Firs american burn!

Hello again friends!

Last Friday (two days ago) I was in my first american prescribed burn. Here in the US they use a certification system. This means that if you want to be officially qualified for doing a certain job, you must pass both theory and practical test, and also you have to prove a certain level of experience. For example for being a concret type of firefighter, a certified burner, for using chanisaw, EMT,... And it is not only one test, once in your life. Every year (or every given time) you must reprove your knowledge. So, this burn was the certification burn for Leland, a Prof. L. K's former student.

If you want to learn more: http://www.nwcg.gov/pms/docs/pms310-1.pdf

We met him in the field, exactly in Austin Carey's Memorial Forest (do you remember? The University of Florida owned forest, for teaching and researching). The burn crew consisted on UF's students, Prof. L K, Adam (as student's advisors), a Florida Forest Service's Officer (the person who had to certify Leland), some fire supression crew (St. Johns River Water Management District's engineand) and me (as Adam now calls me "El Toro del Fuego Merenciano", haha, great guy Adam!). We took a look at the burn unit, for knowing where we were going to work, and waited for the people. The unit was already prepared with the necessary plow lines.

When all of them were there, Leland did the briefing. I think it was the better fire-related briefing in my life: he did a perfect explaining of his burn plan, he figured out how was going to be developped the burn and assigned crew for all the works to do. In my opinion all the people there had perfectly clear what was going to occur and how we were going to do that. Honestly: perfect briefing. He also gave time for asking and encouraged people to participate. Some students gave us a little wheater update and then we finished the briefing.

After briefing all the people went to the ignition place for doing the test burn. All was OK and Leland ordered to start the burn. We worked in six groups (other thing admirable of Leland was the great job managing 30 people in a single burn, hard job): Ignition 1, Holding 1, Ignition 2, Holding 2, Wheater and Safety Officer. Of course, all of that coordinated by The Burn Boss.

We did the black line downwind with backfire (starting with some spots and then closing the non-burned holes). When that was finished we continued with a point source fires (spot fire), putting a fire spot every 8m (25 feet) and in lines separateds for a half chain. Leland noted that all was OK and allowed the change to strip-heading fire. All absolutelly checked. All the people did different works: who started as Ignition crew, then changed to Holding crew and vice versa.

The burn was a total success. The unit burned all under control, without spottings out of it and getting the expected result. So, congratulations Leland for a sure deserved certification: PERFECT JOB.

GPS data from my Garmin:

And two Merenciano's photos:

Believe it or not: its me!

I'll try to update as soon as possible. Thank you very much for following me in that great experience!