Full Transcript for A Hotshot

your logistics is all there, and all of these things. 00:02:51.939 --> 00:02:54.580 And there's usually a chow hall there, they bring in caterers. 00:02:54.580 --> 00:02:57.379 It's this place that we go, we call it Fire Camp. 00:02:57.379 --> 00:03:05.459 Most of the resources go in there at night, they get their food, they get their logistics reestablished for the next following operational period, and and things like this. 00:03:06.074 --> 00:03:10.555 So the crew gets its orders and then they have to get close to the fire. 00:03:10.555 --> 00:03:16.395 And of course, the wildland fires Ben fights don't conveniently burn near paved roads. 00:03:16.395 --> 00:03:25.930 So sometimes, hotshot crews will take a helicopter to the fire, but they're more likely to hike to it, carrying all of their gear along the way. 00:03:26.250 --> 00:03:47.979 So it's, you know, hand tools, it's medical gear, it's the ability to communicate to helicopters, it's radios, it's maps, it's compasses, it's GPSs, it's water and food to sustain us for thirty two hours, it's, you know, our packs, our gear, fire shelters, chainsaws, anything that you could think of for us to be able to contain and control the fire. 00:03:47.979 --> 00:03:52.139 And and what hotshot crews are primarily known for is creating fuel breaks. 00:03:52.139 --> 00:03:58.995 So we go out and we dig line, removing vegetation and ground fuel. 00:03:58.995 --> 00:04:01.794 When you say dig line, help me understand that. 00:04:01.794 --> 00:04:02.114 Yeah. 00:04:02.114 --> 00:04:07.074 So digging line, if you think of just like a single track trail that you might run or walk on 00:04:07.313 --> 00:04:07.555 Yeah. 00:04:08.020 --> 00:04:10.900 That's essentially kinda what we're looking at doing. 00:04:10.900 --> 00:04:15.620 We go in there with tools, various names of these types of tools. 00:04:15.620 --> 00:04:17.379 One of the famous ones is called a Pulaski. 00:04:17.379 --> 00:04:20.500 It's a axe with a a hoe end on the other side. 00:04:20.500 --> 00:04:20.899 Okay. 00:04:20.899 --> 00:04:27.535 And we're literally just making trails, you know, from a rudimentary kind of standpoint to contain the fire. 00:04:27.535 --> 00:04:28.894 And we can do that in two different ways. 00:04:28.894 --> 00:04:35.134 We can do direct attack, which is right on the edge of the fire, or we can do indirect attack, which could be like multiple ridge lines away. 00:04:35.134 --> 00:04:53.105 And so that's kind of our bread and butter, and we use chainsaws to remove brush, cut dead trees down, and so we make these swaths and trails out in the woods, so that when the fire gets to these containment lines, or if we're right on the fire putting in the containment line, there's nothing for the fire to burn. 00:04:53.425 --> 00:04:55.024 That's so interesting. 00:04:55.024 --> 00:05:00.305 And the trail thing is a really useful, I know it's not exactly that, but it's useful just to have in my head. 00:05:00.305 --> 00:05:08.160 Like, how wide does that have to be before you know a fire is not gonna be able to like jump over it and get to the resources on the other side? 00:05:08.399 --> 00:05:08.879 Yeah. 00:05:08.879 --> 00:05:09.600 Great question. 00:05:09.600 --> 00:05:22.845 So if we're doing a direct attack right on the fire's edge, typically, you know, the the flame lengths, the heat, the vegetation maybe is more conducive for us to be that close, and our specs are usually, we would say, ten and two. 00:05:22.845 --> 00:05:38.050 So a 10 foot chainsaw cut removing all brush and burnable material from the ground level all the way up through a canopy of trees, and two would be our scrape or our trail system that we would be creating as a two foot bare minimum soil scrape. 00:05:38.425 --> 00:05:39.144 Two foot. 00:05:39.144 --> 00:05:39.625 Okay. 00:05:39.625 --> 00:05:40.105 Uh-huh. 00:05:40.105 --> 00:05:40.504 Two foot. 00:05:40.504 --> 00:05:40.665 Yeah. 00:05:40.665 --> 00:05:43.225 And it works better than you would think honestly. 00:05:43.225 --> 00:05:44.504 That is shocking to me. 00:05:44.504 --> 00:05:49.144 I would have thought it had to be like 15 foot or something like wow, two feet. 00:05:49.384 --> 00:05:49.865 Yeah. 00:05:49.865 --> 00:05:58.620 And if we're in more of an extended attack situation, it could be multiple ridgelines away and we could be looking at using dozer line on top of ridgelines. 00:05:58.620 --> 00:06:10.995 It could be our two foot scrape trail, but it could be like a 50 to 200 foot cut where we're actually taking a lot more vegetation away because we're away from the fire. 00:06:10.995 --> 00:06:15.475 So instead of being right on top of it where we can kind of control the risk a little bit more 00:06:15.714 --> 00:06:16.035 Mhmm. 00:06:16.035 --> 00:06:22.274 We may need to put a much bigger cut in because the fire has burnable fuel before it gets to us. 00:06:22.274 --> 00:06:26.769 So you could have taller, more aggressive flame lengths and fire. 00:06:27.649 --> 00:06:36.129 And how frequently are you able to see the fire versus, you know, maybe working at the periphery where you think it's headed or something? 