Home Page

Love-hate relationship

By Barbara Brown
Flying to the West Coast to put out fires may not sound like a great way to spend your summers, but for four Stacy men, itís become an expected ritual that allows them to follow their passion of fire-fighting.
Bruce Hoppe has been a member of the Stacy-Lent Volunteer Fire Department for two decades.
Several years ago, he got an itch that needed to be scratched. An interest in wild land firefighting was piqued when Yellowstone caught fire and nearly half the preserve burned in the 1980s.
Hoppe said he looked for ways since then to get in to wildland firefighting, but the opportunity never really presented itself.
Then came Oct. 19, 2000, when on a warm Thursday evening, a section of the Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area burst into flames.
By the end of the four-day tantrum, the fire was eventually snuffed out after it consumed more than 8,500 acres in Carlos Avery and in Stacy, Wyoming and Linwood.
More than 250 firefighters from a total of 54 fire departments worked to control the wildfire with help from at least three out-of-state crews and the Minnesota Army National Guard which used helicopters with buckets.
Looking back now, Hoppe said he is surprised that none of the firefighters was seriously injured or died while battling the blaze.
That was when the Stacy fire department started to get serious about wildland fire fighter training, said Fire Chief Kerry Olson.
Olson said the department now has nearly a dozen men who are trained in protocol, procedure and effective extinguishing techniques so they will be prepared if Carlos Avery or any other open land wild fire were to be sparked.
Hoppe, however, has taken his training many steps further and with a fire department friend started a local wildland fire fighting unit called North Central Wildfire.
Hoppe, who owns his own excavating business, had made some connections a couple years ago with men in Washington state who worked part-time as wildland fire fighters.
He said the men he met got him hooked up with groups that are dispatched each summer if they are needed to help fight wildfires on the west coast or in southwestern states.
After the first season of volunteering, Hoppe got friend Joe Meyer to join in and the two eventually brought in Hoppeís son Eric and Olsonís son David.
Meyer, 31, who works as a concrete finisher, got with Hoppe and the two decked out a pickup truck for their own wildland fire truck.
Over the past winter, Meyer finished courses that certified him to be a single-resource box where he can command one truck and up to 20 people.
He will use that training if he and North Central Wildfire are called back out west.
ìIíve met some people who will probably be lifetime friends,î he said.
Training is the key, Meyer said, that will help the fire department in the future better handle a situation like the Carlos Avery fire of two years ago.
ìWe approached it like ëJust get it out,íî Meyer said. ìNow we know there are a lot of things we could have ñ and probably should have ñ done differently.î
Chief Olson said, ìAvery caught us off guard. There is a lot better technique to use than what we did. There are safer ways to set up so we donít get committed and get caught in a situation we donít want to be in.î
Wildland fires are especially tricky for firefighters because of their unpredictable nature, Hoppe said.
ìWith a structure fire, you can usually tell what itís going to do, where itís going to go,î he went on.
ìWith a wildland fire, you never know because a gust of wind could send the fire off in a different direction.
As dry weather continues in the area, stretching from a dry summer to an even drier winter, Meyer and Olson said the area could be facing high risk for the coming fire season.
ìItís not like we sit here hoping things will catch on fire,î Hoppe said. ìItís just that now we have better training and experience to hopefully extinguish a fire if one should happen again.î
The men all said at different times that they are not not sure what draws them to the flames. Maybe its the adrenaline, maybe itís the thrill of chasing down a flame like it was the culprit in some major crime and snuffing it out.
Whatever it is, they all said they have a love-hate relationship with fire and none of them would trade it.
While it seems that west coast forests and the plains areas are always on fire due to the media coverage the fires get, the fires have been burning on some kind of schedule since the beginning of time, Hoppe said.
ìItís amazing. You wouldnít think that fire would go up the bark of a tree so fast. Full-grown trees go up like matches,î he said.
ìThe only reason those fires get so much coverage now,î said Chief Olson, ìis because people have started building their homes in the woods. They build their million-dollar mansions in there and thatís what gets the news coverage.î
David Olson, 20, and Eric Hoppe, 21, were not members of the fire department before they started training to fight wildland fires.
Now both young men travel in the summers to fight fires and David has taken wildland firefighting as his lifeís passion. He is studying the art at Itasca Community College.
David spent two weeks last summer in Oregon and two more weeks in Washington state fighting fires and Eric went on two, 2-week trips to Colorado.
Eric is a student of criminal justice at St. Cloud State University and is happy to spend his summers trying to stop ravaging fires in western forests.
ìItís not that hard because we have some training and know what to do,î Eric said. ìItís a lot of pressure, though, because you have no idea what youíre getting into.î

Top of Page

©ECM Post Review

6448 Main Street
North Branch, MN 55056
Telephone: 651-674-7025
Fax: 651-674-7026
E-mail: editor.postreview@ecm-inc.com