The Hotshot Firefighters Battling California's Biggest Fires

[Music] my dad is leaving tomorrow i do not know where well he's going to fire i don't know which fire or what where it is he's usually gone for like two weeks i grew up in garden valley california as a young man living in this area you kind of really only had three options go do construction get into logging or you become a firefighter for the forest service and so i got a job with the agency two days after graduating high school ben strong is a hot shot one of roughly 2 300 elite wildland firefighters employed by the federal government and sent to the country's most dangerous wildfires this is a bandana i don't put this over my face for smoke purposes this is legitimately what i blow my nose in for 14 days straight and i've used it for 20 years this is his first year as the leader of his own crew we're going to the north complex fire tomorrow the fires i think almost 300 000 acres i remember big fires when i first started were like 20 000 acres our last assignment was the august complex i have never seen a fire this big in california ever nobody has we probably don't have enough people to do the job that we're currently doing what's going through your mind right now the night before you have to deploy right now it's all about getting good sleep and waking up so that i have the best ability to process and make good decisions everybody is tired man all they want to do is just disconnect and just chill like really take it down a notch and not think about the fire at all [Music] i used to look at all the fires all the time and it was constantly almost obsessed with it now all the fires just kind of blend together and i just don't want to know because it just makes me more nervous so i think the less i know the better sometimes from may to mid-november ben and his crew typically work 14 day shifts with two days off between each assignment you mean turn yeah which way this way yeah i sometimes worry about him but not that much because he's good at it don't forget the sideburns girl yeah yeah yeah i got it he's been doing this for a long time so i know he won't get hurt or anything [Music] foreign [Music] this is my 20th fire season it's kind of sad in a way honestly that we've gotten to a point where this is like you know i just leave for two weeks and i come home and then i leave for two weeks and i come home this is just the cycle that everybody's kind of used to [Music] hot shots fight fires more like lumberjacks digging trenches with pickaxes cutting down flaming trees with chainsaws and strategically setting fires to remote swaths of land to stop wildfires from spreading they're called hot shots because traditionally crews have been sent to work on the hottest part of the fire hotshot crews are a national resource so we go where the priority lies right now it's pretty apparent that the priorities are in california four million acres have burned in california this year lightning strikes coupled with record-breaking hot weather low humidity and wind have fueled the largest wildfires the state has ever seen all right dudes you guys all ready ready all right here we go the demand for hot shots is so high that most crews are clocking more than a thousand hours of overtime per season describe a hot shot for me for me it's it's that person that loves fighting fire in the worst conditions can take day in and day out it takes a toughness not just physically but a mental toughness it's hot steep country it's just pounding dirt you'll see on the people's faces when uh they had a hard shift they get that that beat down their eyes are sunken in they look tired hungry and just they're just kind of like just quiet walking around for me the hardest moments is uh seeing one of your friends when your co-workers get hurt i've always had a hard time dealing with that on this crew alone i've seen a couple of them get hurt pretty bad but things do happen i mean all it takes is one time for the fire to be right need to be wrong i mean you pay the ultimate price okay i know dj and mark already kind of gave you the gist of the briefing firestorm six is down there just to pass on they did have a guy get injured yesterday he fell down a cliff it sounds like and got some pretty significant burns but he's doing okay on average 16 wildland firefighters are killed on the job each season all this stuff looking up here looked pretty active earlier we're working a spot that was like off the line hot shot crews like ben's are working overtime to keep the fires in check sometimes pulling 24 or even 48 hour shifts this whole chunk of land here is open and it has hot burning material right on the edge but we would usually have people stringed out there securing edge yeah and there's nobody out there because we don't have the resources it's just it's that kind of season what is contributing to the fact that you're so under-resourced so we have a lot of fires going on and then i would say retention problems to be quite honest with you we don't have enough people to do the amount of firefighting that we need to do why is it so hard to retain your folks hey this job is really difficult two we have other agencies that honestly pay a lot better and you can be home a lot more it was bad when we couldn't compete with our cooperators our local government our state and now we're a power company and then it was really bad when we couldn't compete with mcdonald's that's one of the reasons why my old superintendent left does that feel good aaron humphrey had been an el dorado hot shot for more than two decades he led ben and his team for five years before leaving last season this probably the first time i've ever been on the same field with my two children right here and i think about ben i think about mondo and these guys and there's very few times that they they get to do stuff like this when you were a hot shot what kind of a father were you when i look at my kids i i feel like that part was absent and these dudes do everything they can to be present but yet we can't provide without overtime because of the money we're paid for service employees are paid garbage it's trash why did you ultimately leave and stop being a hot shop i had to reach the point mentally and physically where i was hurting i have a partially torn achilles um body hurts i can't sleep my brain doesn't shut off i was an to my family i don't think the forest first grasps what they put their people through [Music] if you think you got the conditions to go then by all means i'll give you the green line all right a i like that at night as the winds die down and humidity drops ben and his team decide to set a prescribed burn there's only one natural disaster that humans actually try and manipulate and that's fire for people that might think it's strange that you're using fire to fight fire can you explain why you do that kind of is kind of counter-productive it would seem to someone who doesn't understand it that putting more fire in the environment would be a bad thing but the reality is it can help you keep fires smaller dj is going to run the burn he'll pick the people he wants to burn with him his little burn group and then two engines are on their way right now from the other side to help us [Music] so what are your guys in there doing right now we have a fire that's approaching us the main body of fire and we're utilizing roads and dozer lines to put a containment line around it but we need to strengthen these lines up so that when the approaching fire gets here it has a better chance of stopping the progression of the fire [Music] what would happen if hotshots didn't exist man that is a scary thing to think about i would assume bigger fires and probably more people getting hurt when we come to fires we're heavily leaned upon to help people if we're not here who's going to do that [Music] four of the five biggest fires in california's history have burned this year the north complex is now the sixth largest leaving state and federal resources spread thin i'm gonna make my way out to the ridgeline right now and i'll get you a flash the theme of this year since we're so spread thin has been a lot of lot of ground with not a lot of bodies on it okay so right now i've ordered up a helicopter to come in here start doing some some bucket work they're going to come in here and help put water on some of this fire because there's not going to be anybody in this area for a long time he's just going to keep doing that shuttling water basically in that bucket and dropping it on our heat down here either a putting it out ideally or b keeping it in check until we can get people here that bucket ship will help us contain and control the fire till we can get boots on the ground you

Channel: VICE News

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Keywords: Hotshot Firefighters Battling California's Biggest Fires, Wildfire special forces, VICE News Tonight, hotshot Firefighters, hotshot wildfire, VICE News, VICE on HBO, news, vice video, VICE on SHOWTIME, vice news 2020, Forestry Technitions, california wildfires, fire fighting, climate change, forest fire, Michael Anthony Adams, california fires, california fires 2020, hotshot wildland firefighter, Wildland hotshot crews

Id: A6T9R-cjXc0

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2020