Wildland Firefighters get ready for fire season
Wildland Firefighters at the Bannock Creek office location.
By ROSELYNN YAZZIE
Sho-Ban News
BANNOCK CREEK — Dustin Williams is the new acting Wildland Fire Department Fire Management Officer (FMO) and sent two of their crew members to assist in the Black Fire in New Mexico this week for 14 days.
Four from the crew just returned from Arizona where they spent 21 days on a fire. It’s their low fire danger time, which gives them the opportunity to send trucks out to gain experience out of the area.
Williams came from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) where he was stationed in Fort Hall. At the time the BLM had wildland fire responsibilities for the reservation. Last year the Tribes got the rights back, so Williams made the transition from BLM over to BIA. Currently he’s the only Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) employee. He’s been at Wildland for a year and a half.
What Williams likes from moving to BLM to BIA lands is making a difference for future generations of tribal members will see on their homelands.
Ed Christy was the FMO for 20 plus years and retired in January.
The Wildland Fire crew is made up of 11 personnel and a secretary. Half of them do fuels, which deal with hazard fuel reductions in the forested areas and the other half primarily do fire during the fire season. They have three engines and three of them are Engine Bosses. They all do cuts during the summer and work on their projects. They do burns on the project areas for the winter. During the summer they man three firetrucks where they quick respond on the reservation when called.
Williams said their goal is to promote healthier forests and to keep fires from raging through them if they do get established.
With their cut and burn efforts in the past they’ve mainly seen a lot of aspens coming through. It also brings in more wildlife.
Their current projects are near Bannock Peak, Dry Hollow area, and Bear Creek.
The high alert fire season typically is July through the end of September. Williams has observed they’ve been starting earlier each year mainly due to climate change. They had one as early as February last year.
Another thing they’ve dealt with is dwarf mistletoe spread, which kills trees quicker.
Most of the crew has been in the department for years, such as Jacob Atkins and Karl Mosho, who are going to the Black Fire, which has burned 154,911 acres as of May 24.
Mosho’s original plan was to join the military after high school. Representatives from BLM came to the school to talk to them and he found out there was a Wildland Fire Program in Fort Hall. He talked to Ed Christy, tried it out, and has been with the program for 13 seasons. He’s an Engine Boss.
Atkins comes from the Owyhee Reservation and after getting into trouble as a kid he found his way to the Wildland Crew, after his first season he was hooked and has been with it for 10 seasons now and is working towards an Engine Boss position.
Williams said they try to do a little bit of everything, “Work on the fuel reduction and also help out with fires, because that’s the exciting part of the job,” he said.
