Story 1: This Person Was Dangerous

We had a new squad boss, we hired to the crew, we hadn't worked with him a lot and it became real obvious to us that this person was real aggressive, overly aggressive, and they were a danger to the crew and themselves.

The first thing that happened with this person is, there's a two-track road right along the ridge, we were dragging fire down it, we had our lookout in place, the lookout called and said, "The fire, the main fire is making a run at you guys." And just on this person's word, we had everybody up on the road and we actually had a little slopover at the time, but I told everybody to pull back now, back off the backside of the ridge, we had our escape route and safety zone identified and I saw, you know, everybody, got them accounted for, then I called this particular squad boss again and said "Where you at? Get your people out now." And they delayed on what I told them to do. And it wasn't a long delay, but it was, it could have been real serious. And I spoke to him afterwards and, you know, "What was that all about?" You know and he said, "I thought we could just hang in there just a few more seconds longer." I said, "No, when I tell you to move, you move now." Right at that point, I didn't trust that person any more. Because they were very aware of what we expected of them. If you're given an order, you just follow it, you don't question it, you just do it. At that point, I removed this person from being a squad boss, kept him on the crew as a crewmember.

And the next day, we're in a canyon, we had a spot fire and pretty steep slope, and we started flanking it, split the crew, we were flanking it, I called a helicopter in, and told everybody, "Do not get out in front of it, don't get out in front of the head of the fire. We'll flank it. We'll knock it down with a helicopter. We'll pinch it off." And I'm talking to the helicopter, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, and I look up and this guy's scrambling on his hands and knees up in front of this thing trying to build line, singes his moustache, had to grab him, get him out of the way, and I just sat him down by the trucks and said, "That's it." And I sent him home that day. But I did what I had to do at the time. I realized at that point that they could file a grievance or do whatever they wanted to do, but it really didn't make any difference at that point. This person was dangerous. It's a bad deal for everybody. Themselves and everybody around them.

Story 2: We Had Spot Fires Behind Us

We were on a medium-sized fire. Really intense fire behavior and in the middle of the day, and we were burning out, and a crew was behind us—was another crew was holding for us, and all of a sudden, a note, just note in my mind that they were holding, which they were spread out along the line, facing away from the fire, which they should do, but I noted they were sitting down. But all of a sudden, as we were burning, all of a sudden there were multiple spot fires behind us where they were, and so it required that we help them, and which we did, because it was necessary. Noticed, noted the body language, noted how much help they were. I was upset, but didn't really want to show that. But I did go up to the operations chief and said, "I don't trust them, there's some big issues there." Said, "We will take care of this." Said, "You do not have to get involved, I just want it out there that you know, and we will handle this situation." So we just made sure that we had put oversight on them. So, and it was a crew such that we could do that. And I couldn't observe personally, so all the times we used a squad leader. I wanted eyes behind us then at that point.