Courtesy photos
By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT
Hays Post
The love of firefighting and adventure had two Hays spending most of the summer on the West Coast fighting fires on federal lands.
Hays natives Russ Kohl and Dylan McKinney are good friends and have each served on the Ellis County Fire Department for than three years.
McKinney, 24, said he always wanted to be a firefighter. Watching his stepdad respond to calls as a volunteer piqued his interest, so he started volunteering after he became an EMT.
Kohl, 23, always had an interest in fires and also credits McKinney’s stepdad with helping him onto the Ellis County Fire Department and getting acclimated with the force.
Through their work with Ellis County, the two were able to attend a wildland firefighting academy in Nebraska and, after completing the training, the two begin looking for opportunities to work on federal lands. Both found openings and began applying through the site USAjobs.gov.
McKinney said he enjoys responding to grass fires in the region and so he started looking for other places where he could work as a fire fighter.
“I really like (fighting) grass fires here, so I thought I’d look into doing it more often," McKinney said. “I like being outside, I really like mountains (and) I like hiking.”
McKinney was hired on an engine crew working on the Mount Hood National Forest in the Hood River Ranger District.
He began work on June 9 and worked through Oct. 12. McKinney said that was considered a short season and those positions are usually filled in the winter before but were left open, allowing him to get on with the crew.
There McKinney’s crew served as an initial attack engine. McKinney said if there was a report of smoke in their district, they would go look for it. If they found the fire, it was their duty to put it out.
It was McKinney’s first time in Oregon and said, once he got into the forest, he realized he wasn’t in “flat country anymore.”
“Out there, it is mountainous, it is steep, there are trees everywhere and everything grows out there,” McKinney said.
He also said the fire culture is also very different.
“I really didn’t know what to expect,” McKinney said. “I knew I was going to fight fire way different than we do here in Kansas. I knew I was going to learn a lot of different ways to do it.”
McKinney said he felt like they did everything with a purpose but they were non-emergent.
He said if they were called to the report of a fire, they had two-hour window to respond to the station.
“Out here, you get a fire, a report of smoke and you are going lights and sirens,” McKinney said. “Out there, I didn’t go lights and sirens, ever.”
McKinney also said the work ethic of the firefighters in Oregon was extremely high.
“We work hard here, but those guys, it’s a whole 'nother level,” McKinney said. “If you have to dig line for 16 hours, you put your head down and dig line.”
McKinney’s engine crew stayed in the Mount Hood Forest the entire time and patrolled the forest.
He said it was a quiet season and they only responded to three fires in their district, and two were on state property.
“For me, fire-wise it was slower, but work-wise it was a lot,” McKinney said.
Kohl began working at the end of May and worked through the end of September. He spent about half the time in Lakeside, Arizona on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, where he was based. He also worked in the Kaibab National Forest, also in Arizona and the Payette National Forest in Idaho.
He said they responded to three large fires but also worked several small fires around the region and helped to cover a fire that was at high-risk of wildfires.
Kohl also said the fire fighting was different in the western U.S. as compared to Kansas.
In the Kaibab National Forest, which both the north and south edges of the Grand Canyon, Kohl spent 14 days helping to manage the Castle Fire, which was started by natural causes.
In Idaho, Kohl volunteered to be a on hand crew to help fight the Nethker Fire near McCall, Idaho. According to incident services, the Nethker Fire was started by lighting in August and burned most than 2,300 acres.
As a member of the hand crew, Kohl said they were an on-the-ground unit helping to fight the fire.
“That one was going to be a pretty bad fire at first,” said Kohl. “But the day we got there, they got some rain and that helped a lot.”
He said they still had to put out fires that developed throughout the region.
“We still had to do a lot of spot fires, fire that got the past where we were trying to hold it,” Kohl said.
He said about five days in the wind picked up and the fire started to spread and they went from holding the line to actually attacking the fire.
“We had to dig line along the fire, so the fire can burn but it will run out of fuel (when it gets to the line,” Kohl said.
Digging line is digging all the way to the mineral soil to prevent the spread of the fire.
“That was something we were not prepared for but on a moment’s notice we completely change our direction of attack to do that,” Kohl said.
While working Castle Fire in Arizona he said they were called into help cut down dead trees while other crews were burning the area. He said while they were doing that the wind changed directions and they had to go to another part of the forest where didn’t want the fire to spread.
“We had a helicopter spotting them for us so we immediately had to turn around and we’re chasing these fires,” Kohl said. “Some of them we had to hike a little bit just to get too.”
Kohl also said they were leave the engine and work on the ground.
“We’ve had moments where we left our engine and we’d go out and cut down trees, dig line, torching and backburning,” said Kohl.
Kohl said not only was the work difficult but the conditions were a challenge as well.
He said he slept in a sleeping bag under a tarp during each trip.
On two of the trips, they also did not have cellphone service. Kohl said he was in areas where there was cell coverage a couple of times.
“Other than that, you are completely cut off from the outside world. You have no idea what’s happening — you are just fighting that fire,” Kohl said. “I was not prepared for that at first.”
He said it was initially difficult because most of the crew he was with included people from Arizona and he was the odd man out. But eventually they all became good friends and he visited some of their homes before he left Arizona.
Both Kohl and McKinney said they had no regrets about taking the jobs — although both said if they are going to do it again, they would like to find something closer.
“It was quite the adventure,” McKinney said. “If I could go back and do it again, I would.”