00:06:36.805 --> 00:06:38.564 Sometimes you can see it really well. 00:06:38.564 --> 00:06:43.603 I mean, there's a bunch of factors that play into that. Depending on the time of year, where we're at. 00:06:43.603 --> 00:06:45.603 Sometimes you do not see the fire actually. 00:06:45.603 --> 00:06:47.444 You just have a general idea of where it's at. 00:06:47.444 --> 00:06:57.459 You know, we have a our lowest level, like, marching orders for fighting fire, and it's called LCES, which is Lookouts, Communications, Escape Routes, and Safety Zones. 00:06:57.459 --> 00:07:02.180 And a lookout is somebody who is able to actually see the fire. 00:07:02.180 --> 00:07:02.500 Okay. 00:07:02.500 --> 00:07:06.819 It's really hard to get into an area if you don't know where the danger's at. 00:07:07.543 -->

00:07:13.545 But it's one thing to be able to see a fire, and another thing entirely to predict where it's going to go. 00:07:14.103 --> 00:07:21.689 Fuel and topography and weather are the primary motivators for the direction of where a fire wants to run. 00:07:21.689 --> 00:07:21.930 Right? 00:07:21.930 --> 00:07:23.930 Fuel, topography, and weather. 00:07:23.930 --> 00:07:24.490 Okay. 00:07:24.490 --> 00:07:24.810 Good. 00:07:24.810 --> 00:07:25.209 Yep. 00:07:25.209 --> 00:07:25.529 Yep. 00:07:25.529 --> 00:07:30.009 So wherever the wind is blowing is like a factor. 00:07:30.009 --> 00:07:30.250 Right? 00:07:30.250 --> 00:07:32.089 Because fire runs uphill primarily. 00:07:32.089 --> 00:07:36.329 If there was no wind, the fire would just move with the topography, move with the terrain. 00:07:36.329 --> 00:07:42.535 And it would follow the contents of the fuel that are in those particular areas. 00:07:42.535 --> 00:07:49.334 So if you have a very heavily brushed area versus something that's not, you know, it's gonna wanna run to where the fuel's at based on the topography. 00:07:49.334 --> 00:07:57.449 So if we have not a lot of wind, then we can predict that the fire is gonna want to move with the terrain and where the dense fuel is. 00:07:57.449 --> 00:07:58.089 Mhmm. 00:07:58.250 --> 00:08:13.504 Now, there's contradictions to that too because you could have something like a Santa Ana wind, which we see in Southern California, and then those winds come out of the east, and they'll push fire straight to the ocean downhill for multiple days in a row. 00:08:13.504 --> 00:08:20.064 So weather and wind can basically cancel out the topography in in many different situations. 00:08:21.899 --> 00:08:29.100 Have you ever been working on a fire where it was actively moving toward a town or a residential area? 00:08:29.500 --> 00:08:30.060 Yeah. 00:08:30.060 --> 00:08:31.579 More times than I can count. 00:08:31.579 --> 00:08:45.495 One one particular fire that was very impactful for me was the Carr fire, and the Carr fire was in the Reading area on 2000 either '17 or '18. 00:08:45.495 --> 00:09:00.899 I can't remember the year, but it made a massive push down into this town of Reading in Northern California and and got into that town, and it was a moment in my life where I had to question whether or not this is something I wanted to continue to do. 00:09:00.899 --> 00:09:01.539 Oh, wow. 00:09:01.539 --> 00:09:15.154 Because it felt very much like I had zero effect on mitigating any risk in the fire environment, and my sole purpose in that particular fire was to make sure people didn't die. 00:09:15.889 --> 00:09:19.889 What Ben and his crew encountered is what's called an inversion. 00:09:19.889 --> 00:09:25.570 Usually air gets cooler the higher you go, but an inversion flips that. 00:09:25.570 --> 00:09:32.404 There's cool smoky air close to the ground, and then a layer of warm air sitting above it. 00:09:32.404 --> 00:09:37.044 It's almost like a

lid, and it temporarily suppresses the fire. 00:09:37.044 --> 00:09:41.524 But what crews worry about is when the inversion breaks. 00:09:41.524 --> 00:09:47.220 Ben described the break as being like a wood burning stove with a dampener. 00:09:47.220 --> 00:09:54.019 When you open the dampener, oxygen rushes in and whoosh, the fire gets intense fast. 00:09:54.705 --> 00:10:19.438 It was a very traumatic experience at the time where we had this massive break in an inversion where oxygen starts to flow back into the fire and you get this extreme combustion that takes place to where the smoke column rises super high and starts to develop these what we call pyrocumulus clouds, or it's like what you would see from like a lightning storm. 00:10:19.438 --> 00:10:23.664 These cauliflower mashed potato looking clouds really really high. 00:10:23.664 --> 00:10:31.345 And as that heat rises, it condenses in the colder air and that mashed potato cloud gets really heavy and it collapses. 