Smoke Gets in Their Eyes

by Dan Davidson

Life on the fire line is no picnic, but for Devin Bailey, who has been working fires now for ten years, it’s a satisfying way to make a living. He didn’t set out to be a firefighter, but he now spends most of his summers in the Dawson area and winters in Whitehorse.

“I came up here. I was travelling through and there was a big fire,” he recalled before heading out again one morning last week. “I was asked if I had steel toed boots. I said yes. I was a student at the time at U Vic. and it was a great way to make some quick money.

Devin Bailey never thought he’d still be fighting fires now when he started out a decade ago.

“I enjoyed the work. I started that year as an extra fire fighter, an EFF, came back the next year and was an EFF again, but got a little promotion to crew boss EFF, so I ran my own crew. After that I got onto initial attack.”

This summer, after an incident command training course, Bailey is the Division Supervisor on the Dempster Fire. It’s broken up into three divisions. His runs from km 20 on Dempster to km 20 on Viceroy Mine Road.

On this day he has been working on fires in the Goldfields Complex for 30 days, which means he has had two rotations of fourteen days on and one day off in the last month.

“We haven’t had a good look at the fire in two days because we can’t fly,” he said. “So we’re kind of fighting with one arm tied behind our backs.

As a supervisor Bailey sets objectives for his crews, arranges for the tools they will need, and set time frames for accomplishing objectives.

Planning is very dependent on the wind and the weather, he says. Smoky days provide an opportunity for the division in that they don’t have to worry so much about the fire taking excursions.

“Right now we have a sleeping giant. The inversion is keeping the fire down, but also giving it a chance to dig in.

“Even with this weather we’re getting challenges along our guards. It’s just so dry out there that any little thing that spots over our line, in two or three days it will pop up and try to try and take a little run.

“As soon as this (smoke) lifts, we’ll have some major up drafts and the winds will pick up again. I think we’re going to have a challenging time if we don’t get some rain.

“Ideally it’ll rain while it’s still smoky.”

But there hasn’t been any serious rain in the Klondike for about a month, and not much before that, stretching back in late May.

The smoke haze provides an opportunity to consolidate gains and take new ground.

“We put in long days and try and make our ground where we can.When the hot days come we try and hold our ground.”

Standard gear includes helmets with face plates, ear protectors and a cotton bandana with a charcoal filter in it which cuts down on the inhalation of smoke, ash and dust.

The ground crews use water tenders to haul water to places where it is scarce. They lay out hose lines to make fire breaks and work on cat guards to block and direct the fire.

“We truck in the water, pump it into the hoses and out onto the line.”

Everything is very dry right now. As bad as it is for public relations, “tinder box” is probably an apt phrase to describe the situation. During his training course, Bailey learned more about advanced fire management and how to use the Fire Prediction System, which itemizes the intensity and rates of spread that a fire will burn in certain fuel types and topography.

He also learned about the Drought Code, a way of measuring the dryness of the ground and fuels. Currently it’s in the 500s, which means it’s very dry at the deepest layer of duff.

“Nothing is self-extinguishing right now,” he said. “It’ll burn deep down. This makes for very stubborn fires. They need a lot of water, a lot of hand tool work.

In addition, “blow down” from the variable winds in the valleys and gullies increases the fuel load on the ground, so a fire can move back through the slash in an area that has already burned.

Fighting on the ground is close up, intense, dirty work.

“It’s really hard on the eyes. There’s times when we’re really aggressive with the fire and we’re right in the smoke trying to knock down the flames to prevent the spread of it in excursions.”

Firefighters catch relief when they can.

“If there’s a wind switch and you find a few pockets of clean air then you’ll go in and take a few breaths of clean air and then you’re right back in the smoke.”

It doesn’t end when they leave the fire front and head back to Dawson, which has been shrouded in smoke all week.

“I use a lot of Visine. There’s mornings when I wake up and my eyes are just burning.”

The Yukon has a pretty solid base of experienced firefighters, Bailey says. His own experience in getting hired would not be the norm any more.

“It’s not like in some agencies where there’s a lot of summer students who come up for two years and the they leave. In the Yukon we have a solid skill set. It’s people who have been fighting fires for 10, 15, 20, 25 years. On some crews in the Yukon there’s 75-100 years experience among the three or four of them.”

In one way this is a good thing, he thinks, but on the other hand, he wonders how younger people will discover if they have an aptitude for the work if it’s too hard to get started.

Go-to guy gets the organization going

By Sarah Elizabeth Brown

The Whitehorse Star, July 16, 2004

Rob Swainson’s work day starts at 6:30 a.m. as he drives through Dawson City to pick up bagged lunches for his hungry co-workers — all 170-plus of them. Swainson, who sets fishing regulations and quotas in his other job as a biologist, is part of the 19-person “incident command” team from Ontario guiding the fight against the fires plaguing the Dawson area.

His title of facilities unit leader translates into 12 to 18 hours a day of feeding, clothing and housing all firefighting personnel.

Rob Swainson, the go-to guy. Photo by Dan Davidson

“Our job basically is to make sure that people have what they need to keep them comfortable and provide them with the equipment they need to go out and do their job, fight the fire,” said Swainson.

On any given day this month, he’s taken pickup truck loads of firefighter-grubby clothes to a local laundry, organized three square meals at a plethora of local restaurants and repaired pretty much everything with his trusty fix-it kit.

Thursday was Day 16 for Swainson, about 2,300 bag lunches later, 2,000 one-litre bottles of water, 32 cases of granola bars and 2,600 juice boxes from Day 1.

“What I find refreshing about this is that here you’re actually helping people that want to be helped,” said Swainson. “As opposed to my regular job where I’m trying to bring in fishing regulations . . . I’m not a popular guy at times.”

