The End!

We completed our Wildland Fire Training today and took our exam, all 36 of us that started out including the ten of us from Wolfskin VFD. I expect we'll all pass and then Oglethorpe County and its various districts will have acquired FFT2 graduates. That's what you get, and it's a deal because now your volunteer fire fighters are qualified to work alongside the Georgia Forestry Commission.

Here's the folks who graduated and got the great trinket below, the nicest cap I have: (I'd be glad to name some of these folks but there are some of our firefighters who are otherwise tigers prefer to be unnamed and that is perfectly understandable and so this is what you get - the great VFDs in the area:

Devil's Pond VFD

Wolfskin VFD

Beaverdam VFD

Glade VFD

Maxeys VFD (hi Tim!)

and

Winterville (Athens-Clarke County)

We were also very pleased that Glenn Reynolds and Sharon Dow from the Appalachian Trail Club joined us for the course.

Here's part of what we got. Forty hours of training, and this:


And that's not a complaint. We were delighted to receive these caps color-coordinated with our nice kevlar shirts and pants and I intend to wear mine (but not bill backwards, never fear).

Yesterday was especially gruelling and, in the end interesting. Grueling because it was all classroom work, and interesting because an hour before the end our own Wolfskin and Beaverdam got called out for a "controlled burn" that had gotten out of control. To our relief we got out early; to our chagrin, the instructors ended the day's session at the same time and everyone one else was waving cheerily to us as they took off for home.

The "controlled burn" was way down Wolfskin Road and then off onto a itty bitty dirt road that went for miles and then we discovered that the owner had decided he didn't need us and please go away. Oh well. When an owner says no and there's no clear danger, that's it. To be frank, it *appears* that the owner had not submitted a burn permit in the first place, thought his fire was getting out of control, called *after* the fact to submit a controlled burn permit and then, probably seconds later, called 911 for help. Well, this is how things work sometimes. Please just make sure that the above is not how you organize it.

The course was excellent - well organized over three 12-hour days plus four more hours today, with wonderful instructors, and if I started out knowing 10% of what we eventually covered, in the end I knew 95%. And we got to know some of our fellow firefighters around the county that we never see, because after all they are in different districts, and that's of considerable value too.

Yesterday on Saturday, to our surprise, we found we'd had a catered lunch delivered by Countryside Catering. (If you have a link to this I'll be glad to insert it - Jerry Warren and the other guys worked hard to put this together.) Wolfskin VFD Chief Phyllis Jackson and Treasurer Cary Fordyce had worked behind the scenes to pull together a number of sponsers to treat us all after two weekends' and 40 hours of hard work. It made us sleepy in the afternoon but that's ok.

So we particularly thank the caterers and our sponsers:

Countryside Catering sponsered by

Bill Cabaniss of Commercial Bank
Anita Turenne of Pinnacle Bank
Roger Tench of Georgia Power
and
Jeff Paul of Rayle Electric

We had a strong ovation for all these sponsers at the end of our training. And had an especially strong ovation for our great instructors from the GFC:

Tracy Graham, Chief Ranger in Crawford who along with Phyllis Jackson and Steve Gray, helped to make this happen.

Steve Gray who conducted most of the sessions, and believe me I've seen plenty of instructors but never someone quite so good at motivating his students.

Mark Millirons, who was great at peppering his lectures with an astonishing array of stories and accounts.

Denise Croker , who as Glenn said, comes with a competent and knowledgeable exterior, and a no-nonsense no-b.s. inside.

and

Mike Lee, who was my own Squad 4 Boss, and a very patient one indeed, and gave a great talk on hazardous materials.

You'll probably agree that we hope never to see you, but thanks to all the folks above, you can be grateful if it turns out that way.

And now, to end with, here's the Georgia Forestry Commission Forecast for today. 33% relative humidity, a burn index of 25, a KBDI of 510, which is not just high, but extremely high. With 15 mph winds and 93 degrees (I'm looking at 98 degrees right now) we are in a Class 5 day, the highest fire danger: Extremely High Fire Danger. Expect more of it if we don't get rain tomorrow, and take a look around your place. Do you think you could withstand a wildfire out of control with 50 foot flame length in 20 mph winds? If you're at the top of a ridge it will be as if your house is sitting in front of a blowtorch.

So *please* don't light fires without calling for a permit - there's nothing you have to burn today that couldn't be burned in better conditions next week, and the consequences are that you could destroy your own home and those of your neighbors! If you'd seen the videos we'd seen you'd be scared to death.

Sorry, folks, but that's what we've been learning. Please don't start any "controlled burns" without contacting the Georgia Forestry Commission, which you can do with a single simple phonecall to 706-638-5556. You might want to look take a squint at your neighbors if they are burning under these conditions and maybe give them a little call.

-Wayne