00:10:31.345 --> 00:10:47.909 And when that collapses, it brings down superheated air down to the ground level and shoots it out in every direction and you can have massive amounts of combustion in an area very very quickly and instead of air being very directional, it's going everywhere. 00:10:48.674 --> 00:10:49.794 That's terrifying. 00:10:49.794 --> 00:10:52.355 It's like the fire's creating its own weather. 00:10:52.835 --> 00:10:53.554 Correct. 00:10:53.554 --> 00:10:54.914 It is exactly doing that. 00:10:54.914 --> 00:10:55.394 Yeah. 00:10:55.554 --> 00:10:59.075 And were you and your crew at risk during that time? 00:10:59.634 --> 00:11:00.034 No. 00:11:00.034 --> 00:11:03.169 We we saw it coming, fortunately. 00:11:03.169 --> 00:11:05.970 Again, you know, we're paying attention to the fire environment. 00:11:05.970 --> 00:11:07.649 This is our skill set. 00:11:07.649 --> 00:11:10.929 Paying attention to the fire environment and we're seeing cues. 00:11:10.929 --> 00:11:14.529 We're seeing, oh, you know, an inversion sits down and you can't see the sky. 00:11:14.529 --> 00:11:15.570 It's like being in fog. 00:11:15.570 --> 00:11:23.264 And when that inversion's down, air is not getting into the actual fire on the ground, so it's kind of keeping everything kind of tampered down a little bit. 00:11:23.264 --> 00:11:23.825 Mhmm. 00:11:23.825 --> 00:11:31.424 But once the inversion breaks, you start to see blue sky a little bit, or you start to notice trees moving a little bit, like, okay, the inversion's getting ready to break. 00:11:31.424 --> 00:11:38.700 And we noticed these cues start to happen, fire starts to pick up, and we are like, hey, we need to start getting people to a safe place. 00:11:38.700 --> 00:11:50.653 So we already had established a safety zone, so we started heading down there and starting assessing where the fire might potentially want to go, so that we could prepare for that fire to get there and take action. 00:11:50.653 --> 00:11:58.254 But in this particular case, the combustion was so intense that the column actually collapsed over the top of us and there was really nothing we could do. 00:11:58.975 --> 00:12:03.850 So the wildland fires Ben and his crew are trying to contain are sprawling and complex. 00:12:03.850 --> 00:12:10.009 And Ben says the fact that we even have hotshot crews mobilized against them is remarkable. 00:12:10.490 --> 00:12:13.370 I had this idea about this not that long ago. 00:12:13.370 --> 00:12:18.889 Wildfire is like the only natural disaster that we're actually trying to influence. 00:12:19.745 --> 00:12:22.144 That's a great point. 00:12:22.144 --> 00:12:28.065 You know, we're not trying to put a cork on a volcano, you know, or it's like it's mother nature. 00:12:28.065 --> 00:12:29.264 It's very powerful. 00:12:29.264 --> 00:12:38.379 And if you don't respect that and work with it, instead of like putting pressure on it to like manipulate it, a lot of times you're gonna get bit in the butt. 00:12:38.379 --> 00:12:59.004 So we very much take that perspective of like, hey, we can do work here to maybe contain and control a specific area and guide it into a place and or remove enough burnable fuel ahead of the fire so that when it reaches that point, it it doesn't wanna move any further in the direction we're trying to keep it away from. 00:13:00.929 --> 00:13:14.850 I'm just trying to get I I still feel like I'm struggling with the basic idea that a crew of 20 people can just, you know, not with fire trucks or we're talking about just backpacks and axes and and other hand tools 00:13:14.865 --> 00:13:15.024 Mhmm. 00:13:15.024 --> 00:13:17.583 Can, like, meaningfully influence a wildfire. 00:13:17.583 --> 00:13:19.345 Like, that's a kinda superpower. 00:13:19.345 --> 00:13:24.304 I mean, it just seems like the ultimate David and Goliath story, is it not? 00:13:24.464 --> 00:13:25.105 Yeah. 00:13:25.105 --> 00:13:25.504 Totally. 00:13:25.504 --> 00:13:27.105 I mean, it feels that way sometimes. 00:13:27.105 --> 00:13:27.345 You know? 00:13:27.345 --> 00:13:35.339 There's there's lots of times you put put work in for multiple days or weeks in a row and the fire just says, don't care what you just did. 00:13:35.339 --> 00:13:38.620 I'm gonna go over this thing and then you gotta start over again, you know. 00:13:38.620 --> 00:13:43.259 And and but we also use other tools too, like we fight fire with fire. 00:13:43.894 --> 00:13:44.855 How so? 00:13:44.934 --> 00:13:45.335 Yeah. 00:13:45.335 --> 00:14:04.279 One of our greatest tools as a hotshot crew is to if we are doing an indirect attack, so we're away from the main edge of the fire, main body of the fire, say a couple of ridgelines away, we put in the work necessary to hold an area so that when the fire gets there, it doesn't want to move past that line. 00:14:04.279 --> 00:14:08.360 And one of the ways that we do that is we will do something called back burning. 00:14:08.440 --> 00:14:08.840 Mhmm.

