Ok, here is my fire page and my story hehe. Ive always been fascinated with fire, I saw my first fire when I was like 12 and wanted to hide under the bed. Now when I see a fire I run to grab the video and regular cameras. And now as a volunteer fire fighter I am really excited to get my first call and I will try and bring my camera on calls but we'll see. To me firefighters are very brave people, you look at these pics and imagine standing maybe 50 ft from these monsters and not having the least bit of fear, I personally respect fire very much and I know what it can do. But anyway, as promised to some of you here is my fire page. If you've ever looked at my "outside" pics page you'll see I have a pic of a SMALL fire and said we have a lot of them here, well here are pics of the BIG fire and some other fire related things so enjoy the pictures.
Im not sure if the info is correct on these pics, we had a fire in 94 and one in 96 in about the same place but when I find out the proper info on them I will make any corrections needed.
Ok, this is the start of the big fire we had in '96, it's by far the biggest fire I've ever seen out here or anywhere actually hehe. This is from our front porch, you can see it up on the mountain, and I am pretty sure there are 2 fires going there, the wind blows the embers and starts new ones. You can kinda tell the wind is blowing from the smoke. You cant really see it very good but the highway is kinda just below that fire on the right.
This is the same fire, by this time I think it had crossed the highway or at least it was really close, with all these pictures of this fire I am not sure if I got the sequence right or not. You can tell it has spread quite a bit more though.
I dont really know what to say about this one hehe, it looks all bundled up, and theres people standing right there at the base, you cant see them but they are there. Im not even sure how many fire fighters we had on that on, but I know we had at least 4 different crews working on it, cool huh?
You can really tell which way the fire is going here, and I think at this point it was VERY close to going over the highway, I am pretty sure it crossed way down there first and then kinda came back towards our house. By the little hill to the right of the power pole theres a bar and a house or two so you can guess they are pretty lucky since its all still standing today.
I really wish I knew where this was and who took the pic because I dont recognize the surrounding area and stuff but anyway its kinda eerie the way the smoke is so colorful and all the different shades it turns.
I dont know where this one was taken or who took it either. It looks like there were just two twisters though and in the middle where the smoke is all white, that's either smuldering or its being put out but its really cool how the sun and the smoke mix and make such dramatic scenes in the sky like that.
Ok I KNOW this one was the one in '96. Cause by the time it got there it had jumped the highway and we were told by the sheriff to evacuate (2nd time we've been evacuated cause of a fire). You dont need me saying this but this was one hell of a big fire!
This was taken from my best friends house, its a picture of where our house SHOULD be. Our house is like up and to the right just a little of those trees. Luckily we had NO damage to our house at all, but good thing we were evacuated. It sucked cause we were 20 miles away and they wouldnt tell us anything except there were 3 houses in danger and as you can see our house was one of them.
This is a very common site when theres fires, Im not sure if the fire is still going or not, it looks like it though but all the heat and stuff makes little tornadoes with the smoke and it takes the embers and spreads them all over causing new fires and stuff, but they are kinda neat to see (from a distance of course). This was also taken from my friends backyard.
Ahh the backup troops hehe. Without these guys fires would be A LOT harder to deal with. The first time I saw a bomber was in '92 and it was so...I cant even describe it, I had the chills and the watery eyes and everything, it was just amazing to me. This is also taken from my friends back yard (They were told to evacuate but didnt, wish I had gone there instead of 20 miles away).
Again, this was at my friends house. As you can tell it was REALLY close to them and their neighbors, but the plane doesnt put out the fire, just spreads a line of fire retardant material which prevents the fire from burning past that point. As expected, saving the houses is the number one priority, and the firefighters here have done a VERY good job of doing that over the years. The plane is super low, almost looks like its gonna hit that power pole huh?
Heres a really good close up of the plane. it doesnt look it but this plane is really big, it can drop I think 3-5 loads before having to refill and it is powered by 4 propeller engines. This isnt even our plane, I think it comes from a town called Elko thats about 2-3 hrs away so it usually takes a while for it to get here but it is always on standby for us which is really good for us of course.
The aftermath - This is what we got to come home to, actually we had came home at night and didnt fully see the damage, but there were a few little fires going at the time, like camp fires. But the next day we awoke to this, you can see how extremely close it got to our house, this was from our front porch.
Ok, to get a total idea of just how much danger our house was in, this picture says it all. It totally burned everything in front, back and to the left of our house, the right side was spared for some reason, good thing too cause thats where our propane tank is. This is taken out in the field in front of our house like from a little bit away, which of course was completly burnt too (but we dont own that land anyway).
This is from our house looking out left, towards town and stuff. EVERYTHING black you see was burnt and there was a lot more burnt too, Im not sure but if I remember right the total acreage burnt was 86,000 JUST in that fire alone. But at the time we had I think probably 5 or 6 seperate fires going at the time. But you can really get an idea how big this one was from the pic.
This one was taken looking towards the right of our porch. You can again see just how close it got, nothing else to say really except look at my flowers!!! I wish they would grow like that again *sigh*
I think this might be more of the "outside" ones but its fire related. Anyway I think its a really cool pic of the smoke, the clouds, and the sun had just gone down I think. Again my best friend took this one.
Ok, new fire now. This was just a simple little hay fire from like Jan or Feb of '99. It doesnt look too big from the house, but it never got too big in the first place.
