I took my daughter to the teen center in Thousand Oaks around 6:00pm tonight. Must have been shift change. The freeway was filled with fire engines from all over heading to base camp, which is right across from the teen center. On the road leading past the camp, the right lane was coned off so that the engines could make wide right turns without the risk of some idiot getting to the right of them. Firefighters were invited to use the game and TV rooms at the teen center and some were making use of it.
Almost every wildland fire is run with two shifts, 0600-1800 and 1800-0600. Some fires are run with 24 hour shifts and you are given a full 24 hours off. I liked working 24's as you were able to sleep a full 8 hours or more, did not have to wait in line long for a shower, and didn't experience as long of lines for meals. 24 hour shifts are often employed when transportation time to a from the line was long. The 12 hour shifts did not normally include transportation time, especially at the 1800 shift change, because being picked up or leaving the line was almost always delayed.
If there were a lot of large fires active at the same time, services such as food and showers were often not sufficient for the size of the camp. After arriving in camp, it could take 2-3 hours to get dinner and 2-3 hours to get a shower. Finally hitting the sack may not be until 2400 or 1200. You then had to have your breakfast or dinner before 0530 or 1730, in order to attend briefing (crew bosses and above) so that you were ready to leave for the line by the 0600 and 1800 shift times. Long hours, lack of sleep, exposure to smoke, high or low temperatures, and exposure to a lot of people coming from many different areas (w/cold viruses) eventually runs a person down. Before 1987 and 1988, the years of the northern California fire bust and Yellowstone, work and rest guidelines did no exist so you could stay out a month or more at a time, including incident management teams. Until those years assignments greater than 2 weeks were rare, although hotshot crews often ran from fire to fire for months at a time in especially active seasons.
Present guidelines allow for 14 days only, and if longer, must be justified by the incident commander, at which time 2 days of R and R are required, but then you can only return for 7 more days. Then you have to return home for at least 4 days before going out again. Incident management teams have a 14 day maximum. Research has indicated that after 14 days that crews safety records start deteriorating and that incident management teams ability to make decisions is significantly compromised.
One of the most notable fires that extended to a month or more, prior to 87 and 88 was in 1977 on the rather famous Marble-Cone fire. That was a very active year due to the record setting drought following the winter of 1976-1977. A lot of fires that year generated an unusual number of stories that are still being told today, although there are fewer and fewer people working now who were working then.
I wish I could have heard those conversations. Around what time was that? I am going to look through my audio files for that one. Those fires were right under the normal approaches for both Burbank's Runway 15 and Runway 8, and Van Nuys Runway 16. It must have been a heck of a day for the pilots and Socal Approach.
