Achievement earned: Hot Pocket

So yeah. I got the achievement for staying in the crotch pot, but the boss isn't dead yet. The fire is still not completely put out.

There's a clip from the local news here, unfortunately in Swedish but it shows some live action pictures of the day time team working with putting ember fires out. As I write this, my own images are uploading to Picasa. I'll link the album at the end of this post. My camera smells like smoke.

When we first got there we had no idea what was going on. I had very little information other than "Hey we're going to a wildfire" and that we'd probably be fed (this ended up being a very broad truth). We eventually got droven out to our "base camp", the fire truck that was feeding our hoses. There were also some soda/mineral water/low alcohol beer to feed our thirst. From there, we were driven on a cart behind a fourwheeler to our own base stations, to start sweeping grid squares. Each group in my part consisted of a fire man and two national guardsmen, and we were responsible for 2-3 grid squares each, each square being about 200*200 meters.

My group started doing recon, to see where the problems were worst and possibly relocate the hoses. We then started filling watering cans and lugged them around, putting the smouldering beds out. We kept doing this until feeding time, which was midnight. We each got three hot dogs in buns, and we (10 people) got one loaf of bread to share, along with two thermoses of coffee. I didn't think much of it at the time since we agreed to meet back at about four in the morning to have some more cuppa. I assumed we'd get some more food by then. I'd myself had a big dinner at about five, but with the amount of work we did, three hot dogs was barely noticable at midnight. Anyway, back out into the woods for continued work until four o'clock came around. No. There was nothing. We'd fill up on mineral water and cold coffee mixed with chocolate powder to maximize nutrition and waited a little bit for the last rays of sunlight to show up, making complete daylight. Smoke is really hard to spot once the light starts to disappear even the slightest. Once this was done, back into the woods. My group was ordered to relocate some hose to be able to meet up with the other group that was being fed from the same fire truck. We did some recon in one of the worst terrains I've ever been forced to get through, and then proceeded to lay the hose down. About the time we finished, we were ordered back to the fire truck at about quarter past seven (we were due relief at eight) for breakfast. Jolly good! We sat around until about half past, then relief arrived, and the minibus took us back to the headquarters compound where we had sum bread and oatmeal porridge. We were then thanked for our effort and set free. I went in the same car as another man from my squad and I think I fell asleep five times during half an hour. I went home, got up, tore my clothes off, showered, and literally collapsed in bed and slept for twelve hours. This is easily one of the most excruciating experiences I've ever had. I had little nutrition, became dehydrated at times, had to breathe light and heavy smoke most of the time we weren't in basecamp, and the terrain was at times almost untrekkable. At first I wanted to go back for another night since the money is real good, but I simply cannot. My shoulders and my feet stop me from doing any serious work at all and knowing what would await me, I'd not be efficient.

Oh, and by the way. There were mosquitos and midges all over us, just to round out the fun.

Clicky for pictures! Please use the zoom function, I uploaded them at max resolution, and Picasa sometimes does bad things to my pictures.