00:14:08.840 --> 00:14:20.174 So we'll actually use fire, we'll put fire on the ground burning off of the control line that we used and creating a much bigger buffer before that fire gets there. 00:14:20.174 --> 00:14:38.528 So you could have that ten and two situation that I talked about with our cut in our hand line, could be a two foot hand line and a 3,000 foot backburn that removed all of the ladder fuels that a fire would burn to before it approaches that area. 00:14:38.528 --> 00:14:43.424 So it basically hits that burned area that we already put in, and it just stops. 00:14:43.424 --> 00:14:50.065 After the break, where a hotshot crew sleeps while they're on assignment, stay with us. 00:14:56.429 --> 00:14:57.230 Hey, folks. 00:14:57.230 --> 00:14:58.190 Dan here. 00:14:58.190 --> 00:15:03.070 A hearty hello to the many new listeners who have joined us during the air travel series. 00:15:03.070 --> 00:15:04.350 Welcome to you all. 00:15:04.350 --> 00:15:09.149 One thing you may not realize is that this is not a big corporate show. 00:15:09.149 --> 00:15:12.653 It's just Matt and me, a labor of love. 00:15:12.653 --> 00:15:17.934 And because of that, we rely so much on our listeners for help in making the show. 00:15:17.934 --> 00:15:30.620 So just as an example, of the five guests that were in the air travel series, two came directly from suggestions you made and a third saw a LinkedIn post of mine and volunteered themselves. 00:15:30.620 --> 00:15:44.884 So for all of you, newcomers and old timers alike, we always want to hear your ideas for professions and your recommendations for specific people who love their work and are good talkers. 00:15:44.884 --> 00:15:49.605 Just email us anytime at jobs@whatitslike.com. 00:15:49.605 --> 00:15:52.028 And now, back to the show. 00:15:52.028 --> 00:16:14.485 Before a hotshot crew start to work on a fire, they identify two things, an escape route to follow in case things go bad, and the location of a safe zone where the fire can't touch them. 00:16:14.884 --> 00:16:23.409 It's described often in our documents as a place that you could lay out a lawn chair and sit and watch the fire go by. 00:16:23.649 --> 00:16:29.330 So no vegetation, rocky, or like what concretely would be the characteristics? 00:16:29.409 --> 00:16:29.809 Yeah. 00:16:29.809 --> 00:16:33.250 It could be a large gravel parking lot. 00:16:33.250 --> 00:16:34.690 It could be an actual parking lot. 00:16:34.690 --> 00:16:36.289 It could be a body of water. 00:16:36.289 --> 00:16:38.705 It could be a place where there's no vegetation at all. 00:16:38.705 --> 00:16:41.024 It could be large rock outcroppings. 00:16:41.024 --> 00:16:49.424 It could be the top of a ridge line where a bunch of bulldozers like leveled out a place that's nice and flat with no burnable material. 00:16:49.424 --> 00:16:51.664 So it's like a dirt parking lot on top of a ridge. 00:16:51.664 --> 00:16:54.629 It could just be getting in our trucks and driving away. 00:16:55.269 --> 00:17:02.470 I asked Ben where his crew usually slept, and he said, sometimes it's near the incident command base, which we talked about earlier. 00:17:02.470 --> 00:17:06.150 But he said, they actually prefer to stay closer to the action. 00:17:07.095 --> 00:17:10.295 We prefer what we would call spiking out. 00:17:10.295 --> 00:17:22.375 So it looks like camping, but we call it spiking out because we're just sending a spike into the ground, we're gonna lay down right here, throw our sleeping bags out, sleep, wake up, and be right where the fire's at so we can get to work right away. 00:17:22.578 --> 00:17:23.220 Wow. 00:17:23.220 --> 00:17:25.460 Especially when there's a need for it. 00:17:25.460 --> 00:17:31.619 So we work from zero six hundred to twenty two hundred, sixteen hour days. 00:17:31.940 --> 00:17:32.339 Wait. 00:17:32.339 --> 00:17:33.778 That's the routine? 00:17:33.778 --> 00:17:35.058 Sixteen hour days? 00:17:35.058 --> 00:17:36.099 Like that's normal? 00:17:36.099 --> 00:17:36.659 Yeah. 00:17:36.900 --> 00:17:37.859 Holy cow. 00:17:38.535 --> 00:17:41.815 And during the off time, we're just sleeping in the dirt. 00:17:41.815 --> 00:17:49.174 So sixteen hour days, sleeping in the dirt, rinse and repeat, two weeks at a time from basically June to December. 00:17:49.494 --> 00:17:50.454 Holy cow. 00:17:50.454 --> 00:17:52.940 Man, that's a lot of time away. 00:17:52.940 --> 00:18:00.138 I mean And it's not like you can jump on a Zoom in the middle of the forest, know, it's probably hard to communicate even given that. 00:18:01.259 --> 00:18:03.019 Oftentimes we're in places we can't. 00:18:03.019 --> 00:18:03.179 Yeah. 00:18:04.355 --> 00:18:09.954 So what I mean, what effect does that have on your life just that time away? 00:18:11.875 --> 00:18:14.115 Well, I'm divorced, so that paints a little bit of a picture. 00:18:14.914 --> 00:18:15.154 Yeah. 00:18:17.160 --> 00:18:19.079 And a lot of us get divorced, know. 00:18:19.079 --> 00:18:21.640 I think it takes a very strong family dynamic. 