> That would be true, we now have temps to 123 f, As an ex-forest fire fighter, I can tell you that at that temp it is hard to fight a fire. People keep passing out and falling down. I could do it then, but not now.
1) you are wearing all kinds of protective gear working hot-line. 2) You have to carry heavy things; fire shelters, tools (probably two), a file, a lot of water, a lunch, maybe a med pac, maybe a sleeping bag. And I carried an Argus C-3 camera. 3) You have to walk up and down hills, rocks, thick shrub, soft sand, climb over logs, fences, rocks, duck under logs, trees, shrubs, wade creeks and rivers, wipe mosquitoes, spiders, Yellow Jackets, snakes, ticks, etc off your body, 4) Then you have to work hard in the sun at that temp. Next to a blazing fire. 5) then you have to look out for safety stuff. I have been almost toast more than once from crown-fires. Falling trees injure folks a lot. I had a tree cut down to fall on my head. They never gave warning, or had a lookout. :-( One fella jumped for safety, bumped his knee, was out for the season with a bad knee injury. Some folks went to the hospital from breathing poison oak smoke. Some went because of Yellow Jacket stings. All kinds of sprains, twists and broken limbs. 6) then ya hafta look out for management. They are a serious danger to people around them, and I am not joking. People went to the hospital following their orders, I chose disobedience. I never saw a Parasol there, but I did have a lot of thrilling helicopter flights. This was back a few years when the pilots coming back from Vietnam were hired by helicopter companies. These hotdoggers would fly like they were doing ground-hugging evasive action. I loved it. Not everybody in my squad did. :-) Had lots of helicopter flights. One time our crew was being ferried up the mountain by choppers, for some reason I was last. I went up in a Hughes 500D, no doors, just the pilot and I. Santa Ana winds. Mtns. Thrills. At one point we were flipped 90 degrees, we were on our side (or very close to it). I just tighten my grip on my duffel, it was on the floor in front of me with my legs around it. It would have tumbled out. To crash would have meant a fiery screaming death on the rocks far far below. Saw a few miracles too. There was a sawyer and his puller working below the fire, in a steep broad rocky coulee below cliffs (against safety rules). The fire dislodges a big rock. It hurtles downhill with an ever greater velocity. It only touches down once in a while. It would take out a Greyhound bus. We hollered, we screamed. They couldn't hear us. The rock hit a big rock, busted up, lots of killer rocks headed towards our crew. They had their backs to it, working on sawing something. S-M-A-S-H!!! One hit the puller right in the back! He flew into the sawyer. They both went down, no movement. Ran down there, they got up, dazed. Looked around, looked at the tree. They thot a tree had fallen on them. We looked them over amazed. Get this: The puller had a 2-gal canteen of water on his back, straps over his shoulders. The rock hit with a flat side, right on the canteen, which absorbed a great deal of the shock or he would have been dead. The canteen wasn't dented, it was FLAT. Lots more stories, but wrong venue. :-) GeoB
