A Columbus firefighter is taking steps to ensure that he can continue to battle fires even after he retires. Todd Beery, 46, has logged 15 trips out West to fight wildfires during the past 10 years.
He hopes to rise in the ranks to become a crew boss by next year so he can continue the work. He plans to retire from the Fire Division in seven years.
“It’s just the best of all worlds for me,” said Beery, who has been with the division since 1993. “I’m an outdoors man, and I love to fight fires.”
Beery was part of the first crew deployed this year by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to help fight a wildfire at the Fork Complex in Shasta-Trinity National Forest in northern California.
Also on the crew was Casey Burdick, 33, a forester with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, who has traveled west to fight wildfires seven times over the past 10 years.
“Firefighting was part of my training for becoming a forester,” she said. “I became very interested in it and in going to help people out there.”
In the field, the firefighters start their day around 4:30 a.m. and usually work 14 to 16 hours.
“You just get through it,” Burdick said. “You take breaks when you need to, but the adrenaline is usually pushing you forward.”
Their assignments include widening roadways and trails to create breaks the fire can’t cross and digging out roots and twigs to remove fire fuels.
But this season has been different.
“We were actually fighting active fires on several days,” said Burdick, a resident of Lebanon in Warren County.
That’s because the fires have covered such a wide area. Nationwide, about 8.9 million acres had burned as of Friday morning. That number is 3.3 million acres above the 10-year average, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
ODNR has so far deployed three, 20-person crews to fight wildfires in the western United States. The second crew went to the Canyon Creek Complex in Malheur National Forest in Oregon. The third deployed last week to help fight the Bear fire at the Gasquet Complex in Six Rivers National Forest near Eureka, Calif. Lightning caused that fire, which started on Aug. 3.
Cotton Randall, active-fire supervisor for ODNR’s Division of Forestry, said the crew is expected to return home this week. Crews are usually deployed for two weeks.
Randall, who has been on two deployments in previous years, said firefighters sleep in tents that are a safe distance from the fire but still within walking distance of their assignments.
“If safety is ever at stake, we pull out,” he said.
Randall said they use what he called “trigger points” to determine when they need to leave an area. The trigger points include wind-speed levels and temperatures.
During his trips, Beery said, his crew has had at least two close calls when they decided to pull out because of sudden changes in the weather.
Jennifer Jones, U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman, said that although the number of acres affected is above average this year, the number of fires is below average.
The severity of this season’s fires is likely the result of drought because of below-average rain and snowfall coupled with above-average temperatures, Jones said.
The U.S. remains at national preparedness level 5, which is the highest possible. There were 40 large, uncontained fires as of Friday, the National Interagency Fire Center reported. Even firefighters from Australia and New Zealand were called in to help fight the fires this year.
Before each fire season, which typically starts in July and goes into September, ODNR holds safety-refresher training. Randall said volunteers are mostly ODNR employees who are qualified firefighters. Ohio has about 1,000 wildfires every year, mostly in the southern part of the state. Volunteers for duty in the West also have to pass a wildfire-behavior class and a fitness test.
Firefighters have a duty to protect not only local but also national resources, Randall said. “It’s important to help out because we’re part of a larger community. We would want the same thing if we were in need of resources.”
ndakroury@dispatch.com
@NollyDak