00:18:21.640 --> 00:18:36.364 It takes a partner or significant other back at home that is independent for sure and has the, again, the mental fortitude to get through things with you being gone, then it's it's can be rare. 00:18:36.923 --> 00:18:47.069 As you might imagine, given this description, it takes a special kind of person who not only is willing to do this work, but is physically able to do it. 00:18:47.390 --> 00:18:56.029 You know, science tells us that our energy expenditures at the highest peak are during the hike in and the hike out of our work site. 00:18:56.029 --> 00:19:02.565 So I tell people, you should be at least able to run 10 miles if I say today we're running 10 miles. 00:19:02.644 --> 00:19:03.285 Mhmm. 00:19:03.285 --> 00:19:11.523 You should be able to calisthenically move your body in a healthy way that allows you to do a certain amount of pull ups, certain amount of push ups, certain amount

of sit ups, things of this nature. 00:19:11.523 --> 00:19:13.285 Know, it's just can you get through it? 00:19:13.285 --> 00:19:16.868 Can you work your body enough to get through that recovery and keep working? 00:19:17.190 --> 00:19:25.109 That is I mean, just the sheer endurance factor just seems like the thing that really pops out here, on for sixteen hours a day. 00:19:25.109 --> 00:19:36.474 Like, if if you ran a half marathon with your buddies, that that is a very different animal than the eighth consecutive day of sixteen hours of swinging an axe and hiking through difficult terrain. 00:19:36.474 --> 00:19:40.795 Does that mean this is primarily, like, a a young person's game? 00:19:41.179 --> 00:19:42.858 I think so. 00:19:42.858 --> 00:19:54.220 You know, I'm I'm I'll be 44 in June and, you know, my body's although I've taken really good care of it, you know, it's I can't show up the same way that 20 year olds can. 00:19:54.220 --> 00:19:54.700 That's for sure. 00:19:56.023 --> 00:20:01.304 What kind of mistakes did you make early as a superintendent that you wouldn't make now? 00:20:04.263 --> 00:20:06.104 Trying to prove my worth. 00:20:06.104 --> 00:20:15.200 You know, as I when I got the job, like I said, there's maybe maybe a 100 hotshot crews, that means there's maybe a 100 hotshot superintendents. 00:20:15.200 --> 00:20:25.119 And when I got the job, I was very hungry to prove myself that I deserved to be there. 00:20:25.119 --> 00:20:25.440 Yeah. 00:20:26.555 --> 00:20:42.089 And we didn't make any mistakes where people were at more risk than they should have been or you know, we didn't have any close calls, but I burned the candle at both ends immensely. 00:20:42.089 --> 00:20:49.450 And that had a huge effect on who I was and how that was bleeding into the crew in terms of just rest and recovery. 00:20:49.450 --> 00:20:53.849 I just wanted a hard charge all of the time and be the tip of the spear all of the time. 00:20:53.849 --> 00:21:01.394 And as I've learned how to exist in this role, you don't have to do that that much. 00:21:01.394 --> 00:21:13.618 And and in fact, it's allowed me to step back a little bit further and be more in an observation role and actually see where we need to push hard, where we need to let off. 00:21:13.618 --> 00:21:19.619 And I would say that that was probably you know a mistake or a very a learning point in my career for sure. 00:21:20.994 --> 00:21:30.434 Was there a particular moment when that that bias that you had of you know, trying to be the best, trying to push for a little bit more became apparent to you? 00:21:32.289 --> 00:21:32.849 Yeah. 00:21:32.849 --> 00:21:34.048 For sure. 00:21:34.048 --> 00:21:36.528 So I got the job in 2020. 00:21:36.528 --> 00:21:42.210 In 2020, we had this I don't know if anybody remembers, there's this thing called COVID. 00:21:42.769 --> 00:21:43.730 Rings a bell. 00:21:43.730 --> 00:21:44.369 Yeah. 00:21:44.769 --> 00:21:45.250 Yeah. 00:21:45.250 --> 00:21:57.734 So first year superintendent and COVID was going on, and we happened to have, in my opinion, the most aggressive fire season that I've ever been a part of. 00:21:57.734 --> 00:22:05.500 We had a million acre fire in Northern California along with multiple 100,000 acre fires all over the country, definitely in the state of California too. 00:22:05.500 --> 00:22:09.660 So it was, to say the least, very very very aggressive. 00:22:09.660 --> 00:22:18.055 And so we were pushing so hard that year partly because we kinda had to, but partly because I didn't know how not to. 00:22:18.055 --> 00:22:20.535 And again, I was trying to prove myself. 00:22:20.535 --> 00:22:25.974 And it got to the point where at the end of that fire season, I was shot. 00:22:25.974 --> 00:22:36.329 I was so shot physically, emotionally, mentally that I started experiencing depression for the first time in my life. 00:22:36.329 --> 00:22:38.730 And in December, I actually tried to commit suicide. 