Story 1: Out To Compete With Everybody

There was us and another hotshow crew, there were some jumpers there, it was kind of mixed, we were on this division, another shot crew came in, and I guess starting off by saying this, some healthy competition's always good, but if you get, if people get too full of themselves, that's not good either.

And this crew in particular, they were obviously out to compete with everybody all the time, and they were doing their own thing. And we worked with them a couple days, and they wouldn't communicate with the other crews or strike team leaders or even the division sup, because they were just kind of, out there doing their own thing and wanting to show everybody up.

And we had a couple of days of that and it was a safety issue. So what I did is, I, out on the line, I gathered up the overhead of that crew, and things were really busy, it was a hot burning fire, we were going direct, you know, just a busy time, and so I didn't have time to sit down with them for a long time. I just got them and told them, "You need to start communicating with everybody around you and be a little more professional in the way you're acting, because it's a safety issue." I said, "You need to straighten this out." I was pretty blunt with them. But in some instances, that's what needs to be done. It was just basically said that you guys are off in your own world here and, you know, you obviously want to be the star of the show here and you're not cooperating with other people, you're not talking to people on the radio, and you need to straighten it out. It was real simple.

Immediately right after that, they started communicating, cooperating with the other crews, and the other people on the division. And they actually apologized a few days later.

Story 2: The Excitement Is Gone

Got these 20 people together and we're going down to Colorado and we get to the fire and, you know, like anything, you're new on something and it's exciting. So right away everybody wants to do a good job and get toward the goal.

About halfway through the fire, people get tired and the interpersonal stuff starts to get a little touchy. So we had a couple of individuals in particular that were kind of starting, I don't know if you want to call it a rebellion or a mutiny, but, you know, along those lines where their tension or discontent about whatever factor starts pulling them apart from the main group. And there breaks our cohesion immediately because now you're missing two people and those people act like a cancer and just starts to spread. And so just bringing everybody down because once those two went, then we lost the cohesion because everybody's looking at these two saying "Well, maybe they're right, maybe this isn't fun. I don't like digging in the dirt and mopping up all day." And so then everybody's kind of doubting what we were there for in regard to our goal. It wasn't real outright, just you know, subtle things, little comments, you know, why are we here, blah, blah, blah, just little things. But the big things in the overall picture, trying to keep things going in a positive way throughout the course of the fire until we were done. So, yeah, little things, but they were big.

And since one of them is a squad boss, you know, he's kind of one of those people that sort of in a leadership place where a lot of people are looking up to and so then it's definitely my job to address it. And it's two days left, should I even bother with it or should I just let it kind of fly by the wayside, but I decided to address it anyway. Pulled them aside, and said, "Hey, this is what I'm seeing. Is this what you're doing?" And of course both denied it and so we talked about our goals again, what we wanted to see, and then I gave the one the ultimatum of, you know, clean up the act or take the fast boat home type deal. That seemed to work well, but I think you always encounter that sort of stuff toward the end of a tour.

And, you know, if you don't address those issues, there goes all your trust and respect that you tried to build over the last 12 days. Because somebody in that crew is going to say, "Hey, I thought we were going for this goal and this guy's over here being a jackass and you're just going to let it happen." And for that instance, it culled the situation and we got things back to working order and the cohesion came back again. Once those two people realized that being an individual isn't exactly what you might want to do when you have to be working with, you know, 18 other folks. So that was the big thing on that fire because it was a big fire and a lot of things going on and just having that cohesion, people working together, was a big deal.

Story 3: He Didn't Get To Be Crew Boss

I was the Assistant Crew Boss/Crew Boss Trainee. And Griff was my trainer. There was this other guy on the crew, he was working on his crew boss too and I didn't know that. I had been picked as the crew boss trainee for that trip because of my training needs on the district.

It's not my fault that I got to go out as crew boss and he didn't. He was just sulking the whole time. He was one of the squad bosses, sulking, sulking, sulking. He made it—I won't say that they didn't follow what I asked them to do but they didn't make it very easy for me. And, I thought we had an all right time but there were times when it just didn't mesh quite right; we didn't mesh as well as we should have. You know, and, by the end of it, they would pick, pick, pick on me.

Well, then on the next trip, it was that way all over again. I got to do the crew boss thing so actually we were going to split it and he was going to take assistant for 1 week and I was going to take assistant for the next week. I was leading the crew and half the crew was following me. We would walk down the road and the other half was following this other guy and they were walking down the other side of the road. He would have them do stuff like that. I was like, we can’t have this. You know, I talked to Griff about it and Griff was like, “Yeah, this is not good.” So we sat down with him and we were like, “We know that you’re bent about not being crew boss, but you’re going to be crew boss next week. But while I’m crew boss, please respect it. You know, quit doing this stuff. This has got to stop, you’ve got to start following or else the whole crew will fall apart. You’re going to screw up everything.” Well, after that talk, this guy started like really helping me.