Although I do a lot of "routine" two-way work for the DNR, Fire Season introduces a whole new set of circumstances to deal with. I (as are most of the other techs) am often dispatched to our largest fires, known as Project fires. The difference between a Region fire and a Project fire is that a fire is declared a "Project" when it gets too large or difficult to handle with our resources within our own region. At that point, Fire Control in Olympia dispatches groups of firefighters and overhead to the fire in order to get it under control.
During a Project fire, our communications infrastructure grows rapidly to handle all the new resources, including installation of "portable" radio repeaters and includes the arrival of an "on site" repair shop.
Come on in to 1997's Red Lake Base Camp to get a "feel" for what life for a wildland firefighter is like. A bit of caution, here, this tour consists of a number of jpeg photos and may take a couple of minutes to load.
Well, that's about all for now. Next time I'll try to include some real "work" photos to show that I do other things than sit at my computer and make all this stuff up.