Best week ever

Hey everyone,

I just got back into St. Louis last night after spending 11 days down in Eminence. This is about the time of the year that the Missouri Department of Conservation starts prescribed burn season. With that being said, my team spent a lot of time these past few days walking around and doing last minute prepping of burn units all around Eminence. Last week, we carried all of our gear, chain saws, weed whackers, leaf blowers, and gas around a different burn unit each day. 

Walking around these units isn't much fun and there really isn't a lot to do, so I get bored and need to find something to do. On the Coot Mountain fire line, there is a fire tower really close. With it being on MDC land, I had the key to let me inside. Of course I had to go up it and I'm glad I did. I could see for miles and miles. 

Looking north I believe. There's a river over yonder.

Blue Hulk just hanging out.

Lunch time on the steepest part of the fire line

After carrying our gear around the 4 mile burn unit, Susan, our contact, took us to see what she said was a really neat little gorge. It was pretty cool, and I almost fell off.

Sticking my feet of the edge.

On Friday, we found out that we were going to do a prescribed burn on Saturday. After switching some members on my team out with another team, we were ready to light up the forest. I did a pretty good job at that because I was given a drip torch to do it. Using a drip torch is awesome, you can start a fire so fast! I worked with two other people, they were from the Park Service, on igniting one side of the burn unit.

Hello fire

The tools of the trade

We started the fire at Rocky falls. It's a really cool shut-in.

Blue hulk parked like a rock star.

 I took a lot of pictures of the fire because it was really cool to see.

4 other ERT guys starting the other side of the line.

Boss man just standing in the fire.

There's my line!

1 of 3 engines that helped hold the fire.

The People Mover. This UTV went everywhere. Through rivers, in the fire, over logs.  You name it, it went there.

Hello sun

I think this is my favorite picture.

Post fire party picture.

The next day we were on fire standby so after doing some prepping of a fire line, we sat on the side of the rode and waited for our name to be called on the radio.

We got a little bored of that, so we drove down the road to Alley Springs. I later found at that this is part of a huge burn unit that I would work on a few days later.

On Monday, we were called to do another prescribed burn. This burn was much smaller, but it was much more fun. I was able to use the drip torch again to light the forest on fire again.

Blue hulk in rock star formation again

Burn baby burn

I was the last man making sure there are were no spot overs.

Smoke!

No spot overs

Smoke in trees.

My turn to light the forest on fire.

Lets let the AmeriCorps guys start the fire going down the steep hill. Thanks MDC, that was hard work.

Wind blowing the wrong way.

Another ERT took over at the bottom of the hill

The fire went about 50 feet in 10 seconds.

Down in the river bed.

The fire took off up the hill, so I didn't really have to breath too much smoke.

Point G. Still in the river bed.

Post fire looking up the huge steep hill I hiked down using a drip torch

On the last day, we were on the other side of the Alley Springs burn unit. I just walked around carrying a chain saw, chain saw gas and oil, food, fire shelter, radio, water, rake, and my camera. I slept so well that night. We hiked another 3 miles that day cutting down snags and moving fuel away from the line.

I'll be in St. Louis this weekend and then it's up in the air where I go. With the tornadoes this week in Branson and Southern Missouri, ERT has already been deployed. One team is in Branson, another in Buffalo, and another in Lebanon. So we'll see where I go.

Until later,

Shamucas.

First Post of 2012

Hey everyone,

Sorry I haven't updated this in a while. Christmas and New Years were way too much fun and kept me busy. But here I am once again. Since my last post, there has been plenty of fun and exciting things happening here in St. Louis and all around Southern Missouri.

Starting off, I flew home for Christmas and spent a lot of time with Sarah. We went skiing, walked Gnarly, and went to the Denver Aquarium. We spent new years in Boulder with all our friends and then before I knew it I was 30,000 feet in the air on my way back to St. Louis.

Sarah and I on top of Copper Mountain. Kevin went with us and took this great picture.

Gnarly loves walking around Wash Park.

One of the first things I did when I got back into St. Louis was to take the Pact Test. In order to fight fire on federal land, one has to carry 45 pounds for 3 miles while walking in under 45 minutes. It was tougher than I thought, leaving me with really sore shins and calves. I was in the first group to go and I was the first to finish in just over 41 minutes. I thought that was fast, until other members, practically ran the three miles and did it in 34 minutes. I found out its easier to run with the weight compared to walking, but the test really tests to see if one can actually walk 45 minutes with the weight.

Some people came out in the rain and watched us.

A few people getting ready to carry 45 pounds of batteries.

Then the next week I went back to Peck Ranch. I spend a lot of time there maintaining a fire line, it's mindless, but it has to be done or we would never be able to burn anything. We throw a lot of sticks around, move some large logs, and walk all around trying to get burn units ready to burn.

Before picture. Lots of wood need to be moved away from the fire line

After picture. No sparks can fly from wood that isn't there. That's one safe fire line.

Then it was the time for the best weekend ever. I surprised Sarah for our three year anniversary with a last minute surprise out to St. Louis. It was all planned out, and Sarah didn't know she was flying out to St. Louis until about 2 hours before her flight. Thanks Neil.

While she was here, we did all the tourist activities. We visited the Arch, the Budweiser plant, tried to go into the Schafly brewery, City Museum, Soulard Farmer's Market, and the free and awesome St. Louis Zoo.

Sarah and I at the arch

Sarah looking west. She loved the city.

Sarah at the zoo, totally fascinated by the penguins

Rocking out in the Bud truck. I told her she looked good in a truck.

Spudz. Good old spudz!

First tour of the morning. And we went on the short tour.

