Day 5

Granola bar for breakfast. Packed up camp and rushed off to Warm Springs Fire Management. After a presentation of the fire management crew and their different departments/careers, we are headed out to one of their project sites.

We're camping behind the fire station tonight. Hot showers and WiFi in our future???



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Today began with a presentation from Brad D. who is the Assistant Fire Management Officer with 24 years of experience fighting fires. Warm Springs Fire has 100+ staff based at the station and an additional 100+ staff in fire camps. The station takes care of all the projects within the reservation as well as some projects in the surrounding region.

Field staff includes a 20 person Hot Shot crew (who are a national resource, currently in Alaska, a 20 person Engine Crew, a 20 person Fields Crew, and a 10 person Fire Module.

Bob S. who is responsible for writing plans and monitoring progress of fire management projects, took over the second half of the presentation.

It is the general opinion of the Warm Springs fire management professionals that fire (controlled burns) need to be reintroduced to forest ecosystems to support healthy forests.

We learned that Wildland Fire Investigators look at direction of grass bends and location of individual char marks to determine the cause of a fire.

Administering a prescribed burn requires the right time (of day/time of year, temperature, seasonal variation, etc), right place (does the area have the necessary components to sustain a recovering ecosystem), the right people, and the right choices (ecosystem, local community, resources, etc).

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Our project site tour with Brad and Bob took us to back to back sites that had been treated (differently on each side of the road) with controlled burn. We ended at Warm Springs Longhouse in Hehee, where we had our sack lunch in the yard.

    

We collected flowers for pressing again from the project sites and the Longhouse. My group is responsible for dinner tonight, plan being chicken Alfredo. Camp setup followed by some blogging, and flower pressing will complete the day 5 activities.

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My veggie alternative dinner was soft shell tacos. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Hot water shower, and early bed.

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