it well armed.

Anyway, if you have any questions about how to get sick in fire camp and/or what to do for it, I’m your girl. In the meantime, I will be here in Division Zulu hacking out the inner lining of my lungs and trying not to infect the three people in camp who have thus far miraculously escaped exposure. It’s only a matter of time though…

500 man medical kit. Drugs-r-us. (PS2, also not on this fire)

PS, Speaking of getting caught, I wonder if I will get in trouble for writing about this fire, even though I didn't name names or use current pictures? Oh well. Getting caught for blogging can't be any worse than getting caught by a cold, right?