HEATHER CASEY
Firehouse.com News
Maryland forester Mike Huneke just returned from 15 days of fighting the Cave Gulch fire in Helena National Forest, Montana.
"It's not as simple as you'd think back here in the East. The weather and conditions are just absolutely extreme," said Huneke, who served as crew boss for 19 Maryland men. Huneke's crew members worked 15-hour days for two weeks and returned on Aug 8.
"It was not glamorous - it was a lot of hard work," he said.
Firefighters who have signed up for the state's resource list might get only eight hours of notice to pack, take care of personal business and get to the ranger station to leave for an assignment, Huneke said.
His crew was the second requested to fight the wildfire at Helena National Forest, but the fire got so bad so quickly that there were over 1200 firefighters there by the time they arrived. The fire had grown to about 27,000 acres and had become the number one priority for the northern Rocky Mountain region because so many homes and buildings needed protection.
Photo By Mike Huneke
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Everything at the firefighters' camp, such as portable toilets and catering facilities, was brought in by truck, and resources were scarce. There were six showers provided for 1200 people, and only four telephones for personal use.
On a typical day the crew got up at 4:30 a.m. and had a big breakfast of eggs, hash browns and meat. As crew boss, Huneke would go to a briefing and then return to tell his crew their daily assignment. Meanwhile, the crew members would get everything ready, such as their tools, lunches, and batteries for radios. They would head out to the fire By 6:30 a.m., work until about 8 p.m., and then return to camp to wait an hour for a shower and half an hour for dinner.
"Basically you work all day and wait in line all night, and go to bed," Huneke said.
The crews start early because fires are less active in the morning due to higher humidity. "After 11 the fire takes off, and hopefully you've made enough progress by then," Huneke said.
For the first three to four days, the crew's task was to patrol and mop up anything within 100 feet of the fire line.
Then they got into structure protection - they would go ahead of the fire and clear brush, pine needles, scatter wood stacks, cut trees and cut fire lines around structures. In one case, they were about to burn the fuel around a house to protect it, but had to leave the canyon because of a blowup. After the fire passed, they mopped up around buildings that had been saved, including a historic log cabin.
Depending on a structure's location and building materials, "Some things are capable of being saved from the get-go, and some aren't," Huneke said.
Photo By Mike Huneke
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"You just have to try to get ahead of the fire, because there's not enough water in the world to put that out once it gets going," he said.
The crew also did pump and hose lays, to get water all the way up the mountain, as well as some initial attack.
On the last day there was a 1500-acre slop over - the fire got out of its line and winds got to 30 miles per hour. "We lost a lot of ground," he said.
Huneke, a forester with the Md. Department of Natural Resources Forest Services, said the state sends help out West for three main reasons:
"One, we believe in protecting forest resources wherever they may be - it's the right thing to do," he said. "Two, it's a great opportunity to get some experience and training that could pertain to a situation back in Maryland, and three - this is a mutual aid situation. If there ever was a disaster in Maryland, other states would have reason to come and help us."
"My biggest hope is that safety is maintained through this whole ordeal," he said.
Huneke's usual work includes tree planting, forest management and local fire suppression. He is an eight-year veteran of wildfire fighting, and believes this is the worst wildfire situation in 50 years because resources are spread so thin at all the major fires.
"Right now it's the entire western United States. Everything is in need - helicopters, overhead, administrative people - we don't even have enough caterers to take care of the people," he said.
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