Up Close: A new breed of woods worker

From AZ Daily Sun, from Sept 5: Up Close: A new breed of woods worker

For much of August, the normally vivid pink-violet sunsets in Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument have been muted and hazy. The Fly Fire, a naturally ignited wildfire, has burned 1 mile north of the crater, sending billowing gray smoke far up into the skies.

Since the fire was started by a lightning strike on Aug. 19, Flagstaff resident Aaron Graeser, a firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service, has been the incident commander at the fire, acting as supervisor for a 10-person initial attack and fuels management team.

Graeser and his team worked hard to "button up" the fire, let it burn itself out, before the Labor Day weekend.

HOW TO PLAY FIRE

Working with about 20 firefighters, Graeser has been in charge of managing the fire as it burns through rugged terrain dotted with ponderosa pine and brush.

Firefighters have not been trying to put the fire out, but rather to manage its growth within about 1,400 acres, as it slowly burns northeast to meet the Black Fire burn area of 2008.

"On some fires, we need to let fire play its role in the ecosystem," Graeser said.

Some of the same tools are used in fire management, but there are other skills needed, as well.

"It's a lot of brain work; it's a lot of thinking," Graeser observed. "We still have to use chainsaws, to run helicopters effectively. But, there are these other needs, like rigorous scientific data collection and an increased mapping skill set. We have to be able to play a fire in a different way, using fire to manage fire, especially when it comes to prescribed fire."

Above all, Graeser is in charge of ensuring conditions are safe for his firefighters.

That task is emotionally, spiritually and physically demanding.

"My No. 1 goal is to make sure everyone gets home in one piece," he said. "We're engaged mindfully. We keep safety at the forefront of what we do out there.

Managing fire is an inherently dangerous job."

MORE TIME AT HOME

Graeser, 37, is now working his 13th fire season.

Ten of those seasons were with the Mormon Lake Hotshots, one of the elite teams of multi-skilled professional wildland firefighters in Arizona.

In March of this year, he accepted the new post with its emphasis on wildfire management.

Working as a supervisor has advantages over being a Hotshot, like not having to be out of the state or the region nearly as much.

This means Graeser can spend more time with his wife, Elaine, who works long hours as a nurse at Flagstaff Medical Center.

"Elaine and I have never known anything else," he observed. "We met in my second year as a Hotshot. There is no way I could do this job without the love and support of my wife. Even the little things like the other night when we both worked 14 hours, she said, 'Don't worry, I ordered us a pizza.' We ate pizza and drank a beer on the sofa. There's no way the job is more important than the marriage."

The couple has two dogs, and neighbors help care for them when they are both busy on duty.

Normally, he works 9 to 5, but when there's a fire, his hours are longer.

"When we're assigned to an incident, we have to meet some work-rest ratio guidelines:

For every two hours that we work, we have to take an hour off," Graeser said. "For the most part, it's no more than 14 days on an incident, then we take at least one day off, hopefully two, and then we can be re-assigned. It can make for some long months."

ALL FIRE ROLES VITAL

Graeser said he doesn't really miss his Hotshot job.

"I was there for a reason, and I really enjoyed it, but life progresses," he said. "I was offered the opportunity to run my own crew, the opportunity to do something a little bit different with a crew I inherited."

He said Hotshot crews are respected for good reason, but other fire jobs are also important.

"They should be respected," he said. "It's a vital role within the fire community that needs to be filled, but there are equally vital roles in other areas as well."

Graeser said sometimes fires are memorable because they are big or complex, but he has another reason to remember a fire, including a time several summers ago when he was still a Hotshot.

"The ones that stick out in my mind are the ones when the crew I was working with was really doing good work, when we were really clicking together," he said. "It's a really magical thing, to be able to say to crew members, "'Today we did it right and we did it better.'"

A SHIFT IN CAREER

Graeser fell by chance into his firefighting and wildfire management career.

After studying and earning degrees in public administration, government and politics and national security on the East Coast, he worked for an outdoor recreation company doing corporate team building with rope courses in Virginia.

Still, he was looking for a new career direction, which he found in 1999 when a college friend going to NAU suggested to Graeser that he might really like Flagstaff.

"I lived on a sofa a few months," Graeser recalled. "I was walking through campus one day, and there was a fire service recruiting table. I signed up and got a call from the Williams Ranger District to work on an engine."

He said it's been a very rewarding career choice, although unusual considering the graduate program he pursued before.

His new assignment does call for some skills he might have learned in college, like diplomacy.

"The hardest part of what I do is trying to strike a good balance," he said. "It's a constant act of balancing the needs of the folks that work for me, the needs of the people I work for, the needs of the public, the needs of the land and the needs of the agency -- the policy side of things."

Graeser said he also has a personal reason for living and working in this region: his brother Brian, who died at the age of 21.

"He's one of the reasons that Flagstaff appealed to me," he explained. "He always loved in particular the desert Southwest."

Betsey Bruner can be reached at bbruner@azdailysun.com or 556-2255.

Who are the Hotshots?

There are three Hotshot crews in the Coconino National Forest: Blue Ridge, Mormon Lake and Flagstaff.

For the past month or so, they have mostly been out of state, currently assigned to wildfires in Montana, Nevada and Wyoming.

"They're part of a national system to go where the need is," said Karen Malis-Clark, public information officer with the Coconino National Forest. "You can never count on catching a Hotshot at home."

Malis-Clark said there are about 111 crews nationwide, including 12 in Arizona, one of the states with the highest number of Hotshots in the country.

Their formal name is Interagency Hotshot Crews (IHC), and they work in 20-person teams.

Crews are available for each fire season and are employed by the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, various Native American tribes, and the states of Alaska and Utah.

In May, June and July, when it's hot and dry, crews are often assigned to fire activity in the Southwest.

"The Wallow Fire is a good example, when about a third of all Hotshot crews in the country were assigned to that incident," Malis-Clark said. "In August, the activity moves north to the northern Rockies and Northwest. Then it's often southern California's turn for wildfire activity, with dry conditions coupled with Santa Ana winds in October and November."