In this relentless wildfire season, when fire crews and resources are stretched thin from the foothills of the Rockies to Alaska’s wilderness, the latest enemy confronting firefighters is not flame. It is grinding exhaustion, reports The New York Times.
“Everybody’s beat,” said Paul Fleckenstein, a battalion chief who spent the past two weeks fighting a wildfire that killed four people and destroyed 1,958 homes and other buildings here in the parched mountains 90 miles north of San Francisco. “There’s nothing left to give.”
Fleckenstein knew he was getting tired when he climbed into his red-striped truck after a full day defending the pine-shaded neighborhoods where the fire had erupted on the afternoon of Sept. 12. It was 2 a.m., and he was planning to check on nearby crews, but he ended up miles down the road, with no memory of having driven so far.
“My body just failed me,” he said, as he drove past the white ash of homes he had tried to save that night.
Fighting wildfires has always been draining, dangerous work, but firefighters say they now are being flung from one huge fire to the next, using the same old axes and scrapers to fight a new species of mega-fires born from years of drought, while dealing with rising temperatures and government policies that filled the woods with tinder. Fire seasons that once ran from May to September can now stretch to Christmas.
Even with 29,000 firefighters working across the West, officials had to call up the National Guard and active-duty troops this year to supplement. Residents have pitched in. Fire officials are letting some fires burn, keeping crews and equipment on fires that threaten lives or homes. And firefighters say they are working at a furious pace to keep up.
“没有上班因为新鲜尸体everyone is at work,” said Mike Lopez, president of the union that represents firefighters with California’s state fire agency, commonly known as Cal Fire.
This year, Cal Fire issued a safety bulletin about the dangers of working while tired, and reminded fire leaders to follow guidelines that suggest an hour of rest for every two hours of work. But Lopez and other firefighters here said the prescribed routines of 24 hours on and 24 hours off had been scrambled by the punishing litany of fires.
Read more of the story herehttp://nyti.ms/1KYdHYx
