Yes, and my father had nothing to say about the paramedic and structure-fire elements, as they weren't in his specialty. I think Dad thinks the city fire people are crazy the same way some city fire people can't believe what the Forest Service people do. The fires they fight and the tactics and equipment so different they they might as well be from different planets sometimes. For that matter, the amount of time the USFS people spend in the field is huge; back when I was in seventh grade, the Laufman Ranger District of the Plumas National Forest had a particularly bad day with dry lightning and something like 22 separate fires, two of which turned into monsters and then burned into each other (I remember being on the base and seeing the huge red-brown plume shooting into the sky from over the high ridge that separated us from where those fires were. My father was Fire Suppression Officer (at that time the #3 person on a USFS district, and effectively the Field Commander for the forces fighting the fires). I didn't see him for nearly a month, that being how long he was out there fighting that and other fires that summer, eating in field kitchens and sleeping whenever he got a chance, but never getting a chance to come home. I'm proud of my father's work, but I'd never want to do it myself.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-06-15 07:13 am (UTC)