Newspaper Page Text
6A Sunday, November 25, 2018
The Times, Gainesville, Georgia | gainesvilletimes.com
NATION
Firefighting crew has common trait: Military service
KARI GREER I Associated Press
Members of a fire crew out of Lakeview, Ore., work Aug. 17 on the Cougar Creek Fire in central Washington
state.
BY ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press
SALEM, Ore. — After being in
firefights in Afghanistan and Iraq,
members of one of America’s new
est elite wildfire crews are tasked
with fighting fires in rugged coun
try back home.
On the U.S. Bureau of Land
Management’s only hotshot crew
focused on recruiting veterans,
members have traded assault rifles
and other weapons of war for chain
saws and shovels. But, like in the
military, they have camaraderie,
structure and chain of command.
And the occasional adrenaline rush.
“Being in a firefight is way dif
ferent than being in a wildland fire,
but both are mentally taxing,” said
Chris Schott, who served two tours
in Afghanistan with the Army’s 7th
Special Forces Group. “In a wild
land fire, no one’s shooting at you,
but conditions can go favorable to
unfavorable very quickly.”
The Lakeview Veterans Inter
agency Hotshot Crew, based in
Klamath Falls, Oregon, received
its hotshot certification after rigor
ous training and testing, the Bureau
of Land Management announced
last week. It’s now among 112 elite
U.S. wildland firefighting teams
and the only targeting veterans for
recruitment, the agency said.
Crew superintendent Michael
McGirr said he and other manag
ers took then-President Barack
Obama’s initiative to hire veterans
to heart.
“We felt it was important for
them to transition back home,”
McGirr said.
Their maturity and ability to
follow and lead are benefits that
quickly became apparent when
the crew started operating in
2012 as a lower-classification unit,
McGirr said. Their military expe
rience also means they’re used to
enduring tough missions.
“It’s a lot of arduous hiking in
nasty terrain,” McGirr said. “The
steeper the terrain, that’s usually
the ground hotshots are on.”
Kenn Boles, a member of the
crew since 2012 who did three
tours in Iraq as a Marine, agreed
that veterans can withstand the
intense work.
“You’re working hard, sweat
ing; the fire doesn’t stop because of
those things,” he said. “It’s like in
combat — just because you’re hun
gry, tired and thirsty doesn’t mean
the firefight stops.”
The crew is on leave and hasn’t
been battling the recent deadly
wildfires in California.
Of the 25 positions on the crew,
17 are filled by veterans, McGirr
said. There are three additional
openings, and McGirr said he wants
to recruit female veterans, too.
Schott, the Army veteran, said
the crew felt they had the potential
to achieve elite hotshot status after
fighting fires in 2015, including one
in Oregon’s Crater Lake National
Park that they almost had con
tained when winds picked up and
changed direction, pushing the
flames behind them.
They worked two weeks in a
row, digging fire lines and doing
prescribed burns to deprive the
fire of fuel. After three days off,
they worked another two weeks
straight.
“After that, we thought we could
be the first veterans hotshot crew
in the nation,” Schott said.
The crew usually works for nine
months, with three months off.
“We spend more time together
than with our families,” McGirr
said. “It’s a grueling pace. We eat
together, sleep together.”
That creates a camaraderie
that allows the veterans to share
their wartime experiences with
those who understand what they
endured.
Boles lost a close friend a week
after he left Iraq. That was the big
gest contributor to post-traumatic
stress disorder that hit him later, he
said, describing it as “a lot of survi
vor’s guilt. ’’The veterans have each
other’s backs when PTSD issues
arise, acting as a support group.
“Instead of bottling it up, we’re
really receptive to hearing peo
ple’s stories and problems,” said
Boles, who was in the invasion of
Iraq and in heavy fighting in Fal-
lujah and Ramadi.
Schott, who served in Afghani
stan’s Urozgan Province north of
Kandahar, said, “A lot of times you
think, this can’t get any worse. And
yet you made it through. ”
He was in an operations center
when he heard radio traffic about
someone killed in action. It was his
best friend.
“Myself, I was in denial for
quite a long time about my PTSD,”
Schott said, adding that joining the
crew and opening up to other vet
erans “helped me get my life back
on track and where it needs to be. ”
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