Here, everyone fighting fires — from grunt firefighters to pilots to radio operators — can thank Swainson and his band of helpers for full bellies, clean duds and even the box of ear plugs so everyone can catch some rest in the “echo chamber” of an arena where they sleep.

On top of the Emergency Measures Organization folks, Swainson feeds 164 people, which includes the Saskatchewan incident command team that arrived Thursday evening to replace his unit. But that number fluctuates daily.

One night, he donned a delivery hat and drove out a stack of pizzas along with water and juice when crews were stuck fighting the Dempster Highway fire all night.

In the provincial incident command teams, the top bosses are firefighters. But the rest are handpicked, often because they’ve worked together in other fields. This is Swainson’s second season on the northwest Ontario team.

His boss in the logistics unit, Dan Desramaux, a forestry technician, has a desk back-to-back with Swainson’s back in Nipigon, Ont.

Before travelling incident command teams were formed, a fire boss and his operations and logistics chiefs showed up in town and picked locals to fill out the roster.

But that’s like bringing only your first line to play hockey and then finding the rest of the team in each town you visit, said Swainson.

“This way we came ready to go, and as a result we set up our base and our headquarters in record time.”

It didn’t hurt they were handed the keys to Robert Service School, complete with wiring for computers, phone lines, desks and a home economics room where Swainson sets up food for people working at headquarters ‘til 3 a.m.

Often when they arrive at a new fire base, the first job isn’t setting up computers, it’s bulldozing an area flat and bringing in

toilets, showers, generators and phone lines. They usually live in gravel pits, Swainson said. “Just getting the infrastructure in there is a nightmare.”

When his airplane landed in Whitehorse in late June, the first thing Swainson did was ask the hotel lobby staff if Dawson City had a school.

The next day most of the team flew north while the rest drove up part of the fleet of 23 rented trucks, vans and one car that trundles crews, gear and even dirty laundry around Dawson. Locals with flatbed trucks were hired to move fuel site to site, and a few people are assigned as drivers, though they’re used “for everything under the sun.”

With basic setup done, Swainson hustled around town making friends. He’s got contacts at every restaurant, grocery store, bakery and hotel, and alternates the job of buffet breakfasts, evening meals and all those brown bag lunches — “trying to share the wealth so to speak.”

And when you’re the odds and ends go-to guy, you’ve got to be prepared.

Swainson travels with his Rubbermaid tubs containing an electric saw and drill, nails, tie wraps, wire, screws and even pre-cut arrow signs “because you know you’re going to have to direct people to somewhere.

“Of course, everybody’s giving me the gears — ‘How come you get to bring all this luggage?’ I’ve pretty well used some of everything I brought,” said Swainson, who’s proud he always had that little something for every task — making all that ribbing worth it.

As well as meeting a plethora of new people — the jovial logistics man’s favourite part of the job — the biologist of 24 yearschecked out the local flora and fauna, and tried to get used to 24 hours of daylight.

First thing each morning, Swainson picks up the lunches and drops them off at the arena where crews sleep or the school where ignition teams pick up their grub. He flips on the coffee maker that brews up 100 or so cups of java.

“Then hang around while everybody’s going every direction, because that’s the busy time, when we’re trying to get people off and out the door,” Swainson said.

He tracks down batteries for different radios, dredges up alternate lunches if one crew happens to have vegetarians or someone with allergies.

If firefighters drop off their dirty laundry by 10 a.m. at the sign marked “You drop ‘em, we wash ‘em”, they’ll have their fresh clothes back that evening, folded and in individual bags.

It’s the little things that make the difference between happy crews and a miserable workday.

“Morale is the big thing,” said Swainson.

“I kind of feel bad,” he said. “Their food is coming to them in a bag. You don’t get to make your own lunch, so some poor guy’s got a peanut butter allergy and all of a sudden there’s a peanut butter sandwich in your bag, holy geez.

“You’re a long way from home. I was joking about it being the United Nations over there in the arena.”

The New Brunswick firefighters are at one end, the Parks Canada crew is from all over Canada, and mixed in are Yukon and Alberta crews, along with the Ontario guys headed out and the Saskatchewan firefighters just arriving.

“There’s that whole cultural part of it too, where everybody gets a kick out of simply meeting people from around the country.”

Swainson dredged up 30 or more cots, and some pitch tents on the arena’s plywood floor or simply sleep on bed pads out in the open.

“When the crews arrive and I go through this ‘here’s how we’re doing things’ you can see everybody looking at each other,” said Swainson. “They can’t believe it. They’re able to shower for one thing. They’re not camping out in the bush.”

Firefighters returning from the line “are just black from head to toe with two little white eye-rings peeking out.”

The seven or eight female firefighters share the three showers in one arena dressing room, while the male crews scrub up in the other three dressing rooms before heading out for their evening restaurant meal.

Normally, every person involved in firefighting comes prepared for rough camping. Firefighting in Dawson is rather civilized in comparison.

“So they’re just pleased as punch,” Swainson said.

Everything gets billed to YTG, and someone, somewhere is tracking it all, but not Swainson.

“I’m a biologist,” he said. “They don’t let me play with money very often.”

Every day, fighting fires in Dawson costs anywhere from $250,000 to $300,000, $150,000 to $190,000 in the gold fields alone.

But while the fires are costing the territory big bucks, they just might create a little cash down the road.

Shortly after arriving in Dawson, his first trip to the Yukon, Swainson wrote to his kids, telling them they’ve got to come visit.

“I’m not ready to go, but I’m coming back ... so there’ll be a little tourism generated.”