Posted by Russ Roth [108.162.245.217] on Friday, December 23, 2016 at 00:49:58 :
In Reply to: Re: When was the last time you, OT posted by Willy-N [162.158.74.78] on Thursday, December 22, 2016 at 18:16:31 :
When I started in the biz in '73 we called them tankers. It was not until later years when the new Incident Command system got started that we changed to water tender. That was after PDX sent a task force to the fires around Wenatchee and E-13 had to make a run for it to not get overrun by flames. They had no idea they were in trouble soon enough due to lack of training.
We had great structure training but no upland fire experience. In fact that crew was probably one of the most experienced crews in the Bureau. We started upland training before the next summer and soon we put it to use right out of our own engine house up in Forest Park.
We sent task forces for several years until the Feds decide we were too darn expensive and started using mostly volunteer departments instead.
Hope you are doing well physically now and have a great Christmas!
RR
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