Below are some highlights from my Podcast Interview with Dan Dobyns. – Rob Shaul
Click HERE for the full Youtube Interview.
Fitness Standards and the Mo’ Hill Test
- Rob Shaul: Tell me about your Hill.
- Dan Dobyns: Mo, it’s been here. It’s a huge part of our culture and tradition. And I wholeheartedly believe it has developed this crew, and it has developed me. It is 2,000 vertical feet, under 60 minutes, and about a mile and a half, a little less than a mile and a half, in full gear. Depending on position, packs will weigh between 35 and 45 pounds. This includes their packs, and then our Sawyers carry their saws. That’s our standard. You got to make it up the hill three times in a row to get your colors, to get your logo. We don’t just hand our shirts out. You’ve got to show that you can meet this standard three times in a row. And then we’ll hand our shirts out to them. And then, you know, you’re part of the gang. We hike it every day in the first two weeks.
- Rob Shaul: Two weeks, 80 hours of training. Go ahead.
- Dan Dobyns: So they’ll do five, we’ll do five days, five eight-hour days, and then take two days off, and another five days. So we’ll hike every day. And, you know, folks have rebuttals and say, ‘How can you?’ Because I talk a lot about fitness with folks, and recovery, and how to take care of yourself. I said, ‘This isn’t about recovery. This is about determination. This is about showing up the next day to do it again, and then, guess what, we’re gonna do it again, and guess what, we’re gonna do it again. And now we’re gonna start cutting line. Now we’re gonna hike up and we’re gonna cut line.’ Because that’s what we do, right? And it’s the true determining factor of fire line readiness.
- Dan Dobyns: Yeah, I love sharing this because we just got some animals, man. We’ve got people that are hitting sub-40 on the hill.
- Dan Dobyns: The deal with Mo is that it’s a south-facing aspect. There’s no shade, there’s no wind. It’s just got all these elements that come together. The previous superintendent did a damn good job of finding this. Because, you know what he did? He said, ‘Hey, this crew had some trouble the year before, got in trouble. I’m going to come in, and I’m going to take away the potential for them to get in trouble at night. Because, guess what? We’re going to hike this hill every day.’
Fire Line Construction and Tactics
- Rob Shaul: So, let’s talk about before you’ve contained a flank. You got one foot in the black, the fire is burning right there, you can see it. What are you doing? You’re not carrying water with you, right? What are you doing to try to stop that fire? You’re cutting ahead of it. What are you doing specifically?
- Dan Dobyns: Yeah, so, typically, what it’s going to look like in an ideal situation, you know, we can only take so much heat as humans. A lot of what we’re going to do, and this is just like a perfect scenario, we have the things that we need. We’re going to try and get an aircraft to work with, maybe one of my leads, our squad leaders, or captains, to cool the edge off right in front of us. And then the rest of the crew is going to remove the vegetation down to bare mineral soil to contain the fire. So, there’s going to be something to cool it. Or, you know, sometimes fires just lay down, and you don’t need water, you just need to go in there and secure it. But in this situation, we’re talking about some flame. Sometimes we’re going to try and get an aircraft out in front of us, maybe it’s a fixed-wing aircraft with retardant. They’re going to run some retardant out in front of us, and then we’re going to back it up. We’re going to come in, and we’re going to cut out all the little edges. We’re going to follow that black edge to the T. We’re not going to cut corners.
- Dan Dobyns: We’re going to make sure that there’s bare mineral soil up against that black edge so that we can ensure that the spread is stopped. So, we’re gonna use chainsaws and hand tools to do that and move forward with that aircraft. Or, we get our, we get our, we get our homies with us with an engine, and they show up. Or maybe they’re already there. They’re running a hose, laying right there with us, cooling the edge. And that’s fun, that’s fun stuff. That’s the good stuff. We can say, ‘Hey, we’re the lead, we’re the front, we’re the tip of the spear.’ But you can’t take heat without water. So, we need everybody to work together.
- Dan Dobyns: Retardant, in my opinion, is ineffective without boots on the ground. You have to go in and you have to go in and back it up.