00:22:38.809 --> 00:22:39.369 Oh, man. 00:22:39.369 --> 00:22:53.765 And so that was a huge wake up moment for me as an individual in terms of what it is that I how am I showing up for myself, and how is that version of myself bleeding into the people that I lead. 00:22:53.765 --> 00:23:12.204 And how do I navigate that space so that I can be present of mind, body, and spirit, so that the individuals who who follow me willingly are learning from my mistakes on how to navigate just not only the fire environment but life in general. 00:23:12.204 --> 00:23:17.565 Like I again, fire is a job that I've chosen to do but this is life stuff. 00:23:17.565 --> 00:23:27.898 Everything we do in these paths that we choose has trickle effects in every aspect of things that we do whether that's with our family, ourselves, whatever. 00:23:28.380 --> 00:23:32.380 What helped you come back from that time? 00:23:34.115 --> 00:23:49.940 The realization that I think a lot of people can relate to this but specifically first responders and veterans and these people that I work with now outside of this and from breathing from this experience is like we identify with what we do. 00:23:49.940 --> 00:23:59.219 We identify with what a hotshot is, what a firefighter is, and we label that and slap it on our forehead. 00:23:59.219 --> 00:24:07.755 And you know, a hotshot to me was this rough, tumbly, nothing can affect you, you can push through anything situation. 00:24:07.755 --> 00:24:28.460 And that only gets you so damn far when one of your friends dies, or somebody you know passes away from a fire, or someone that you know commits suicide, or whatever challenge that you may be existing and and you start to feel things that don't relate to the identity that you've created in your mind anymore. 00:24:29.019 --> 00:24:31.740 Because you're supposed to be impervious. 00:24:32.523 --> 00:24:33.483 Exactly. 00:24:33.483 --> 00:24:34.923 But now you're emotional. 00:24:34.923 --> 00:24:37.724 Now you're

now you can't connect with your family. 00:24:37.724 --> 00:24:39.163 Now you can't connect with yourself. 00:24:39.163 --> 00:24:39.484 Mhmm. 00:24:39.484 --> 00:24:40.923 Some people lose their faith. 00:24:40.923 --> 00:24:43.724 Some people can't, you know, run and work out anymore. 00:24:43.724 --> 00:24:46.204 Some people just they they start to question things. 00:24:46.204 --> 00:24:49.940 Who am I now after all of this? 00:24:49.940 --> 00:25:00.740 And to me, going through that it was a wake up call to realize that being a hotshot is just an aspect of my life, it's not who I am. 00:25:00.740 --> 00:25:05.724 It's just something I I do and it is a part of my identity but it's not the whole picture. 00:25:06.204 --> 00:25:11.005 What what is the culture like on your hotshot crew? 00:25:11.005 --> 00:25:12.845 Like how would you describe it to an outsider? 00:25:13.619 --> 00:25:19.700 Well, they're a bunch of really hungry people that enjoy suffering together. 00:25:19.700 --> 00:25:23.859 So that part's pretty cool, know. 00:25:23.859 --> 00:25:25.700 Communal masochism. 00:25:25.700 --> 00:25:26.099 Yeah. 00:25:26.099 --> 00:25:32.605 Shared suffering is a really great place to grow a family, you know? 00:25:32.605 --> 00:25:55.494 You know, on that point, I mean, you're half joking, but, you know, there's there's a fair amount of research that says when groups, especially, like if you ask people that have been part of groups what they remember, a lot of times what they recall are not like the happy, fizzy, bubbly moments, but the but the moments when they suffered in the service of something important, which is exactly what you're describing. 00:25:55.654 --> 00:25:56.375 Absolutely. 00:25:56.375 --> 00:26:00.855 And putting all joking aside, it is something that I have come to appreciate. 00:26:00.855 --> 00:26:23.515 Maybe not the most, but definitely it's up there in the top three probably is how trained individuals who come together willingly to dedicate their lives and their service for something bigger than themselves knowing that they're going to suffer through things and how they're going to do that together is something extremely profound. 00:26:23.515 --> 00:26:26.714 It builds relationship and bonds that never break. 00:26:26.714 --> 00:26:35.434 And even though you can experience something tragic from time to time, you have people you can lean on that understand you. 00:26:35.434 --> 00:26:38.569 They experienced it next to you sometimes. 00:26:38.569 --> 00:26:46.169 And and those types of individuals, they become with no joke at all, the essence of what a true family member is. 00:26:46.169 --> 00:26:48.009 Someone that you truly love. 00:26:49.555 --> 00:26:54.035 So Ben, we always end our episodes with a quick lightning round of questions. 00:26:54.035 --> 00:26:55.075 Here we go. 00:26:55.075 --> 00:27:02.308 What is a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know, and what does it mean?

