Forestry Students Fight Fires Out West
The hours are long and the working conditions are atypical. Nevertheless,
for a couple of forestry students, fighting forest fires out West was
the summer job of a lifetime.
Jim Maki, a senior working on his BS in Forestry,
missed the first week and a half of school fighting fires in Montana.
"We were doing hot line," he said, which involves clearing vegetation
with hand tools to create a firebreak. "If anything ran across the line,
I was there to put it out," he said. "There were a lot of rolling rocks.
It was quite something to see them coming down the hill at you."
Andrea Durham, who is in the Master's International Program in Forestry,
fought wildfires in California, Utah, and Idaho. "They required a lot
of hiking," she said. "In the Sequoia National Forest, we were up at 9,000
feet--there were lots of arduous conditions."
Durham and the rest of her crew often did mop up--checking burned-over
areas, stirring up embers so the fire wouldn't reignite, and watching
for smoke. "Often times, we'd pull a sixteen-hour shift, and you can pull
thirty-two hours or longer," she said.
"When we were lucky, we got in on the initial attack," she said. "Sometimes
we were on the line with the hotshots--I'd love to go on a hotshot crew
in the future, but I'm going into the Peace Corps in April."
Maki wouldn't mind fighting fire again, either. While the hourly pay
is not terribly impressive, the paycheck can be because of the long hours.
"I worked a total of 256 hours in two weeks," Maki said.
And it certainly isn't your usual summer job.
"It was something," Maki says. "With all the fire, we hardly saw the
sun. And it wasn't scary--it was more of an adrenalin rush."
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources holds a firefighting course
every spring for MTU's forestry students, and this year about half a dozen
of them fought wildfires last summer. "It's fun to do," Associate Professor
Blair Orr (SFWP) said. "And the agencies are really concerned about safety,
so the students don't go into the danger zone with the hotshot crews."
In addition to making better money than at most summer jobs, students
who fight fires get good experience. "They get to work for days on end
with people who do a variety of jobs that are all forestry related," Orr
said. "And because most fires are out West, they get to see other forests."
To see photos of students fighting forest fires during summer 2000, visit
http://forestry.mtu.edu/peacecor/fires.htm