- Rob Shaul: You’re trying to contain it. You’re cutting ahead of it. How wide do you have to go? It just depends on the, obviously, it depends on the vegetation. But, I mean, you’re looking like a 10-foot, like a road? What are you looking for in terms of how wide the vegetation you’ve got to cut?
- Dan Dobyns: It depends on the wind and the size of the vegetation. But when we’re going direct, you know, we’re talking about us being up against a black edge that already burned. So, the flame lengths and heights are going to be less than they were when that was green vegetation. So, our line, if we’re on initial attack or we’re trying to stop some progress of a fire, our line is going to be a little bit narrower, a little bit smaller, because we’re trying to make progress. And then, what we’re hoping for is support behind us.
- Rob Shaul: When you say narrower, what does that mean?
- Dan Dobyns: The saw cut might be a little narrower. The scrape is not going to be, like, two feet wide. It’s going to be just enough. And that’s something, you know, some folks maybe don’t like the way we do that, because we’re out there just stopping spread. And then our whole thing is like, ‘Hey, we’re stopping spread, and we need the folks behind us to help us secure it.’ So, this is, ideally, right? You just kind of move as one big happy family up this piece of line, or you’re leapfrogging is another term. Hot Shot crews will be leapfrogging, taking bumps on each other, right? They tie into the back of you. They take a bump, and then you tie in and bump in. So, that’s hard to kind of give a specific, there’s no specific spec. I’ll never tell my crew specifically, unless it’s an indirect line. When we go indirect, I’ll say, ‘Hey, man, it’s going to be a two-foot scrape, 50-foot cut.’ That’s one of those times I’ll say, ‘Hey, this is the spec.’ But when we’re going direct, I say, ‘Do what you need to do to stop it.’ And they figure it out. And then through just experience, they realize when it needs to be wider, when it needs to be narrower. But no matter what, the hand line itself always needs to be down to bare mineral soil, because otherwise, it’s not there. It’s not a line.
- Rob Shaul: I can understand the scrape, that’s scraping down a bit. What do you mean by saw cut?
- Dan Dobyns: So just going in, limbing and clearing ladder fuels, knocking brush out, taking those chainsaws and creating saw cut, like a swath through vegetation. And then you have guys behind it-
- Dan Dobyns: We run what’s called tank to tank. So if you run a tank, and then I’ll run a tank. You run a tank, then I’ll run a tank.
- Rob Shaul: Tank on the saw, yep. And the swamper is the guy, or the person, who moves the limbs after they’re cut.
- Dan Dobyns: Yep. The number one determining factor of Hot Shot crew pace is how good are your Sawyers? Because that’s our bread and butter. We run chainsaws. That’s what we do. We remove fuel, that’s our thing. We cut trees.
Leadership Structure and Development
- Rob Shaul: So, let me just understand, make sure I understand the breakdown at your unit. You are the superintendent, and then you have two assistants, is that right?
- Dan Dobyns: Yep, our table of organization supports one superintendent and two assistant superintendents, also known as captains. And then three squad leaders, and then three leads or seniors. And then we can have the autonomy within each crew to decide if we need more permanent employees or career seasonal employees. The superintendent and the two captains on my crew, at least, are the only ones that work year-round. Everybody else is career seasonal.
- Dan Dobyns: My big emphasis is, everybody’s a decision maker. That route you’re about to cut is a decision. That tree you’re about to cut is a decision. The organization of your people is a decision. The tactics and strategies up to my level. Hopefully, you see that path I’m kind of creating here, is up to mine. I’m going to help influence strategy and give, and then let my folks develop tactics that are going to be used. And I’m going to support their tactics decisions, as long as it’s lined up with the strategy and to the division group supervisor and the superintendent. That’s my biggest job. My biggest job is to coordinate with the leadership on a division and the other resources to make sure that we develop a team. So, all of that stuff, that’s the complications of fire. The tactics are simple. You pick this stick up and you move it over here. The tactics are simple. You put the water on the fire. It’s the strategy, and the development of the strategy and the communication with the adjoining resources. That is the skillset that comes easier, in my opinion, to folks that have an ability to push themselves and have a fitness level that handles the fatigue that’s required in the job, so that we can make, all that comes back down to decisions made under stress.
