The Dalton Hotshots are one of the fire crews that attack the nation's wildfires every day. Last weekend, they were in action, battling their first serious fire of the season, the Sedgwick Fire in western New Mexico.
The 21 men and one woman who make up the Dalton team travel the West from their base in Southern California throughout the wildfire season, working 16 hours on and 8 hours off, for weeks at a time.
The Dalton crew, like the 130 or so other Hotshot crews, start their year in the Southwest, Arizona or New Mexico, and travel north through the Rockies chasing fire.
"The best thing to do is get out there as fast as you can and get it while the conditions are still not favorable for the fire," said Randy Unkovich, the Dalton superintendent.
And that’s exactly what they did with the Sedgwick Fire.
Lesson #1 — start early in the day
By 6:30 a.m. they headed into the mountains, carrying shovels, chainsaws, fuel, water, food, all the supplies needed for the day.
The air was thick with smoke. The inversion layer that holds it close to the ground wouldn’t lift until mid-morning. Every breath was hard work, with the combined effects of altitude and bad air.
By 9 a.m. the firefighters had walked about five miles, up and down the hills of the Cibola National Forest, which has an elevation of 8,500 feet.
"During the morning is sometimes a window of opportunity," said Steve Robles, the 46-year-old captain of the Dalton Hotshots. "The winds are in our favor, it's not pushing as much, we like to get out and get on it, see how much progress we can get."
The fire had grown to about 7,000 acres, and had overrun, or slopped over, a big chunk of fire line. The crew raced to establish a new line.
The fire line was dug by hand, two feet wide, down to mineral soil, with all overhanging tree limbs cut, nothing organic in the path to carry the blaze.
It was backbreaking work, and Robles was pushing the crew to get a new line around the fire before the afternoon winds picked up.
By mid-morning, the crew had dug four miles of line, back and forth across the hills. Even by that time of the day, the humidity was low, hovering around 9 percent.
Fuels that litter the forest floor are so dry they burn with the slightest touch of an ember. Add in the winds, and the fire can take off and run.
"We anchor in a safe spot, and just start flanking it, anchor and flank, " said Scott Gorman, a squad boss with the Dalton crew.
Fire managers say that's the only way to handle a big fire.
"We basically got to go around the flanks of the fire," said Ray Corral, the man in charge of this section, or division, "and let the head of the fire go where it's going to go. We don't want to get folks out in front of the head of the fire and jeopardize them."
'Eatin' in the black'
By noon, the Dalton crew scraped seats out of the ashes. "Eatin' in the black," said one crew member.
The safest place to be on an active fire line is "in the black,” an area already burned that cannot flare up again. It's safe, but not comfortable. The crew leaned against charred trees with soot and white ash flying into lunches, eyes, ears, mouths and noses.
Hotshots almost always work as a team. If you pick on one, you end up fighting 20.
"You get this strange, weird camaraderie going, it's like a brother-sister love-hate thing," said Andrea Burbank, the only woman on this year's crew.
They also, without exception, love the work. "I have a little boy, he's two and a half, and I wanted to have a job that he could be proud of," said Brandon Burrill, who traded a desk at an air conditioning company for the job.
Must put out every ember
The afternoon brought patrol and mop-up, making sure every smoke close to the fire line was put out.
There was no water, so each ember had to be dug out, turned with dirt, and chopped up to make sure it wouldn't ignite again.
By 5 p.m., the team resembled coal miners — faces, hands, teeth, everything covered with soot.
"You really can't let your guard down until you go home," said the squad boss, Scott Gorman, "because that's your objective, to go home safely."
At 8 p.m., they left the fire line and headed into fire camp. In eight hours, another shift would start.
The Sedgwick Fire was declared contained on Monday, but the Dalton Hotshots and other fire crews around the West will continue this schedule until fire season ends, usually when the first snows fall in the mountains.