00:27:02.390 --> 00:27:03.028 Sure. 00:27:03.028 --> 00:27:05.109 Embrace the suck. 00:27:05.269 --> 00:27:06.548 Embrace the suck. 00:27:06.548 --> 00:27:07.190 Okay. 00:27:07.269 --> 00:27:07.990 Yeah. 00:27:07.990 --> 00:27:13.589 So what it means is obviously when things get sucky and hard, embrace it. 00:27:13.589 --> 00:27:15.349 Don't get sucked into it. 00:27:15.805 --> 00:27:17.565 That's the shared suffering. 00:27:17.644 --> 00:27:19.005 That's the shared suffering. 00:27:19.005 --> 00:27:19.565 Yep. 00:27:20.365 --> 00:27:24.605 What is the most insulting thing you could say about a hotshot's work? 00:27:25.404 --> 00:27:26.683 Two more chains. 00:27:26.683 --> 00:27:27.804 What does that mean? 00:27:27.804 --> 00:27:32.720 So a chain is 66 feet, that's how we measure things out in the wildland area. 00:27:32.720 --> 00:27:38.798 When a hotshot's cutting line all dang day and I come up, I'm like, man, you only got two more chains left and it's more like 10. 00:27:38.798 --> 00:27:42.240 So you know when I say two more chains that I'm lying to you. 00:27:44.105 --> 00:27:48.265 What is a tool specific to your profession that you really like using? 00:27:49.625 --> 00:27:54.984 It's more this tool is more of something that we use to for planning and it's called the time wedge. 00:27:55.065 --> 00:27:55.464 Okay. 00:27:55.619 --> 00:28:01.619 And what this means is an 80% plan now is better than a 100% plan too late. 00:28:01.779 --> 00:28:05.619 Give me an example of how that would play out like in a real situation. 00:28:05.940 --> 00:28:06.259 Yeah. 00:28:06.259 --> 00:28:09.940 So when you're fighting fire, you may not have all of the information yet. 00:28:09.940 --> 00:28:14.265 And so it can be easy for individuals to get caught in this place. 00:28:14.265 --> 00:28:20.825 Well, we're gonna wait until things evolve and we have that 100% plan, but the fire environment's changing all the time. 00:28:20.825 --> 00:28:21.384 Yeah. 00:28:21.384 --> 00:28:26.720 So what we say is like, okay, well, we we may not have the 100 plan now, but we have an 80% plan. 00:28:26.720 --> 00:28:31.200 We can get to work in a safe way while the plan is still developing. 00:28:31.200 --> 00:28:35.119 So that way when the 100% plan shows up, we've already started it. 00:28:35.839 --> 00:28:39.599 What phrase or sentence strikes fear in the heart of a hotshot? 00:28:41.315 --> 00:28:43.554 Standby for emergency traffic. 00:28:43.554 --> 00:28:53.394 So when we are on a fire, we have something called an incident within an incident, IWI, and that's when typically somebody gets hurt. 00:28:53.394 --> 00:29:01.519 And so when when someone says standby for emergency traffic over the radio, everybody holds their breath. 00:29:01.920 --> 00:29:02.720 Right. 00:29:02.880 --> 00:29:03.359 Yeah. 00:29:03.359 --> 00:29:07.599 And how common is it for people to be hurt or killed on the job? 00:29:09.194 --> 00:29:10.875 I mean it's fairly common. 00:29:10.875 --> 00:29:13.914 I mean I hate saying that but it is very common. 00:29:13.914 --> 00:29:20.714 It doesn't happen every assignment that we go on that we're a part of but it does happen about every fire for sure. 00:29:21.035 --> 00:29:21.674 Oh wow. 00:29:21.674 --> 00:29:26.329 I mean it's it's gotta be one of the most dangerous jobs out there. 00:29:27.130 --> 00:29:27.849 Yeah. 00:29:27.849 --> 00:29:32.890 Maybe outside of being in the military and getting shot at, I would say it's probably up there for sure. 00:29:35.625 --> 00:29:39.704 What's a sound specific to your profession that you're likely to hear? 00:29:40.825 --> 00:29:51.278 The blissful humming of chainsaws running, the sounds of hand tools, metal hitting rocks, the clinging clink clink clink. 00:29:51.278 --> 00:29:55.839 Or the three beeps when a when a call comes in. 00:29:55.839 --> 00:29:59.919 Beep beep beep and then we know standby, you know, there's a fire. 00:30:00.240 --> 00:30:03.440 What about the fire itself? 00:30:03.440 --> 00:30:05.974 What do you hear when you're near a fire? 00:30:06.694 --> 00:30:07.173 Yeah. 00:30:07.173 --> 00:30:15.335 Depending on how aggressive it is, it could be just crackling or it could sound very much like a freight train where it's so loud you can barely hear the person standing next to you. 00:30:15.335 --> 00:30:16.054 Really? 