Well, knowing me, I just HAD to drive up and get a closer look at it hehe. So here it is from wherever the heck that road took us. And as you can tell I took it in the car, well I had the door open but oh well.
Here it is at night, pretty nifty huh. My dad stole the camera from me so he could take pics of it up close so this one and the next one are from him. I guess with hay you cant do anything about it cause from what I was told it just kinda burns from the inside out and water really doesnt do anything to it so rather then putting water on it and wasting it everyone just sat there all night and kinda watched it and made sure it didnt spread anywhere.
I believe this is the next morning, as you can see there is a tank in the background. Thats full of gasoline or propane, something explosive like that and that was the biggest worry was that it would reach the tank. From the ashes you can tell it really wasnt that big at all, but its a shame all that hay went to waste, its good money out here.
Here are our fire engines, yep a WHOLE three of them hehe. Actually theres another one which is just a basic pickup truck and that just carries supplies, its the chiefs truck. And then the tanker, which is pretty much my dads truck, and then the other two are the ones that actually do all the stuff. My dad is the assistant chief and with the tanker what he does is he either stands guard at structures or refills the other 2 trucks.
AS OF 5-2-02 ALL THESE PICS UNDER THIS ARE NEW!!!
I need to put a comment here when I get the others of the set uploaded. But if you happen to see this...same fire, only way far back, just to get an idea of the size of it. This is when we were first going to it. The fire itself was about 10-15 miles from our house. We were called to assist, I guess structure protection because theres a subdivison on the other side of the highway. These were taken about mid/late august 2001 by yours truly (thats me).
Aside from being a fire pic and me being absolutly in love with it, I must say this is probably one of THE best pictures I have EVER taken. Was nice and toasty right here, we were behind it chasing it with the truck and hose, I was driving and our chief was on the hose.
This was the same place, only its just goofy looking me with all my gear on. I had some time and snapped a quick pic, thought it would be interesting to see. At least its a good laugh :)
I liked this one, again same area same fire. I believe this is our chief, he's only maybe 20-30ft away so with all the smoke you can see why I had all the crap on in the previous pic.
Ohhh flames! Well this wasnt taken long before/after the last one cause its the same exact spot I think. You can see some cool flames here, and in the middle of the window, like right under the flames is someone spraying it with the hose. I was driving the truck, following as he was walking so thats my excuse for not being the one on the hose.
Ok new fire, place, date, and time. This was a hay fire at some fields like 3 miles or so by my house in early December 2001. Apparently when you wind hay if you do it too tight it combusts and mainly burns from the inside out so this one was really fun. This was also the first time we got to use this foam nozzle and I think the actual foam itself on any fire. My dad took these and the next 3 with a digital camera, he's the asst chief :)
Same fire obviously, this ones kinda choppy in quality but you can barely see someone on the left side of it, I have no clue who it is though. Not much to say about this one, I thought it was cool so I decided to put it up.
Well this ones really kinda neat. I dont know if theres a car somewhere or if the flash from the camera did that to water but it sure turned out nice. And I think that might actually be me on the hose, really hard to tell though.
Another nice play of lighting. I think thats me on the right (the closest one) and then theres three other people from our crew. Im pretty sure the one on the left of me is our chief. What happened here was it was dark of course and the flash illuminated the reflective strips on our turnouts. Notice how SOMEBODY isnt wearing one haha. We are using foam and if you look at the ground you can kinda see how messy it is. This pic is also a little bigger then the rest to show detail, also you may want to adjust your brightness if its too hard to see the detail.
And now what youve been waiting for...Heres me holding the hose looking like a total retard haha. It looks like Im wearing goggles but I didnt have my goggles with me so I dunno what the deal with it is...oh wait its the thingy on the side of my helmet. Well you can see more messy foam here and the stripes.
Ok grab the popcorn, short story time. We had a meeting one day and discussed ventilation technique on structure fires. Well they had mentioned using SCBA's (Self Contained Breathing Apparatus) in the videos. Well I had never even seen one let alone use one. So I took one home so I could get acquainted with it. And when I was doing it I figured go in full gear naturally to get the real feel of it. My dad was playing with the camera, or had decided to anyway so he took these pics. Well this is me I guess figureing out the pressure or hooking up a hose or something. As you can see I needed a haircut really bad haha.
Here I am in almost full gear, and I got the mask on and stuff. You cant see it but I have a full oxygen bottle on my back and that thing was kinda heavy, plus everything else I got on. I bet on here I was pulling the mask off cause I couldnt breathe. Apparently you gotta have the oxygen going through the mask to breathe in it hehe.
Well, fully geared and ready to go! Minus the gloves though. As youcan see it got kinda misty inside the mask, you can see all the fog inside of it, call me crazy but Id think that would be bad if you were in a burning building. Im figeting with the air control it looks like, or snapping that bottom belt together...I think thats what it was. (my fave one of the 'series')
Well here I am yet again, nothing much to say about this one though. You can see our icky house haha, and all my junk on the table. By the way, the other helmet on the table is my brush helmet.
Well hope you enjoyed my new segment, I sure enjoyed slaving for almost 4 hrs making it for you, the least you could do is SIGN MY GUESTBOOK so I know all this time and effort wasnt in vain. :)
