Month: February 2011

Shane Baca, an Engine Captain for the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, recently made a presentation at the Jake Flake Emergency Training Center in Taylor, Arizona, a part of Northland Pioneer College. Speaking to the fire science students at a basic training class, Mr. Baca focused on hiring into the Student Temporary Employment Program (STEP).

Here are some excerpts from an article at WMIcentral.com:

WHITE MOUNTAINS – If you are considering seasonal work fighting forest fires in the White Mountains, you might want to know about the ‘pack test.’ It is the only physical fitness test administered by the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest Service in its seasonal hiring process and simply requires you to walk three miles in 45 minutes or less. Oh, you also have to be carrying a 45-pound pack while you do it.

“The first 15 minutes are the hardest,” says Jarred MacArthur. “After that, you just go numb.” MacArthur, a student with the Northland Pioneer College Fire Science Program, knows well. He has been a seasonal firefighter for the Forest Service the past three summers. MacArthur was taking part in a Forest Service seasonal employee recruitment presentation staged recently at the Jake Flake Emergency Training Center in Taylor, site of the fire science training courses.

Shane Baca, wildland fire engine captain for the Lakeside District of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, was the lead speaker at the session, addressing the morning session of the FRS basic training class.

Baca does not sugarcoat the demands of the job. He cautions the students that, while the pay can be good, it’s not easy work. “The physical demands are heavy and you have to have a tough mental attitude. There’s no room for mediocrity.”

MacArthur also commented on the physical fitness required of the seasonal workers, “If you aren’t fit, you can bring down a whole crew; you become a hazard.”

Both agreed that the excitement and adrenaline rush that accompany fighting fires can also be matched by the tedious nature of required work when there are no fires to fight: equipment maintenance, construction projects, wood chipping, readiness drills, and exercising to stay fit.

Following the presentation, Bill Solomon, NPC fire science instructor for the class, commended Baca for his sessions saying he believes there have been nearly 30 hires for seasonal wildland work as a result of these talks.

This video has been around for three years. You may have even seen it at a fire meeting or training session.

The public, looking at a fire and seeing a fire SUV drive up, probably wonders, “Why is that Fire SUV sitting there? Why not send a fire truck instead?”

We understand the video has been played at the Complex Incident Management Course and a Battalion Chief orientation.

If, after a lost weekend, you find yourself in Prague, Czechoslovakia this month, after checking to be sure you still have your passport, you should visit an exhibition of paintings at the Václav Špála Gallery (map). Yes, that’s right, I said paintings at a gallery. Our regular Wildfire Today readers may be thinking that they don’t remember seeing an art critic’s writings in this space, and they would be correct. I am neither an art critic, nor will I pretend to be one here, but I was intrigued by some paintings by Czech artist Petr Pastrňák who is exhibiting some of his works from his “Burning Forest” series.

The paintings are impressionistic, but undoubtedly represent forest fires. Flames from fires are difficult to duplicate in electronic simulations used for training firefighters, Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) in movies, or in paintings. So an artist might as well go the non-realistic route.

Here is an excerpt from an article about the exhibition, written by Mimi Fronczak Rogers for the Prague Post:

…Raging flames dominate the canvases in Pastrňák’s forests, but there is little sense of impending catastrophe, as the flames often seem like benign campfires. They can also be viewed with less focus on the concrete motif and more attention to the process of painting itself, in which Pastrňák blends techniques of brushing, rolling, splattering and spraying, and in one case even washes over the entire canvas with transparent white so that the painted fire looks masked with a veil of smoke.

Like more traditional forest painters, Pastrňák models his forests using light and dark within a limited color range and with big painterly gestures manages to achieve naturalistic passages that ring true to our own observations of wood fires.

Each painting is different, but there is a strong sense of repetition and a regularity to the rhythm of vertical elements in Pastrňák’s “Burning Forest” and earlier “Forest” series, creating a unified impression of being surrounded by an expressionistic ring of fire. The vertical elements can either have the effect of individual tongues of flames drawing the viewer into an intimate campfire or of flames dramatically shooting up the trunks of tall trees seen from a distance.

The exhibition ends February 27. If you are going to have a painting on your wall, it might as well be an interpretation of a forest fire, right?