00:30:16.054 --> 00:30:16.375 Yeah. 00:30:16.375 --> 00:30:20.490 Literally just sounds like loud engine noise. 00:30:20.490 --> 00:30:23.930 Why do you think this job appealed to you? 00:30:23.930 --> 00:30:30.410 There's something so raw and simple about what we do. 00:30:30.410 --> 00:30:42.595 In in terms of all the things that are taking place in the world in terms of technology and and all of this stuff, like we're kind of fighting fire the same way we've always done it. 00:30:42.595 --> 00:30:46.835 You know, we're using the Native Americans used fire to suppress fire. 00:30:46.835 --> 00:30:54.039 They built hand line, they removed fuel, like, and we've been doing it the same way since our ancestors have done it. 00:30:54.039 --> 00:31:12.744 And when you're out there in some of the most remote places in the country, you get this sense of peace that is just It's so hard to match in other places and you're doing something that feels like you're giving back to this life that we all share. 00:31:12.744 --> 00:31:15.144 And it's really incredible. 00:31:24.619 --> 00:31:29.420 Ben Strahan is the superintendent of a hotshot crew based in California. 00:31:29.420 --> 00:31:35.054 Something's been bugging me since I talked with Ben. 00:31:35.054 --> 00:31:36.253 Money. 00:31:36.253 --> 00:31:48.378 So based on what I learned, many hotshots earn between 50 and $80 grand annually based on a bunch of factors and crew leaders like Ben might see six figures in a busy season. 00:31:48.378 --> 00:31:52.858 But something about those numbers just feels off. 00:31:52.858 --> 00:32:07.523 I mean, these are people working sixteen hours a day through fire season, sleeping in the dirt so they can get up and cut line again in the morning, all to prevent devastating property damage and to protect human life. 00:32:07.523 --> 00:32:10.484 And we pay them like call center managers. 00:32:10.484 --> 00:32:15.279 Now, look, I've taken my economics, so I know the objection. 00:32:15.279 --> 00:32:19.038 Supply and demand, nobody's forcing anyone here. 00:32:19.038 --> 00:32:21.200 People know the pay scale. 00:32:21.200 --> 00:32:24.640 So why do so many of them choose the work anyway? 00:32:24.640 --> 00:32:37.154 Isn't the obvious answer here that people are hungry for a job with meaning, adventure, a mission, camaraderie, the chance to do some good? 00:32:37.154 --> 00:32:42.240 Notice though what economics does with that hunger. 00:32:42.240 --> 00:32:49.200 It says, since these people are getting non monetary value from the work, we can pay them less. 00:32:49.200 --> 00:32:59.964 The meaning is treated as part of the paycheck, which means that the more meaningful a job is, the less you have to pay someone to do it. 00:32:59.964 --> 00:33:03.404 We all understand this trade. 00:33:03.404 --> 00:33:10.479 I mean, I suspect every last one of us would take a low paid teaching job over a higher paid job at the slaughterhouse. 00:33:10.479 --> 00:33:15.359 But step back for a second, notice who's paying for that arrangement. 00:33:15.359 --> 00:33:20.845 It's not the school district, and it's not society. 00:33:20.845 --> 00:33:22.923 It's the teacher. 00:33:22.923 --> 00:33:25.163 It's the hospice nurse. 00:33:25.163 --> 00:33:29.325 It's the 22 year old hotshot with a chainsaw at the edge of a fire. 00:33:29.325 --> 00:33:33.599 I don't have any grand answer here. 00:33:33.599 --> 00:33:51.153 I'm not an economist or a politician, but it just seems like a very strange feature of our world that there is effectively a tax on meaningful jobs, and it's collected from exactly the people doing the work we admire most. 00:33:51.153 --> 00:34:07.989 Dancing with fire instead of fighting it, spiking out close to the action, cutting ten and scraping two, building bonds through shared hardship, and turning physical endurance into a public service. 00:34:07.989 --> 00:34:12.630 Folks, that's what it's like to be a hotshot. 00:34:12.630 --> 00:34:24.414 Thanks to everyone who's left a review on Apple Podcasts, KA Johnson, Kms2nnnn, Karl Kranich, M Senn, Yufyu. 00:34:24.414 --> 00:34:27.934 This episode was produced by Matt Purdy. 00:34:27.934 --> 00:34:29.701 I'm Dan Heath. 00:34:29.701 --> 00:34:30.501 See you next time.