Spent another 7 hours fighting a fire today. A very different type of fire than last one. Very rugged terrain so we took the land cruiser instead of the big truck. It made for a much more tactical operation. The land cruiser only has a 600 litre tank instead of the 3,500 litre tank the truck has. Added to this we had a much harder trip to go back for a refill. So use of water was much more selective. A lot of the actual fire fighting was much closer and with boots and rake-hoes.
The ground was so uneven I nearly managed to twist an ankle while wearing my big heavy calf-high fireman's boots. We had airborne support in the form of a helicopter. Just as well, as there were blazes cropping up on the other side of "cameltoe gully" (as my partner and I came to know it) that were inaccessible to even the land cruiser. We spent the day on "moose-knuckle ridge" so named because the property this all happened on was called "blanket bottom farm".
Oddly beautiful and vibrant trees considering the immanent threat to them. An interesting, almost poetic diametric opposition of life & beauty with the death & devastation of the beast we know as fire. So hot, the rocks steam long after the fire around them is extinguished. The earth itself often erupts in smoke and/or flame when we spray water on it or disturb the surface with our boots of rake-hoes.
