fighting fire in a rainforest

we spent the past 10 days on a 220ha fire just north of mcbride - in an interior rainforest. it was the most unusual fire that i've ever been on. in some freak weather event, the fire raged downslope through cedar and hemlock (one of the least likely to burn fuel types that exist). our crew worked the bottom edge of the fire, often hiking up to 800m through unburned devil's club up to our eyeballs to get to spot fires that needed to be put out. we didn't use pumps or hose because of how spread out the spots were. instead, we carried around canvas pails so that we could use water from small streams where they existed. if there was no stream within 50m or so, we'd just use dirt to put the fire out, or if the fire was too hot for dirt, we'd buck up whatever was burning and pile it up to let it burn itself out over a day or two and then we'd go back to check on it. we got our fair share of rain on the fire, and spent a good chunk of our evenings picking devil's club thorns out of our skin and scratching mosquito bites (i guess they don't just live in the skeg), but all in all, it was a pretty fun fire, mostly for it's uniqueness.

NOT impressed by the devil's club!


a huge cedar stump. funny story...my squad noticed a sign for an "ancient forest" with 2000 yo cedars on the way down to the fire that we wanted to check out. so on our last morning, we got up extra early to make the drive and hike to see it and still meet everyone in pg on time. turns out the biggest tree in there was no bigger than what our fallers had been cutting (don't worry, they only cut the burning ones) on our fire!