You're not thinking about any fears."īut there are fears to be had: This is a dangerous job with many serious consequences. So at the end of the day, you want to eat dinner, have a shower if you can, and go to sleep.
"You're putting in a long, difficult day and you know that tomorrow, you're going to be facing the same thing again. "At night, you're basically eating and sleeping," said Smith, remembering the summers he spent fighting fires in Wyoming and Idaho. It's a demanding and physically exhausting job, one that leaves hotspotters with many muscle aches in the evening. Working in tandem, the teams work to construct lines and clear brush away from encroaching fires. "They can cut chain after chain of line-and I should say, a chain is a type of measurement and there's 66 feet to a chain-and together, they can do several chains per hour." (Read: What It’s Like Taking Pictures Inside an Inferno) For 12 to 16 hours a day, they dig trenches-down to the mineral soil, where nothing will burn.
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The crews figure out how to get in, set up camp, and then construct fire lines to contain the fire. "They use chainsaws and teamwork to get the job done."Ī job consists of flying into remote regions with fast-moving fires. "They don't have big equipment like bulldozers," said Carroll. (See National Geographic's wildfire pictures.) "You do push-ups and pull-ups and you run some more."īecause they are often dropped onto steep terrain, the crews learn how to fight fires using only equipment they can carry with their hands. Forest Service public-information officer and former hotshot squad boss. "You run for miles and you put on all of your gear-it's about 40 pounds -and you walk straight up the side of a mountain until you get to the top and then you come back down and do it again," explained Frank Carroll, a retired U.S. To prepare, they go on long hikes and practice dropping into remote locations. The training is grueling: Crews must be ready for field assignments in any type of situation, including those with extreme weather, environmental hazards and primitive living conditions. They are organized so that they're fully trained, fully ready and fully equipped." "That's what these crews are designed to be able to do. "When the call comes, they don't know whether they're going to be at a fire 10 miles away or 500 miles away," said Smith. During peak wildfire season, the crews are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The 2,000 or so firefighters who make up the nation's elite hotshot crews work in groups of 20, in crews scattered across the United States. "We are routinely exposed to extreme environmental conditions, long work hours, long travel hours and the most demanding of fire line tasks." "We believe in rigorous physical and mental training, which allows us to perform at the optimum level in any location and under any circumstances," said the Hotshots' website.
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"They're highly trained and can meet the highest physical requirements."Ĭandidates for the Granite Mountain Hotshots had to show that they could pass the arduous Pack Test and complete a series of physical activities, ranging from 40 sit-ups in 60 seconds to 7 pull-ups to a 1.5-mile (2.4-kilometer) run in just under 11 minutes.
"In the world of wildland firefighting today, the hotshot crews are similar to the Special Forces in the military," said Dick Smith, a retired firefighter who spent 38 years fighting wildfires with the U.S. Hotshot crews-there are roughly 107 in the U.S.-consist of 20 firefighters who have been specifically trained to respond to fires in remote regions with little or no logistical support. wildfire firefighters based in Prescott, Arizona. The 19 firefighters who lost their lives battling a raging wildfire in central Arizona on Sunday were members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, an elite crew of U.S.
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