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Clarke County firefighters back from wildfires Clarke County Forester Benji Elmore recently returned from 14 days of fighting wild fires in California and Oregon. He was one of three southwest Alabamians to make the trip, joining other firefighters from around the country in helping to fight the fires that often plague the west coast. Elmore was also in a group that went to Texas to fight fires in the spring. The group started out in Redmond, Oregon and moved southward into the Freemont National Forest. "We stood by for a few days. There were lightning strikes that caused small fires but nothing big," Elmore explained. He was soon moved to southern California, around Monterey where firefighters concentrated on a wildfire in the Los Padres National Forest in what is called the East Basin Complex. There, fires sparked by lightning raged over 160,000 acres. For comparison, Clarke County contains about 800,000 acres. The fires were mostly contained and Elmore worked in crews that went in behind the front line fighters. "We were a 'mop up' crew, looking for hot spots and keeping them snuffed out," Elmore explained. "We had one bad flare up and we backed out and they brought in a helicopter with about three buckets of water," he said. Elmore said firefighters work with a backpack of 35 lbs. or so, including water, using hand tools of picks, a combination hoe/rack tool and sometimes shovels. It is hard work, complicated by the rugged and steep terrain in elevations of 2,000 to 3,000 feet or higher. Often the vegetation was a mixture of grasses, small bushes and scrub oaks called chaparral. "It makes for a highly combustible fuel" and burns fast and hot, Elmore said. The firefighters sleep in sleeping bags in two-man tents in base camps that can accommodate 1,800 firefighters. The camps are self-contained cities with mess halls, shower and bathroom facilities, laundries and supply houses. Elmore didn't have time for any sightseeing. Firefighters work 12 to 14 hour days and are too exhausted to do anything but rest and sleep when they are off. It wasn't Holiday Inn, for certain although Elmore noted, "We did get to stay one night in a Holiday Inn Express driving from Oregon to California and we thought that was high cotton.
"That's the only time I shaved on the entire trip," he laughed.
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