Not in a million years…
Wildland Firefighting! I’ve been in the fire service for 25+ years. I’ve spent the majority of my time on the job in a urban setting. You know the usual stuff that goes along with that, structure fires both residential and commercial, wrecks, EMS and rescues of all sorts. I get asked by people what I do for a living and I tell them I’m a firefighter. “Not in a million years would I go into a burning building” is a lot of times the reply. Well for me I hold the same attitude toward wildland firefighting, not in a million years. These men and women are hardcore. They get dropped in the middle of nowhere, sometimes by jumping out of a perfectly good airplane!
Their tools….. chainsaws, axes, shovels and backfires. How do they get the equipment there, they carry it.
Wildland firefighting is fighting fires that are as tall as the trees of the forest there in. These men and women have each other out there, doing a job that I can only imagine seems impossible at times. Doing all this while your federal funding has been cut by 19% over the last two years and the fires are increasing. In 2015 alone for than 10 million acres burned and know you are doing more with less. Many are volunteer firefighters while others are career firefighters.
It takes a special breed of man and woman to do wildland firefighting. There have been 1086 fatalities among wildland firefighters since 1910. As for me, I’ll stick to the streets. I don’t believe I could do that job, “in a million years”. I tip my helmet to the men and women that are working the job in the wildland, you are a special bunch of folks, and I for one have the utmost respect for each of you. Not a single forest fire comes without its firefighter close calls and that makes this one of life’s most dangerous professions.
Check out what we have to show you folks how much we respect and admire you.
You have certainly “answered the call of the wild”
One of the dirtiest if not most dangerous jobs and msot deserving of a firefighter gift.