- Dan Dobyns: I’d say the most fun job I had on this crew is right now, as the superintendent. But the most development I got was definitely when I was a lead. I was in that first-level leadership role I was transitioning.
- Dan Dobyns: So, before all of that, there’s a lead. On a squad, you have a squad leader, a saw team, three to four tool hands, and one lead. So, the squad leader can leave and make sure things are squared away, and that lead can manage the squad. What was fun for me, and I got picked a lot for it, was the special op stuff. You’re gonna go do this. You’re gonna go work with the aircraft. Hey, we need somebody to go interior and light this stuff up. We need somebody to go do this. We need somebody that understands fuel, fire, and fire behavior. And we need to create some heat in here to pull this back in, type of thing. And that’s where I learned the most about fire behavior, was as a lead, because I got that opportunity. I also got the opportunity to shadow my superintendent. I got to hang out with him and see his leadership style, his thinking process, and how he was going to deliver the message to the crew. I got to be a part of that development of his plan and his idea. Because I was his, I was his information-getter. Hey, I need you to go lock this line. Hey, I need you to go do this. I need you to go scout this. Tell me what you think. He just wants to hear what I think. I’m not making the decision, right? He’s making the decision, but I’m just going to come back with some data, some intel.
Risk Management and Safety
- Dan Dobyns: There’s nothing safe about this job. And when folks say this is the safest way to do it, my rebuttal always is, there’s nothing safe about it. There’s only risk management. And our ability to make decisions under stress is where fitness comes from. And my culture and tradition that I hope to drive here with my crew is that we don’t PT to see your numbers. We PT to see how you make decisions under stress, because we need you. When you’re fatigued, it’s late August, you’re pushing your fourth or fifth roll. You are away from your family. When you say roll, that’s the fire you’re working. Yep, so 14, so, right? 14 days is a normal fire assignment. So, put a day of travel on either end. Typically, you’re gone 16 days. For us, if we traveled out to Wyoming or something, that’s about two days of travel. So, you’re talking 18 days away from home. You’re talking about a few thousand miles of driving. And then you go and you get after it, in some good topography, right? So, you take all those things, and you have to understand that there’s a responsibility, especially at the leadership level, all the way down the chain.
- Dan Dobyns: You have to put yourself in scientist mode, if you will, and be able to rethink and be able to see the change in the environment. And it’s not, they’re not dramatic changes that you just feel all of a sudden, but they’re there. You can see them if you’re paying attention. We have great resources. You put an incident management team in place, you get a, you get a, you get a meteorologist, right?
- Dan Dobyns: We can use a road system. We can use a natural feature, like a rock outcropping. We can use an old burn scar. Say there was a burn from a month ago. Well, I would anchor off of that, right? And start running a flank up and start flanking this thing to where, when all of the things come out of alignment, my favorite thing to do is fight fire at night, things lay down. We get the relative humidity to come up. The weather starts to change. We might still have wind and topography, which when you say, relative, yep, okay, go ahead. So, so we might come into better conditions to be able to go and now start to pinch, right?
Recruitment, Retention, and Location Challenges
- Dan Dobyns: It depends, we’re unique in our area. You know, these more, what we would call remote locations. While we’re not, by any means, the most remote location, we don’t have the attractive accommodations to bring people in, and maybe, necessarily, make people want to stay. I think some folks miss the boat on what’s actually available here. When you’re a recreationalist, whether it’s hunting or skiing, there’s a ton to do here. So, what we failed over the years to do is really recruit that and say, ‘Hey, this area hosts these things, and it’s also affordable, considering it’s California.’ But anyways, our turnover rate, typically we’re running, I’d say, at an attrition of almost 50% if you take all the positions together. I’m the anomaly, if you will. I’ve been on this crew for 17 years. And my captains have both moved on to take on new jobs and move up the chain. And that’s, that’s okay, man. That’s a good thing from my perspective, the attrition that we’re experiencing, and I can only speak to me, right, and this crew on that, is that we’re not having an attrition because folks are unhappy, per se, with the leadership and the culture of the crew. It’s that we’ve, we’re developing them, and we’re teaching them that.