Sarah, you can't take hone all the dogs that you see

I had a great weekend, but Sarah had to go home. To make it worse, the next 2 days I was in St. Louis cutting and removing honey suckle. Honey suckle is the worst plant tree in the history of mankind. It just grows where ever and take over the land. But things got much better on that Wednesday when everyone went to Potosi, Missouri for the federal chainsaw class. Taking this class allows us to cut on federal land, aka, Forest Service land. I got my A classification sawyership after cutting down, and doing a great on my tree. If I hadn't fallen and scratched up my whole leg the day before, I would have cut more, but my leg was killing me thanks to my fire boots.

Everyone in the woods getting chapped up and saws ready

Mark scouting up his tree.

Everyone watching Andrew on his test.

 The next week I went to Eminence, Missouri to work on more fire line. This place is great, I really do love serving there. We do more than just move logs, we get to cut down snags, blow leaves, and really cut down anything that may be a hazard when it comes to fire.

Andrew trying really hard to start a backpack blower.

Grace giving a lesson on how to carry a backpack and a blower. Koala bear style she calls it.

Lisa filling up on gas in the middle of no where.

Lisa and Grace blowing the line behind me. Three blowers can make a 8 foot wide fire line in no time.

Before, tons of leaves.

After three blowers made there way up the hill. Leaves moved off the fire line.

Hopefully I have time to update this blog more often in the next few weeks. My neighborhood is swarming right now a week and a half before Mardi Gras, so I can only imagine what I will stumble across. Until next time, see you all later.

Shamucas

End of Joplin, Beginning of Conservation Work

Hey everyone,


    Sorry for such a long time between posts. Towards the end of my time in Joplin, things got super crazy and very stressful. I had to have a few of my WIBs fired for showing up after lunch intoxicated. That lead to a series of events where I had to get in contact with my WIB supervisors and tell them to get their small teams to be better productive and to actually get something accomplished. But other than that, I very much loved my time down in Joplin. I felt that no matter what, every day the ERT was able to do something productive.

    On one Friday in particular, I was dropping off tools at sites when I came to a house where a group of nursing students were to break up, remove, and put in a new sidewalk. Whenever I had the chance to hit something, I took full advantage of it. I pulled up and saw the students working and they needed some assistance. They weren't have the best of luck with breaking up the concrete, so I took over and went to town on the sidewalk. There is something to be said about how much fun it is to break things.

Nursing students trying to break the sidewalk up

Removing the concrete after I got there

    After things got broken up, I found out that the volunteers had to leave. Unfortunately, the homeowner already had the cement ordered and it was on its way. I used my Nextel and called the office looking to see if there were any volunteers available, but they was none. And right then, the office found out they had a deadline to meet on the demo board, so I couldn't recruit any of my ERT friends. I then realized that I would be pouring all the cement with the homeowner all by ourselves. We were able to do it, I learned a lot, and it looked really good. When I was done, the homeowner was so very happy and started crying and thanking me for sticking around and helping him get this done. The only thing I could do was to give him a huge hug and tell him that we were there for him.

Finished project

The homeowner put in a cross

   A few weeks later, I remembered the homeowner told me his birthday was that week, so I bought him a cookie cake and brought a few of my ERT friends and gave him a little surprise birthday party. It was nice to see him again, and he was as thankful as ever. He loved us.

   Like I said earlier, I got really busy and didn't take many pictures of what I was doing. I got a team of NCCC AmeriCorps volunteers from Denver who came to Joplin to help us out. They helped me out a lot, I put them right to work in the field as site supervisors to make sure nothing got out of control.

One of the last projects I was involved in was gutting a house in preparation for demolishing it. It was rainy and cold, but for about a week, I had volunteers out there working really hard. Sometimes I forget that in these houses, people use to actually live there. This house was abandoned after the storm, leaving everything still inside. I found a lot of things that just made me sad and realize how bad the storm was.

This was one of my favorite views. I finally got a picture of it on a rainy day. This is in Duquesne, just East of Joplin.

Bird's nest in the food cabinet.

Gutting

Volunteers from Texas who took down a shed finishing taking apart the roof.

Illinois students gutting the house

One of the other projects that we always did was raking properties so that we could clear the property off our database. Now days, that is practically all we do. These are pretty boring, but I get out and help every once in a while. The property needs to be able to be mow-able / seed-able.

My volunteers. My NCCC is to the right, wearing the black coat.

Action picture! It was really cold out and snowing.

95% done. but it looks great.

    Another day, when it was snowing out, a group of volunteers and I helped Habitat for Humanity lay sod at 5 houses. It was yet another thing that I didn't know how to do, but I figured it out pretty quickly.

Man that looks really good.

   Last week was my first week on conservation. We went down to southern Missouri to Peck Ranch. It is a wildlife refuge that is literally in the middle of nowhere. I stayed in a trailer for the week, which was really nice, but I didn't have phone service to call Sarah. The only place that I could get service was 2 miles away up on top of a hill that is called Phone Booth Hill.

  At Peck Ranch, we maintained a fire line so that in the spring, they can do a prescribed burn. We literally picked up any stick within 60 feet of the road, and carried it further away from the road. I've never done so much back and forth walking in my life. It snowed one night leaving us a cold, wet mess the next day. However, it was fun to drive in though.

Road in the middle of nowhere Peck Ranch. Spent all week on the left side throwing logs around.

Look at that park job.

Looking awesome.

   Well thats about it, as I am writing this on Sunday evening, I found out I am going back to Peck Ranch in the morning. I'll take more pictures, or at least try to. Until later.

Love - Shamucas