Life in Millar Western’s Helitak Crew
July 11, 2013 10:35 am Leave your thoughts
It has been over a month now that I have been on the Helitack crew, with each day bringing new experiences! As a member of Millar Western’s Helitack crew, I am responsible for forest fire protection of company interests, as well as many other side projects, giving me a very broad exposure of the forestry industry. My first day was certainly my most memorable to date. I and my Hack crew leader, Joseph, took to the sky in a helicopter to survey the land for potential fires. I found it interesting how a GPS was used to in conjunction with a map to determine our current location in order to check in with the command base on the ground. I knew right from that first day that this would be like no summer job I have ever had.
Preparing for mop-up at Fire 019.
In my first few weeks as a crew-member, I was being trained in the skills necessary to be part of the team. I attended Fire Safety Training and also learned how to work the pumps, hoses and other fire equipment. Things seemed fairly straightforward to me, and I was eager to get in on the action. Within 2 weeks, I had my chance! I and the other 3 members of the crew were assigned to ‘mop up’ fire 019. “Mop up” consisted of hauling all of our equipment out to an area that had been previously burned, and dousing any areas that produced visible flame or smoke. The day was long and the land was hot, but, by the end of it, it felt good to get a taste of what the job was really about. Unfortunately (yet fortunately for the forest), that was my first and only fire experience thus far. This part of Alberta has been rainy, keeping the fire hazard rating low – and my helicopter rides fewer – I mean resulting in very few forest fires.
Setting up a pine beetle trap around the Mill yard.
So what do I do when I’m not running around with a fire hose, you might ask? Our latest project that we have been working on for the past month is the Pine Beetle Protection program. Joseph and I have been setting up pine beetle traps around Millar Western’s mill yard and various log piles. The intention is to capture mountain pine beetles as well as lodgepole pine beetles. We can use data from the trap samples to determine if pine beetle populations are increasing and where they are located and, as well, to protect the logs that Millar Western has already harvested. When we were setting up the traps for the project, I thought that we were going to capture very few beetles, and that they weren’t a problem in this area. However, I was proven very wrong, as we captured hundreds of beetles! I was amazed to open the traps and find a variety of species in addition to numerous pine beetles. We continue to collect data on the traps and will do so for the remainder of the summer.
Days when I am not working on fire or forest protection, I am often helping out with Millar Western’s roads operations. This can be anything from hauling culverts to a location, to inspecting culverts that are installed and doing centerlines on roads. I often do the culvert inspections with my friend, roommate and fellow intern Kyle Waterman. We work as a team to get the job done efficiently and safely, and we have fun in the process. I really enjoy the planning and mapping that comes with the roads aspect of forestry, and I could see myself doing this in the future.
I hope in my next blog post to write more about a specific week and the details of all that was intriguing and exciting. This post is a general overview of what I have been up to since I started on the Hack crew (It is hard to remember the details when so much has happened). In the next few days I will be going out with the sivilculture group to the tree planting blocks, and I look forward to blogging my experiences from there!