380 attend academy at Arkansas Tech
By Katherine Marks
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Copyright 2007 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.
RUSSELLVILLE, Ark. — Normally when firefighters from around the country gather in Russellville for a wildfire training academy each May, the fire season hasn’t quite gotten into full swing.
But this year, some firefighters arrived straight off fire lines in Georgia and Florida. And others who’d planned to attend had to cancel because they were headed to the drought-stricken southeast.
James Fryar spent two weeks in Waycross, Ga., putting in 14-hour days as an engine boss who, among other things, makes sure all the engines in his crew are in good shape. By mid-May, he was putting some of the lessons he’d learned to use as an instructor after returning to his home base in the Caddo Gap district of the Ouachita National Forest. The forest covers 1.8 million acres in west Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma.
“You always learn something,” said Fryar, 55. In this case, he got a refresher on just how fast fire can move.
He and his crews in Georgia had a hard time staying far enough ahead of the fire to build break lines - trenches or other clearings used to contain a fire. Normally, crews working a mile or two from a fire will have enough time to build a break line.
“In this kind of situation, nine miles wasn’t enough,” Fryar said. “When you start putting miles to a fire, it starts opening our eyes about how fast these [blazes] can move.” Attendance at the Arkansas River Valley Wildland Fire Academy dropped slightly this year because of the wildfires in Georgia and Florida, but was still around 380, said Michael Roys, director of the Professional Development Institute at Arkansas Tech University.
By last week, the wildfires had blackened more than 600 square miles of forest and swampland in southeast Georgia and north Florida. The first large fire in southeast Georgia started April 16 when a tree fell onto a power line near Waycross.
“We had quite a few cancellations,” Roys said.
“The fire season really started early this year,” Roys said. “We just hope and pray the season starts a little bit later next year.” The two-week academy, which the university hosts, wrapped up Friday. For those two weeks, many of the college’s classrooms had sandboxes filled with miniature pine trees and firefighters and the cafeteria was filled with mostly men wearing shirts with logos from fire departments and tribes from around the country.
Agencies require annual training so firefighters seek out opportunities close to home. The Russellville campus provides a central location to firefighters in Oklahoma and Arkansas and draws attendees from around the Southeast, Roys said.
The academy starts the day after Arkansas Tech’s graduation ceremony. This year, it was attended by firefighters from 13 states and Puerto Rico.
“It’s a huge endeavor,” Roys said. “We house them. We feed them. We provide all the logistics.” Registration is $40. Lodging costs $28 a day, and meals cost $21 a day.
The costs are low, Roys said, because the agencies that participate provide instructors, material and equipment. The National Parks Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, The Nature Conservancy, the Army National Guard, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and various fisheries and wildlife agencies participate in the program.
Each year, attendees are asked to request what classes they’d like for the following year, said Johnny Lindsey, who works out of the U.S. Forest Service’s Russellville office as fire-management officer for the Ozark-St. Francis National Forests.
The Ozark National Forest covers 1.2 million acres, mostly in the Ozark mountains of northern Arkansas, and the St. Francis National Forest covers 22,600 acres in eastern Arkansas.
Attendees can take up to 40 hours of classes.
Demand dictates what’s offered, from training on dispatch and management jobs to case studies on fire fatalities or courses on tractor plowing or air tactics. A range of classes is offered not only on the physical aspects of firefighting, but also on subjects such as logistics, finance and administrative or support duties.
While many courses are entry- or intermediate-level, advanced courses are available. The academy is a blend of rookies preparing to go out on the fire line for the first time and veterans honing their skills.
During a break from a beginners’ class, Sonnie Keechi, 25, said that she’d worked for nearly a year as an administrative assistant for the environmental and forestry program for the Caddo Tribe of Oklahoma. She wanted to better learn firefighter lingo to help her take calls from firefighters and to give out information. She’d also taken basic lessons on firefighting, survival and shelter as well as dispatch courses.
“It’s a lot harder than everybody thinks it is,” said Keechi, who planned on being out with fire crews as soon as a week after her training ended.
Garrett Murphy, a member of the Iowa Tribe, near Stillwater, Okla., said that he likes the combination of work that’s challenging physically and mentally. “There’s so much science involved,” he said as he headed back to a class for new firefighters. He said firefighters have to learn the physics of wind and fire. “It’s surprising how intellectual it is.” He hopes to suit up as soon as possible, he said.
The academy was started in 2004 by Lindsey, Teresa Williamson of the U.S. Forest Service and Jim Brigance of the Arkansas Forestry Commission.
Williamson is the Oklahoma American Indian training specialist out of the service’s Russellville office. Brigance is the training and safety coordinator for the commission out of Fayetteville. Lindsey, who worked for a decade to get the academy started, said it was the “most cost-effective, most efficient” way to bring agencies together that will be working together fighting fires.
He and other officials said that, even though the fire season got an early start, training is always timely.
Said Lindsey: “Year round, there’s always a fire somewhere.”