July 3, 2023
Fire school has arrived!

After one week at Starker, getting used to the company and going to training, we are off to learn the basics of wildlife firefighting. We also finally have all the interns at work as Sabrina joined us on Monday as we got ready to leave for our week away.
I’m not sure what I expected from fire school, l but I’m very happy with what it turned out to be.
The first day we got here, we all got our name tags and found out which crews we were assigned to. Sadly, we were not all together, but it was nice to meet new people outside of our small group.

Kathy, Emily, and I were assigned to the Willow. Each crew had a crew boss and Willows crew boss was very nice and was very helpful. We set up our tents, had lunch and then got straight into our afternoon classes. We met our instructors and got started on the first couple units.
Day two and three were similar. We started our day with an amazing breakfast, and then went to morning classes. We had lunch and then headed out to the field. During our time out at the field, we went

through four stations: pumps, hose lay, fire shelters and hand tools. I like that we’ve been able to look at and practice these skills multiple times these past two weeks since I tend to learn better with repetition. We looked at two stations each day and at the end of the week we are going to use these skills to practice on a real fire.
Day four was similar but since we had our final classes of this week today, we spent two hours out practicing digging lines with our crews. I think my crew did a pretty good job and we were able to communicate well to make sure we were all getting what we needed from each other. Sometimes we would need to adjust how much we were taking and sometimes we would need to remind each other to drink water.
We worked well as a team and made sure we were all taken care of.
Friday we were off to combine all the information we’ve been gathering this week by mopping up a fire.
This week has been amazing and I’m so glad to have been a part of it, but I’m excited to get back to Starker to continue to learn new skills!
– Caroline Puckett