Forests & People - Fire Camp Sports

*Intermission*

Top Ten Athletic Events I’ve Seen, #3

Fire Camp Sports Event

Meadow Lake Fire

September, 1975

The Meadow Lake Fire raged for the first two weeks in September 1975 in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains.   It was a tough fire, the weather and terrain were against us.   Every day fire would rush through the tree tops and overtake our fire lines, sending crews scurrying for safety zones (sometimes skimpy) as fire spread another several hundred acres.  There were about 200 of us fighting this thing, finally after two weeks of being chased all over the mountain, we got fire lines around the main fire and the spot fires and were able to hold it.   At that point we started to allow the Hot Shot Crews to prepare to leave the fire.  

A Hot Shot Crew is made up of 20 firefighters, every one of them has several years of fire fighting experience, they are young, they are strong and athletic.  These crews are assigned to the hottest and most difficult parts of a fire and are expected to put out maximum effort for up to 18 hours of initial attack.   After initial attack their shifts normally settles down to 12 hours of the toughest work in fire fighting.   They are impressive people.  There were six Hot Shot Crews on this fire.   

We held all six crews in during the day before they would leave so they could clean up, get their gear in order, and rest.   The next morning we would have airplanes waiting for them in Sheridan, Wyoming to take them to their home base, or another fire. 

Once Hot Shot Crew members have a little time to rest they start looking for something to do.   That restlessness started to come up after supper.   One crew challenged another to a contest - good -  they started to figure out what kind of contest -- there wasn’t a football or any other kind of ball within fifty miles. 

They roped off an area about half the size of a football field, by then it was getting dark so they lined up a bunch of pickups outside the roped  area and turned on the headlights to light the “field”.   The “rules” they came up with were:  Each crew, 20 people, would have five water-pump backpacks (That’s a rubber bladder that holds about eight gallons of water, it has shoulder straps so it is carried like a backpack. There is a small hose between the bladder to a hand pump that squirts a stream of water.  It is a tool used for putting out small hot spots after a fire is controlled, there are hundreds of these used on fires, we call them piss pumps.)  OK-- a field with a roped off boundary, lit by pickup headlights; two, twenty-man teams; each team with five piss pumps,  THEN  each crew leader put a lit cigar in his mouth.   The objective was to put the other crew’s cigar out!!   NO RULES, no time, no referee.   After a “game”  two other crews would take to the field, then the winners would challenge each other.   

That “game” made rugby look like a fifth-grade playground activity!! Guys were being tackled and rolled, lifted on shoulders of others all of it on a dead run with both offense (the piss pumps) and defense going on at the same time often in one big wet scrum of 40 guys with arms and boots flying in all directions.   No one was hurt, and finally they all wore themselves out. 

There is no beer allowed in a fire camp and generally no one carries any money on a fire -- so no betting.   This athletic event was strictly “for the fun of it."   

After this playful interlude, they dried out the wet cigars, grabbed some “ZZZZs” and the next day they flew out, ready for the serious business of initial attack on a raging fire in rugged mountain terrain.     

I’ve seen professional football games, they don’t make my top ten list of athletic events, the Hot Shot Crews do. 

Jerry